When I’m fully sick and stranded on the parlor sofa, sometimes I can’t even read, but it’s also impossible just to lie there with nothing to do but focus on how lousy I feel, so I tend to watch things on my laptop that I normally wouldn’t.

If you’re like me, a bunch of violence and nasty people outdoing one another isn’t appealing when ill; I want a romantic comedy from the 50s or 60s. Trouble is I’ve seen most of them, so this time I found the original episodes of The Munsters.

My family did not have a TV when I grew up in the 60s and 70s, so my exposure to this kind of popular TV show was limited along with the incumbent nostalgia, but recently while watching a few early episodes of The Munsters, silly as they are, I was struck that the show’s subtext might have been about accepting diversity, a subject that is much batted around these days.

After all, Herman and Lily were a nice, loving couple with a well-mannered child and two pets, not to mention caring for an aging eccentric grandfather—they just happened to have pale green skin, lived hundreds of years, and one of their pets was a fire-breathing dragon. Of course, they housecleaned by adding dust and cobwebs, prized stormy weather, and talked about staying up all night, which never made sense since they were up all day, as well.

The show was extremely popular during its two-season run and perhaps even more so in later syndication. The timing with our culture’s initial acceptance of diversity seems perfect, and the show might have increased diversity’s appeal.

But diversity has its problems, which is many times ignored in the media. Diversity is not automatically always a good thing. Maybe you’re reacting to this statement, but allow me to clarify and use marriage as an example.

A couple might marry having the same race, religion, politics, sexual orientation, economic strata, and age, but after a few years, if the wife begins to smoke and drink heavily, eat steaks and sugary cakes, becomes promiscuous, gets into drugs, listens to nothing but death metal, stays out at night, spends freely on herself, ignores her children, explaining that she is, “Finding herself” or “Expressing herself,” while the husband continues his abstemious, vegan, chaste, modest, carefully considerate classical-music lifestyle, taking care of the kids as well as supporting all, I’d bet the marriage will soon become ugly and fail.

For most marriages to work well, the two partners must want pretty much the same things, be motivated by the same basic desires, and honor the same living habits. No diversity required. However, as long as the two partners align behaviorally and aesthetically, then race, religion, economics and so forth can usually be worked with, sorted out, and actually enjoyed for their differences and variety. Diversity can be educational, especially when you’re young, expanding your tastes and understanding through contact with other cultures, foods, beliefs and arts. Just as an individual can increase awareness, so can a society. But a careless embrace of all diversity can be precarious.

When neighborhoods go downhill, it’s actually not the skin color, nationality, or the religion of incoming groups that generates tension; it’s the cultural and lifestyle differences that fester into problems. At first, ethnic differences might be a factor because of prejudice, but I believe that over time these can be worked through if everyone agrees on what it is to be a good neighbor.

It’s this collective alikeness of desire and attitude that is vital to harmony. Sadly, it’s usually the lowest common denominator that controls a neighborhood because that group is less bothered by lack of manners—barking dogs, screaming kids, raging parties, lawns strewn in garbage, commerce through drug sales, violence, etc. But the cause is not always economic. The nouveau riche can be just as guilty as the poor when it comes to insensitivity towards others. I’ve yet to encounter old money with terrible manners unless their fortunes are being threatened—then picture a fire-breathing dinosaur.

In my early 20s, I asked a fellow I knew, who had been raised in prep schools and whose father was an admiral, to teach me good manners. Heading out on the road at 16 hadn’t prepared me, since traditional manners aren’t the forte of the bum or even the hobo. I expected the fellow would teach me about which fork to use and how to tip in fancy hotels, behavior which I lacked and coveted. Instead he explained that the whole point of good manners was to make the people around you comfortable.

Thus the unsubstantiated story of Queen Elizabeth and Captain Drake. At a banquet in Drake’s honor — he had just returned from circumnavigating the globe — he picked up his soup and slurped at it noisily. The royal assembly fell silent in horror. Then the queen reached for her soup and made the same noises, which allowed Drake to avoid embarrassment.

I think everyone is at least a tiny bit prejudiced. It’s difficult to avoid. Many years ago I drove a used car from Florida back to Maine. I had no trouble finding clean and reasonably priced motels until I passed Washington D.C. From evening through the night until 3 a.m. I must have stopped at a dozen motels only to encounter rude, surly motel owners who wanted me to pay before examining their rooms, and who questioned my motive in even wanting to see a room, which has always been my protocol with motels I don’t know. It was a miserably exhausting situation until I finally found a place in northeastern Massachusetts. By coincidence, every motel I had checked was run by someone from Pakistan or India. I realized I was up against the math of prejudice.

It wasn’t the proprietors’ home country that bothered me; it was their suspicious rude attitude, lousy manners, inflated prices and dirty rooms. And I admit, as the night wore on and I grew truly tired, the minute I heard that accent, I began to assume the room would not be habitable. This is prejudice, clear and simple. I prejudged before I had facts. I did not give each individual a blank slate and an even chance; but then, I’m human.

Wrong as it is, prejudice likely begins somewhere based on some kind of initial reality — wrong or right. In my motel-aversion case, I admit the problem was entirely mine. If people are thus motivated, they can run their business the way these motels were being operated. Since they weren’t breaking laws, it was their choice. After all, I wasn’t forced to stay there, and of course I didn’t. Someone else might have reveled in the surly attitudes and ugly rooms, been charmed by the athletic bugs. My point is that the conflict stemmed entirely because of my notions of what a motel should be, just as I have parameters for marriage and society. My ideals are probably a slim minority of the world’s, and I couldn’t be more aware that they could be shunned as Middle Class White. Who else has written a poem about the perfect motel?

One of the many things I find incongruous is how certain nationalities and races are fair targets for all kinds of slights and stereotyping while most are not. You can throw whatever verbal darts you want at Germans or the British and no one reacts. The French and Spanish are also pretty much open season, as well. With the Irish? You might get counterpunched in the nose.

There is also such a thing as positive prejudice — when you view a racial group with favor, and merit them qualities they may or may not have before you know them well. Native Americans get a lot of this, and it’s now trendy to claim Native American blood. As my friend Richard Silliboy, who is a Mi’kmaq elder, joked: “Eric, I had some exciting news the other day. I thought I might be 1/64^th White. Sadly, as it turns out, I’m only 100 percent Mi’kmaq.”

Of course we are almost all immigrants in the view of Native Americans. And maybe it’s the long list of atrocities perpetrated by the English and Germans that keep them unprotected by the politically correct agenda, which seems so fond of diversity. But there will always be some people who have more and many who have less. Those with less will try any means to get more. Immigrants don’t usually move to America because things are going splendidly back home.

But something in me feels that immigrants might be pleased and thankful to be in the country I was born in, and they should reflect that in their attitude and in honest work. After all, true or not, these were the values I was taught America was based on, and I’m romantic enough to care about that. A country is in some ways similar to a home. How would you act walking into someone’s home as a stranger? I think the ideal is to reflect the ways of your host, at least initially, or until your host indicates otherwise.

For me diversity is acceptable unless it’s overridden by entitled attitudes, lack of manners, insensitive esthetics, and intrusive belief systems. But as I’ve said, that’s just me, and I think everyone has the right to their own opinion. I believe in this as much as I believe we should all have the right to be left alone, agreeing that we immediately lose that privilege when we have taken away someone else’s right to be left alone.

As cruel as it sounds, people of like behavioral fundamentals will be happiest and most productive living around each other, in marriages or in society. If we were smart, we would judge others within that criterion and on little else. These are the essentials that bind people together, generate friendships and can lead to love. If people have basically the same approach to manners and aesthetics, the same desires about life, over time, nothing else will matter—not race, economics, or religion.

Even though Herman Munster was green, eight feet tall, from Transylvania and innocent as a child, he would probably make a satisfactory neighbor. On the other hand, that flamboyant dragon residing under the staircase seemed a bit noisy with all that roaring.

Eric Green lives in Belfast 

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