Diversity and suburbia

Trey wants "kids know to stay off mine (lawn)."
Sounds like a McMansion twit with a trophy wife, a trophy lawn, and kids driven around town in a SUV to organized events.
In the middle class neighborhood I grew up in, everyone knew that a single yard was not big enough for a group of kids to play anything fun in. We could run the whole block without encountering a fence, and we frequently used the whole block.

Those urban yokels who don't like suburbia -- how many of them send their kids to Rosa Parks High School down there in the diverse city?
I'm guessing these people are either childless and don't know what they're talking about, or else they are hypocritical (like the many rich liberals who send their kids to non-diverse private schools).

Wow - such class warfare. One writer already has him all figured out as a twit, and another as a loner. He went over the PC line by saying he didn't want diversity right up to his doorstep. I'm glad he said what he said - it points out the legalistic views of many who assume that if you don't like diversity you must be a rich racist snot. No grace to be found here, on this site.

Re: Noodle Beach's comment.
I made no comment about the author's desire for lack of diversity.

Not wanting other kids on your manicured Home Depot-ed lawn sounds anti-kid, anti-community and overly consumer-driven. None of which seems aligned with what I remembered reading in Crunchy Cons.

It's an asinine argument.

Not to him. Not to lots of people. Some people like living in neighorhoods where people don't have Home Depot on speed dial or where grumpy people complain about people on their lawns. They like the fact there is a cash-checking store next to a yoga studio next to a bodega, and don't like living places where people congregate at Home Depot on their way to Whole Foods, but where they need to pick up a New World Reisling at the chic wine and organic cheese shop.

Middle class values are great, but so are the working class values usually being praise unless, I guess, they are living next door. I guess working class people are to be admired as long as they aren't in ones backyard. Those salt-of-the earth people who sometimes use cash-checking stores are great as long as they live in someone else's neighborhood.

Ah, Christianity. Ain't it great, especially the crunchy kind. My cup runneth over.

Scott, the author and Rod said they wanted to live around people with middle class and bourgeois values. That would seem to leave out the working class people who drive trucks and buses, clean offices, and wait tables. My point was that there are a lot of people who don't want to limit themselves to middle class enclaves with people who have Home Depot on speed dial, but instead want to live in communities with a wide variety of people, including truck drivers and people who clean offices.

Daniel,

Are you trying to imply that yoga and organic cheese are icons of working class culture?

Cough. Cough.

Daniel,

I've lived in neighborhoods not unlike the one that you describe and have had many friends who also have in other places. If you can honestly say that there is much if any overlap between those who patronize the check cashing store and those who patronize the yoga studio -- or much if any social interaction between the two groups -- then you are clearly living in a highly unusual neighborhood, on the basis of which experience there it would be hard to generalize very far. The point of my initial post was that living in proximity to people who are different from oneself and "diversity" are two different things -- things which may coincide, but usually don't. A wealth of social science data shows that measures of community and social solidarity decrease as "diversity" expands. The idea of diversity is frequently a band-aid to cover up the fact that while people are living cheek to jowl with others who are not like themselves, they are doing so in a highly isolated and atomized way, that does not involve much friendship or social interaction across lines of class, religion, politics, nor even ethnicity -- ethnicity which is emphasized so strongly in the rhetoric of "diversity." I don't write to celebrate this fact, but just to *face* the fact.

Daniel,

The picture you paint of suburbia consists of many caricatures and cliches. It also seems to imply that a lifestyle that you yourself would not choose is one that no one else ought to choose, or at least one that is based on a choice with less moral virtue than your own. I agree with Rod and others on the thread that that's going to far.

As for your own experience, note that it's not your Salvadoran neighbors whom you're hanging out with, but rather your gay ones -- one of whom must represent an ethnicity different from you own, unless you're biracial -- but neither of whom, I'm guessing, have political or religious views very different from your own.

That said, I will allow that your participation on this blog does show that you are more willing than most to interact with those whose religious and political views are different from your own -- though I still get the sense that much of what you're doing here is shoring up your views through opposition, as opposed to refining your views through conversation. So the jury is out on how much your participation here can be said to reflect your engagement with "diversity."

Daniel,

But as often as not people here have *religious* and *political* views that are different from your own -- as opposed to ethnic or economic or educational ones.

I was trying to give your some credit for being at least somewhat "diverse," given that I'm otherwise throwing cold water on the kind of "diversity" that you'd prefer to claim -- especially by contrast with those who in the suburbs.

That said, It seems to me that you may not really value diversity of religious or political views, because you seem inclined to think that your own views on religion and politics are the ones that we all ought to hold.

Which is fine, though it does indicate that you -- like everyone else -- place limits on how much "diversity" you choose to "embrace."

Can I just say one thing?

Wherever did we get the idea that not wanting every kid in the neighborhood to trample your chrysanthemums meant that you were some kind of sourpuss community-hater who shuns yoga and organic cheese?

I grew up in lots of different kinds of neighborhoods, from suburban to urban to rural etc. The scenery changed a lot, but the rules didn't: my parents expected us to stay out of other people's property unless we'd been invited to be there, either by the parents or by the kids our ages. We were not simply permitted to run wild through everybody's yard, and that would have been considered a serious transgression of manners and behavior by my parents.

Where did we get the idea that in the good old neighborly community days kids just ran like packs through every flower bed and over every sapling in town? Kids behaving like that were the miscreants; the polite kids rang the door bell and asked if Jimmy could come play, either in their yard or in his, depending on what was convenient for the adults involved.

I reject the notion that not wanting groups of neighbor children playing uninvited in your front yard all day and all night is somehow unneighborly and snobby.

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.

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.

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.