Here's a great Dallas Morning News column by Trey Garrison, defending his decision to settle in a Dallas suburb and not inside the city of Dallas, even though he gets made fun of by his "urban yokel" pals for being afraid of "diversity." Excerpt:
Apparently, in choosing a house in one of the top school districts in the country, in a suburb where the poverty rate is low and the median income is high, I was guilty of the high crime of white flight.My humbled, guilty reaction consisted of two words: "So what?"
I mean, what the heck does diversity mean? Some of my new neighbors in Plano include people from Thailand, Armenia, India, Afghanistan, Hong Kong, Colombia and the Ukraine, but apparently that doesn't count. And when a school is 85 percent white, it's not diverse, but when it's 85 percent Hispanic, it is?
More:
And I'm not entirely sold that diversity is automatically good.Look, diversity is great when it comes to nightclubs, workplaces, cultural experiences, restaurants and all that. But I don't want diversity in my neighborhood.
Now, put down the pitchfork. I don't mean the superficial diversity of skin color. I mean diversity of values. That's what I don't want in my neighborhood, or my neighborhood school.
I want uniformly boring neighbors with uniformly boring, middle-class values who spend Saturdays working on their lawns and whose kids know to stay off mine. I want neighbors with Home Depot on speed dial. That's how I choose to live. Your mileage may vary.
Agreed. I'd rather be the only white Christian guy on a block of middle-class people who live by bourgeois values than to live in a neighborhood where people share my skin color, but not my boring values. Funny how raising kids can do that to you. Anyway, one of my colleagues at the paper says that many of us city dwellers like to think of the north Dallas suburbs as "lily-white," when in fact that's a badly outdated stereotype.
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This reminds me a bit of your San Francisco post the other day. It’s interesting how settlement patterns have begun to change in healthier North American cities, where the only “lily-white” neighbourhoods to be had are often in the core. In Toronto, for example, new immigrants these days tend to head straight for the suburbs because a) that’s what they want, and b) it’s way more affordable than most of the inner city. However, their children are just as apt to be dissatisfied with the blandness of suburbia (ethnic “diversity” notwithstanding) and to move downtown along with their white friends. Young families are still more likely to live outside the core (gotta have that patch of lawn), but that’s changing as energy prices continue to climb.
Another result of this phenomenon is that most concentrated low-income districts are now located outside of downtown, in the “inner suburbs”, out of sight and (some would say) out of mind of city-dwellers.
Without joining the flamewar, I do think inner-city / small-town living is more conducive to Crunchy Con-ness than suburbia, for reasons that don’t need to be restated. Whether that makes it more virtuous, I can’t say. That is all.
Do you really mean to suggest that for you Bush-style Republican conservatism and Obama-style Democratic liberalism are equally valid political views, each of which you "embrace" just as freely, in the spirit of "diversity?"
Actually, yes. I have no problems with Republicans. In fact, some of my best friends are Republicans (cue the cliche music). I live inside the Beltway where politics is a way of life, not just an amusement. I know and respect Bush-style Republican conservatives and admire their conviction, even if I don't agree with them and believe they are dangerous. Their political views are equally valid, even if I think they are wrong.
I feel the same way about people who go to Evangelical Megachurches or who have orthodox views of Catholicism. I don't agree with them, but their views are equally valid. Just because I disagree with them and criticize them doesn't mean I want them to go away.
Daniel,
If you feel that Republicans' views are "wrong" and "dangerous," then clearly you do *not* believe that their views are are equally as valid as your own.
Likewise, if you "disagree" with and "criticize" Evangelical Protestants and Orthodox Catholics, then clearly you do *not* believe that their views are equally as valid as your own.
What this means is that for you -- as for everyone else -- while pluralism is a value, it is not the *only* value.
You -- like everyone else -- make exclusive truth claims whose potential to generate conflict between yourself and those who are not like you cannot be neutralized or wished away by means of your appeal to an idea of "diversity" that shows itself to be rather vapid and empty of content when closely scrutinized.
I appreciate that Augustus has saved me the need to visit a psychologist, because he has offered his indepth analysis of my psyche. Bless you.
Actually, none of my analysis -- which did not pretend to be in-depth -- pertained to Daniel's psyche, only to his sometimes confused ideas -- ideas which he himself chose to air, presumably in hope of some sort of response, or at least in tacit agreement that some sort of response might be made.
I apologize if my replies did not suit, Daniel.
Again, it seems clear that there are limits to "diversity."
In future, I will segregate myself from Mr. D.
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