Reply #43: I don't mean the concept of suburbs [View All]

[m berst]

I am talking about the post war American suburbanization of life. It has become a distinct blind spot for many liberals today, but that is because we have become accustomed to it and accept it now. There was a time when for Dems the idea of suburbs and the phenomenon of "white flight" were seen as one and the same. It is no coded as "school problems" and "drug problems" and "crime problems" and we are supposed to imagine that race has nothing to do with it.

When we fail to see the ways in which racism corrupts the souls and destroys the lives of the oppressors, we fail to see the problem in its entirety and we cripple our ability to combat it.

The "school problem" just like the "drug problem" and the "crime probem" is coded language for war on African Americans and poor people IMHO. It is scapegoating and projection at its worst.

This has been thirty years and more in the making, and the pattern is always the same. Ghetto-ize the poor and minorites, strip the wealth out of the city, set up little Potemkin Village enclaves in the suburbs, maniplulate the government to maintain the status quo and then blame all of your problems on "them" down there in the city.

For thirty years whites fled Detroit, always saying "no it isn't (Negroes, Blacks, African Americans) I object to. It's just that it is important to me that my kids go to a better school." Who could argue with that? "It's for the kids!" Sigh.... Now that everyone has abandoned the city to "get their kids into a better school" suddenly the schools are no good and suddenly their children is not learning?

The desire to get away from "them" is some sort of spiritual sickness and lying about it compounds the depravity and insanity. That depravity and insanity are what is actually wrong with the people in the suburbs, not drugs, crimes, gangs or schools. People went to the suburbs so they could have their own little school district and their own little municipal government and create the perfect lives for themselves. Apparently it didn't work out since they are growing ever more unhappy and vindictive.

Meanwhile, home equity in the city collapses (when 2/3 of the people - the whites - aren't bidding on your property, the value goes down by 2/3) and the city is surrounded by hostile neighbors and a hostile state government, there are bound to be a few problems on the city. Still, I will say from my direct experience that with far, far fewer resources and far more problems to deal with, the minority neighborhoods do a far, far better job of coping then the whiny self-indulgent suburbanites do.

By any measure - voter participation, voter awareness and knowledge, parent participation in the schools, neighborhood organizations, involvement of the churches in neighborhood programs - the poor communities are doing a better job than the suburbs are. People in the suburbs are seduced by an ethic of buying happiness and trying to keep the realities of life at bay.

Things are screwed up in the suburbs, no doubt. Perhaps that is why in Oakland county north of Detroit, the wealthiest county in Michigan, over one third of the adults are taking prescription mood altering drugs. There is a hollow core in the hearts of too many people, as they have become 24 hour a day self-indulgent consumers and strive to climb to the top of the heap. It is immoral to project that malaise and unhappiness onto the poor and the minorities as though they were the source of the problems.

I believe that racism and white flight, and the consequent disconnection from reality and self delusion, is what triggered this escapist and anchorless malaise. You can only run so far, and money and prestige are fool's gold.

Building the suburbs destroyed our cities and our environment, ended public transportation, led to chains and malls, destroyed community and family life and distorted and weakened our economy. I am sorry that it didn't all work out for suburbanites the way that they had hoped it would, and I am sorry that they are depressed and anxiety ridden now, but I am much, much, more sorry for those who were climbed over and left behind, which is 70% of the American population and 99.999% of the world population.