Don't get me wrong, Hyde Park is a nice place in many respects. But it's definitely not the post-racial lovefest this article suggests. Numerically speaking, yes, it is diverse. (The Hyde Parkers interviewed have even managed to spin the proliferation of homeless people and panhandlers in their favor--economic diversity!) There is also a lot of property theft and street crime and the occasional murder, which is a major feature of the neighborhood and which this elegy completely ignores. And, one block in every direction away from Hyde Park, there be dragons. (Except to the east--there be sharks.) Robert Putnam has written about how neighborhood diversity breeds more distrust and tension than Kumbaya-singing, and Hyde Park seems to me like a prime example of this logic--a place where everyone is trying so hard to appear to be integrated because underneath the general cordiality of day-to-day interaction, there is simmering suspicion and tension that boils over about what (at least to me) seemed to be the weirdest provocations.
The reporter obviously wasn't around to witness the
I came to the U of C from a school where "We are so diverse!" was code for "Our academics are so mediocre!" so I was disposed to be suspicious of the claim that diversity was itself a great virtue of a neighborhood. But I wasn't prepared for the kind of politically deliberate view of diversity that Hyde Parkers took. No one moved to Skokie for the sake of its diversity; it happened to be diverse because a lot of different ethnics (is that a PC term?) moved there for other reasons. But in Hyde Park, the diversity was (or its residents claimed it to be) deliberate. White people seemed to move there expressly to live in an integrated neighborhood--that is, they made their decision based on a head count of black people and a belief that they can overcome, in isolation and through sheer willpower, what the broader society has failed or refused to do, or at least their children can, having been raised in those pure habits which the elders have had to laboriously cultivate.
But Hyde Park has been integrated for at least 50 years now, and it has yet to become postracial or a utopia. People are still living there in order to demonstrate that they can live there. They are still counting heads, they are still diligently seeking out any real or phantom signs of racism to hold up as indicators that we are not there yet, and the reality of crime continues to undermine the exhaustive PR efforts to convince us all to stop stereotyping (see page 39). (I don't mean to suggest that Hyde Park is some whacked out ideological commune, of course. Many people move there to study or work at the University, which is totally circumstantial, but once they get there, they often adopt the same attitudes as the political pioneers.)
So, WaPo puff piece = FAIL.
7 comments:
Agreed. Mesmerizingly bad Total Fail.
I feel like Freddy, in Pygmalion. I know that if I try to use any new slang, I'll be all "What was you sniggering at?"
The best part of this article is photo #13 in the picture gallery, where someone is trying to lure a baby into a hot grill using a marshmallow.
There's a farmers' market in Hyde Park?
Objection A:
I came to the U of C from a school where "We are so diverse!" was code for "Our academics are so mediocre!" so I was disposed to be suspicious of the claim that diversity was itself a great virtue of a neighborhood.
First of all, the academics of said institution are far from mediocre. Furthermore, as one can easily understand, academics, per se, are largely irrelevant, mostly because that term has no content.
Let's assume by academics, you mean overall intelligence, achievement, quality of teaching, etc as measured by award won, graduation rate, standardized test scores, etc. By that measure the school is and has never been mediocre. But even if it were, academics, or let's say quality of students and staff, and their achievements, are a tricky business.
There was an article a couple years ago in the times about the wonderful topic of America's failing school system, but unlike trooping out the usual, oh, just do whatever good private schools like Amherst do, the article was polite enough to mention, if you put a stuffed bear and Latin textbook in front of the kids at schools like Exeter they'll be reading Virgil in a few months. It's not that the teachers are uncertified or have had real world jobs or Phds, it's that the kids are the bomb. They come from bomb families, and the stragglers who aren't the bomb or dont' come from bomb families, quickly get in line to a certain extent. Anyway, I'm sure not new to you. Long story short, stop trying to think you can make kids smart by fixing schools. You should know the Coleman reports, all three of them, he did teach at U of C after all.
So, "we are so diverse" isn't a codeword for "our academics are bad". Schools, at least schools run by smart administrators, realize they have little ability to actually change the "academics" of their school. They could transform the school into an exeter-like charter school with free-form optional classes, but if the inputs are still the neighborhood lot, then the outputs are still going to be the same old neighborhood lot. School's don't transform communities and cultures, they teach some basic things and values, and public schools do a slight immersion/integration program which is crucial. If you don't think its crucial, try dealing with home-schooled people, or private for lifers.
Second to finally, the 'we are so diverse' tag is worn with much pride at your school because the diversity is in some sense genuine and less forced than the super-lib hyde park cum Berkley scene. The pride comes around when we have a black guy running for president who can come here and not just merely be tolerate and not get booed and fear for his life in a place like Iowa, but where he can actually feel comfortable, because diversity, done right, not only breeds tolereance, but it breeds comfort and oftentimes indifference, putting race off the table in ways unheard of or unimaginable even often one or two towns down, not to mention one or two states down.
Diversity in itself is a great virtue to a neighborhood and its sad that you can't see that. Even failed diversity and unsuccessful diversity is a virtue. Just go try to deal with people who've never met a black person before. Simmering resentment and fear is at least a first step away, an opportunity that non-integrated communities in many parts of the country are far from taking. Am I calling large swathes of the country racist? You damn right.
But who really undrestands Southern and racist culture anyway? I mean, how many black kids are there in Glenview? Those kids aren't really racist (well, a little bit), but then you go down South and black people are everywhere and there's diversity and there are huge racists. How about that? Well, you must never forget that the south is retarted, and the culture there is in many ways backwards for a lot of people and hard to turn around. Anyway, all for that today.
No mention of the massive failure of free-markets? Enough to make Greenspan sort of pee in his pants crying, saying, "yknow, things aren't supposed to work this way, i don't really know why this happened yet."
So, I have no idea what this rant means. You're missing my meaning if you think I mean "we are so diverse" is always code for "our academics suck" or that any of this post is about fixing schools. My point is that diversity is advertised more loudly when some other vital aspect of the institution is missing--good academics in the case of a school, or safety in a neighborhood.
Why would diversity be a source of pride when it's unintended and a source of crime and tension when it is? Why would the latter be the better version? What does pride in Skokie have to do with Obama? Iowa is not very racially diverse, so what does that have to do with doing diversity "right"? And what is doing diversity "right" if the only right way is the unintended way rather than the forced way?
Can't speak to whether the South is "retarted." My cursory experience of it has been pleasant enough. Moreover, in my anecdotal experience, there seems to be less racial tension in DC--only a hair's breadth away from the South--than in Chicago.
I think you advertise what you have. If you have great academics but no black people you won't play up the fact that minorities are afraid to walk down the street. Things are always accentuated to make up for perceived weaknesses, including diversity.
Diversity is a source of pride because it shows people can treat others as people, its a civilization thing. Segregation and separation don't breed tolerance, they breed isolation and ignorance. Crime and tension are the birth pangs of democracy.
Pride in Skokie and the racial dynamics of Chicago could much more easily produce a politician like Obama. Try dealing with racial dynamics in places like new york, d.c., or even atlanta. It's going to be a long time before you see those black politicians hit the ground running.
Iowa is an example of tolerance, not pride. Acceptance, not integration.
The South is not pleasant. Your cursory experience was wrong. As for the lack of racial tension in D.C., the only people left are black, and they're too angry about living in a horrible city to have tension with any particular group. You sometimes can't even literally can't pay people to live there (congresspeople and senators).
More responses to the other topics late.
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