eruthros

yeaaaaah, I'm with you on the mice for sure, because I grew up on a farm and all my classmates grew up on farms or near farms, so mice were pretty common for everyone - we had to just have traps all fall/winter/spring (which is like everything but august in Manitoba) and were constantly disposing of mice. But since I've moved to cities, I've felt more like mice are a moral failing, or seen as one. And I think even in farm country everyone thought of cockroaches or rats as something you got from being dirty, and specifically something you got from being a dirty native, as my extremely racist family members would say. And when I think about the image of New York tenements with cockroaches that I got from the media, I don't think of white people. I think it's one of those cases too where if you're white and middle-class to begin with and get mice or rats or cockroaches, it's assumed that you probably didn't do anything wrong (though you are suspect) but if you are poor or seem poor or aren't white, and in Canada especially if you're Native, it's assumed that you're disgusting and dirty.