And in conversations from the pub to the piggery, I heard both pride and frustration: pride, because people felt that what they had learned about how to build a multicultural community should be applied more broadly; frustration, because small-town views are so often ignored. City elites, they added, rarely invest much time in engaging with people who are different. “City people are so wrapped up in their own world,” said Gail Smith, the breeding supervisor at Kia-Ora, the pig farm Tom runs with his sons. “They need to broaden their horizons.”Many of the Filipinos I met in Pyramid Hill agreed, having moved from cities like Brisbane. But Pyramid Hill speaks to something else: the power of individual actions, sustained over time.

Source: New York Times May 24, 2018 05:12 UTC