Journal pudge's Journal: Urban Liberals Not Getting The Suburbs 11
I saw a very puzzling story on NewsHour recently, about an art exhibit in Minneapolis that "tackl[es] the stereotype about suburbs, that of a colorless, design-free zone."
These are, unfortunately, people who believe in and perpetuate suburban stereotypes
To wit, one artist notes, "[T]he governor of Minnesota to me was the archetypal suburbanite. He was white; he was middle-class; he was evangelical Christian Republican. And then I was just asking myself some harder questions. I don't want anyone to paint all Italians in the same way or all gay people in the same way. And so that's how this started. I just started looking around. It's so massively uniform, and, I mean, I do feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone right now."
There's two ideas that bother me about this. The first is that they don't see that to people in the suburbs, the cities are massively uniform. Just because you have a nose ring doesn't mean you're unique (it tends to imply the opposite, to me).
The second is that they implicitly believe that demographic diversity is actual diversity, or at least, the most significant and important diversity. But just because you're brown and I'm white doesn't mean we necessarily have little in common. I have a lot more in common here in suburbia with the average Hispanic immigrant than I do with the average white urbanite; would having him live next door to me actually make my neighborhood more diverse, other than by adherence to a strictly demographic view of the world?
The reason diversity is important is because it broadens our perspective and helps us think in different ways. I daresay that most urbanites I know need this than a lot more than most suburbanites. Find me any street in suburbia, and you'll find Democrats and Republicans; strong atheists and strong Christians; anti-public school homeschoolers and anti-homeschooling public schoolers; global warming proponents and skeptics. I've done my share of doorbelling in suburbia, and I never expect that the people I run into will be like everyone else, and they never are, unless you look at superficialities like minivan ownership and soccer participation.
You find a much broader spectrum of beliefs and views and people here than in the city. Perhaps it is because many people who choose to live in the city want to live a certain "sophisticated" lifestyle, either among people who think like they do, or away from other people who don't, and this is strongly associated with specific modes of thought and views of the world; whereas, many people who live in the suburbs just want to live in peace, and that characteristic is found among every demographic. Everyone is different here, and they always have been. The only thing that draws us together is that we like to live in a place that is relatively quiet and peaceful.
Artists don't always know this, but all good journalists do: everyone has a story. Everyone is interesting. Everyone is unique and different and creates diversity wherever they go.
The exhibit actually perpetuates the stereotypes it attempts to tackle by implicitly saying that if you're white and Christian and Republican and don't shoot pornos in your back yard, then you're not contributing to your suburb's diversity.
However strongly I fit their profile, I think that wherever I go, I increase the diversity of where I am. And in this, I am not at all unique.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
Mental Bleach Needed... (Score:2)
Uh.. dude. We've seen you on YouTube. Please DO NOT start appearing in Pornos in your back yard.
Re: (Score:2)
Eek.
But hey, the pornos thing was mentioned in the article.
Re: (Score:1)
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Yeah, I almost sent you hate mail about that one ...
Who cares about diversity? (Score:1)
Um, yeah. Who cares about diversity.
So some artist thinks it is a good thing, but it doesn't impress me. Too many folks out there "have black friends," heck some of them even have a website: http://www.blackpeopleloveus.com/ [blackpeopleloveus.com] ;-). So what, you can hang out with someone with a different skin color, but what brought you together is some common interest.
My point is that there is nothing inherently good about diversity. I'm not saying hanging out with different folks is a bad thing, but commonality is what d
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Um, yeah. Who cares about diversity.
I do, where diversity is defined as I did. I do not, where it is defined demographically.
My point is that there is nothing inherently good about diversity.
Again, as I defined it, I do think it is inherently good. Diversity is part of how society is capable of growing. That's not to say all diversity is good, but without diversity, life is boring. The problem is in identifying what diversity is good and valuable, what is neutral, and what is negative. Demographic diversity is almost entirely neutral.
Your criticism seems to be levelled at demographic diversity as the o
TFA is like... (Score:1)
...listening in on a KKK meeting. As is often the case hearing Liberals talk amongst themselves.
So we've got what is presumably a derogatory term (amongst Lefties I assume) unprofessionally thrown in, McMansions (I have no idea what it means), but also a bizarre, gratuituous tie-in to the porn industry? That
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The only thing I wanted to do was define "McMansion" for you:
A McMansion is a house, usually in a suburban development, that satisifies most or all of the following criteria:
* Relatively large for the lot size--for example, my in-laws live in a development of 3500-4500 square foot homes that have less than 10' of space between them
* Relatively uniform or similar in floor plan and appearance, generally with trivial reflections etc, to houses in the same neighborhood.
* Excessively concerned with appearance
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Wow, thanks, that was great, very thorough. Sounds then like "McMansion" is basically a term for a house built such that saleability is maximized, at the expense of everything else.
But it's like the old "Hollywood reflects the culture" thing -- is your description not at all what people want but it's just that they really have no alternative, or are builders giving people exactly what they (think, at the time they're shopping) want?
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Six of one half dozen of the other.
I like my 1200sq ft starter, myself, but my in-laws are rebuilding two of their four upstairs bedrooms into a suite for their parents who're now in their mid-80s, and the cheap modular-style construction makes that sort of stuff easy-peasy and they've got plenty of room for it--heck, my wife's kid brother's bedroom, smallest in the house, is larger than my master bedroom.
(My parents built their own place, so they have the best of all worlds--3500 square feet on a hillside
Best JE Evar... (Score:2)
The second is that they implicitly believe that demographic diversity is actual diversity, or at least, the most significant and important diversity.
The reason diversity is important is because it broadens our perspective and helps us think in different ways.
Those two lines in particular are things I've felt for some time but not seen or been able to put into as clear & concise of words. I suspect (hope) that as time marches on, this will become more and more evident. Each generation will listen and judge a person's ideas and actions on merit rather than what they look like.