It's my theory that "niceness" comes from being able to expect getting similar help in the future, or getting some kind of payback (even if it's just other people thinking you're swell). The more transient we are, the more we move from place to place chasing jobs and hunting for the "right" neighborhood, the less we have invested in a place, the less we know our neighbors and the less we care. The less we help. The less we're nice.
One of the other writers suggested it was due to a homogenous society. While I think that contributes a little, I think more important is that when someone *looks* like someone you know (or might end up knowing) then you're more likely to stop and help. When they look like a stranger, then we care less.
You can see the same mentality in any wartime propaganda. We always play up the similarities we have with our allies and exaggerate the differences between us and the "strangers" we are fighting. In my first summer here four years ago my husband and I took one of the steam boat trips. Along the way we saw some people out on the bank fishing. We had been talking to some other people sitting near us. I pass quite well for a white person and my husband is even more white and Germanic to boot. We asked about the fishing and what was good to catch and eat in the Mississippi. The people made some comments about how only "those people" fished from the bank and with some of their other comments made it clear that they were speaking about blacks, Native Americans and/or Asians in a disparing manner.
"Those people" has been a sarcastic phrase in our household since. People tend to pick out others who are different from them in some way and then distance themselves from those people. It's human nature.
Mary Baker East Side
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