My experience of growing up in the suburbs very much coincides with Thursday's lecture in that I can see a stark contrast between the suburbs of my early childhood and the suburbs of my adolescence, which I suspect to be not only a result of my own growing teen angst, but of the rapid increase of immigration to the Silicon Valley from countries like China, India, and Pakistan, and the racial anxiety this triggered in the mostly white, long time residents of my hometown.
The suburb that I left three and a half years ago to go to university is marked in my memory as disempowered, cynical, and class segregated. While the economic and political climate of the entire country over the past 6 years has certainly been influential, I argue that the change happened in the mid-nineties. Growing up, I was surrounded by my mother and her community activist friends, going on hikes through the open space that they had just successfully preserved, working to creating a culturally integrated community through my mother's parent-participation community pre-school, working to ensure that the arts and music programs stayed strong in our schools despite budget cuts...but then, BAM, I went to middle school, in a different town, thirty miles away. By the time I returned to the public school system for high school, I heard talk of a different kind. I started noticing the warning signs of white flight: "They don't speak English...They are abusing the system...They don't want to assimilate...They're starting to outnumber us." Fear. We were class segregated because our schools were rated so highly. People moved here so their children could go to our public high school. Property values skyrocketed. Before long, you had to be rich to move in. But the disempowerment and the cynicism, I believe, resulted from fear. Our small little community kept getting bigger and bigger, and rather than embrace the newcomers as we (as progressive, left-wing Californians) once had, we separated ourselves from them...They were just here for the schools. They only talk to other Asians. We didn't know them. So they became the other. Different. Not us. The enemy. There grew the sentiment that things would only get worse (cynicism) and there was nothing we could do about it (disempowerment). Efforts to integrate were all but abandoned. The community was left more or less fractured, as it continues today. But I feel something good rising up from the earth. The grassroots are growing again. This time, I hope, stronger, because we have learned from our mistakes. People are becoming more and more empowered, the young activists are now old crones, quietly leading a revolution the best they know how. Through community.
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The narrative has been simplified for space...the economy of the former Silicon Valley has played parallel role in the mood of the suburbs I know.
Although in a much different part of the state, I feel like I experienced a very similar experience. In second grade, my suburban neighborhood became the breeding grounds for gang violence and a general feeling of fear arose among the population. My parents and several others decided to move out of the area because too many of "them" - the vague, unfamiliar and therefore threatening "them" - were moving it. We moved only 20 minutes south, yet the diversity was no longer threatening. Everyone was middle- or upper-class and therefore shared some kind of common interest. While I can appreciate the feeling of safety and comfort I received in my new neighborhood, the experience has left me with the image of an "us" versus "them" social hierarchy. I would hope that Allegra's optimistic conclusion will become realized among our population, but I still believe that there exists a fear of the unknown that may be difficult to deal with.
This strikes me as really similar to something discussed in my (regular) section tonight. The "multicultural" whites who invite Gunnar into their group and embrace him as an example of their colorblindness continue to see him as different. Although they claim to accept him as the same, they ask him what it's like to be black in a condescending and self-righteous way. This seems a lot like what was going on in your neighborhood: a lot of well-meaning people embraced diversity, although maintaining the deeply rooted mentality that they are different.
Absolutely right- the major weakness of the middle-class dream of "upward mobility": we (white middle-class)are afraid that THEY will drag us down, that THEY will take away everything we have worked for, everything that we believe is rightfully ours.
In a strange sort of way, i was actually in this situation but flipped. I went to middle school in a part of LA that was an hour and a half away from my house. There were schools much closer, in my own district, but that was the better school and my parents wanted me to go there. The funny thing is, the neighborhood around that school was poorer and more dangerous than mine, and the school itself was predominantly black neighborhood kids. The only reason that school was so good was because it was right next to USC and kind of affiliated with it, but it was still strange to be an outsider, the "them".
Well as far as the influx of immigration goes, you can definitely thank capitalism for that. These next comments are not directed to any one person, but an afterthought I had after reading this. It is very easy to think that oneself is an open minded person, prone to learning about other cultures and adopting certain concepts. However, when you communtiy as a whole is effected, for instance by an influx of immigrants, you see people quickly go into defense mode. When there is a different cultural and religious penetration into a community, it breaks its continuity and comfort for those who have been living there. It reminds me of when there was a huge stirup in my community when a community of Muslims applied for a buildingn permit to erect a mosque. It must have taken them 5 or six years to get approved. Communities filled with generations of the same families dont exactly enjoy change, especially when they are forced to drive by an enormous symbol of the inherent changes going on in the community. HOwever this is the price we must pay for globalization.
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