The expression ignorance is bliss is taken to mean that what we don’t know cannot hurt or affect us. Having just read M.E.Kerr’s latest novel for teenagers ‘Someone like summer", I am reminded that often not knowing is an excuse to continue to be prejudiced. This novel explores the relationship between a rich Long Island teenager and a migrant worker from South America. She has no idea of the sort of life he is trying to escape from, his need to provide for mother, sisters, brothers, the whole extended family, as she tries to make him acceptable to her family. Needless to say the attitude of her father and the community to the migrant workers smacks of the U.S. in the sixties.
The attitude of the U.S. government to illegal migrants is even more astonishing – a free green card if you go to fight in Iran!
It would seem that the average U.S. citizen cares little for the plight of non-U.S. citizens and as shown at the end of the novel, even less regard for their own citizens as Cyclone Katina sweeps into the Gulf of Mexico.
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