Another serious problem to deal with: "The Suburban Bubble"

[UdoKier]

I called my 92-year old grandmother the other day to wish her a happy birthday. She lives in Sun City, Texas, an exclusive, spotless gated "community" outside of Austin for upscale retirees. A more sanitized, artificial community you cannot imagine. My Grandmother supported the worthless piece of s**t in 2000, and I haven't brought up the subject with her, mostly because I don't like to be argumentative with someone at that age, and because she is fairly intelligent and has been a longtime republican. Not the "Fox News" type, but the "McNeil-Lehrer" and "Louis Rukeyser" type.

Since she lives so far away (we live in San Francisco) we don't get to see her much, the closest relative to her with much influence on her is her great niece - I'll call her "Heidi". Heidi and her hubby are both hard-charging high-powered yuppie types, with the SUV's, big suburban house, etc. She even put her babies into day care at 6 months of age so she could go back to work and "maintain their lifestyle" - Our priorities were different - My wife stayed home for six years, until the younger son was 4.

Anyway, we got to talking about the kids, school, etc. and she told me how Heidi was so harried with shuttling the kids about to their private schools, and I said "yeah, it must be rough living in those far-flung suburbs". And she said "No, their school is only about 2 block away from their house." and I was like "What? why not just walk them over?" She told me how it was "too dangerous" (remember they also live in an upscale new 'burb). So I said, "Well, at least when they are 5th grade or so, they can walk to school on their own."
No, she said. I had no idea of all the danger and terrible people out to get our kids. She said that it was not safe to let kids go to school alone EVEN IN THEIR TEENS.

I tried to tell her than crime rates (although they were better under Clinton) are at 30-year lows, that kidnappings, etc. are very rare, and are almost always done by a desperate parent. Molestations, too are almost always done by a trusted family or community member.

But she insisted on this idea that there were bogeymen ALL AROUND, ALL THE TIME.

To me, living in a bustling city, where we collide with all kinds, every day, such a mindset is incomprehensible.

But when I think of the spotless, pristine, all-white environments these people live in, I can imagine that a place like my neighborhood in SF would look intimidating. Lots of people walking about of all different races, some youths in baggy clothes, the occasional vagrant - and there is sometimes graffiti on the walls. But I personally feel safer here where there are lots of people around than I would in some homogeneous suburb.

I guess what I'm leading up to is the fact that people like Heidi and my Grandmother have chosen to cloister themselves off from the realities of modern society to the point that their view of the world is almost irreparably warped. It's no wonder then that there is such a huge disparity of blue and red between the cities and the exurbs and rural areas.

Any ideas for how to get through the barrier with people like this would be appreciated.

[tedoll78]

1. I live in Austin..

and when I hear these advertisements for "master-planned communities," I think "yeah.. more like 'master race' communities.."

:eyes:

[ThoughtCriminal]

2. This must be why kidnappings are so popular with the Media

Especially stories about white suburban kids.

[vixannewigg]

3. A generalization

I live in a suburban community that is pretty "Leave it to Beaver" like. Not everyone is paranoid and out of it politically. Some of us just like the space and trees and privacy. I proudly voted for Kerry and so did 99% of the people I know.

[UdoKier]

5. Beaver's neighborhood wasn't gated.

Little 5 and 10 shops were in bicycle distance if not walking distance, not to mention the baseball field and the school.

Neighborhoods today are designed to stifle community and humanity, IMO.

[TO Kid]

8. Thank the "experts"

I swear that the world would be a better place if every urban planner just up and disappeared. Zoning laws are wonderful for things like keeping oil refineries away from residential neighbourhoods, but what the hell qualifies a city hall bureaucrat to dictate how far apart buildings must be or declare that all retail shall be on major arteries only? The most livable neighbourhoods are the ones that developed before urban planning became a profession/obsession, when businesses were established to take advantage of local markets and it wasn't necessary to buy a politician to get your projects approved.

[UdoKier]

4. EXACTLY!

The local news stations are always hyping the hell out of these local crime stories.

They are statistically no more prrevalent than they were long ago, but perceptually, the media has made it feel like there's always a bloodbath waiting to happen.

Even here in SF, the big story today is that Visitacion Middle School was closed down for several hours today because a teacher got robbed at gunpoint at the school.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/archive/2004/11/09/SCHOOL09.TMP

Not that it isn't a worthy news story, but the hype now is so much more than it used to be.

I really think they do this to keep us scared, keep us home watching TV and consuming, keep us separate from each other (and thus politically impotent).

[Shoeempress]

6. We call the local news, (which we don't watch) the Fear Plex News Center

featuring the fear Plex Weather center. (It's gonna snow and your all gonna die)

[Warpy]

7. I noticed this a long time ago

I lived in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, statistically one of the areas with the lowest crime rates (the North End was another). When there was an accident on the main route to the suburbs, people would go down the main drag. We'd see them lock their doors and roll their windows up REAL FAST. It was pretty hilarious, considering that neighborhood had lower crime rates than their bedroom communities did.

Now I see people in the affluent bedroom communities trying to schedule every waking minute their kids have. Those kids don't interact with other kids unless it's organized, supervised, and institutionalized. There are no kid games in the cul-de-sac at any time, they're all being shuttled from Akido to music lessons to soccer to gymnastics; all because the parents are working long hours and are terrified that unsupervised grammar school children will always start smoking crack or worse.

Kids here in the inner city (this 'hood is called The War Zone) can be seen skating, riding their bikes, playing unsupervised ball games, and generally being kids. The estreme level of paranoia doesn't seem to extend to neighborhoods which might be truly dangerous, but are restricted to the affluent areas.

I guess wealthy people do create their own hell and then force their kids to live in it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. I think that the media deliberately cultivate fear of crime

as a means of social control.

In 1993, I left my college teaching job in a small town in Oregon and moved to Portland. Everyone I talked to who wasn't connected with the college was horrified that I would move to such a "dangerous" place. (Some of them hadn't even been there, even though it was only 40 miles away.)

One month, shortly after I arrived, there were three incidents within a month in which people were killed or injured by gunfire. One of the news stations led with, "Is there a crime wave in Portland?" I called up the station and gave them hell: three unrelated shootings in a month does not constitute a "crime wave."

Whenever I rode the light rail out to the suburbs to go to my doctor (I lived without a car for ten years), I'd hear suburbanites talking about how dangerous Portland was. After one unfortunately incident in which a white youth was robbed and killed by a gang of black youths near Lloyd (shopping) Center, across the river from downtown, I heard a young suburban airhead remark, "Dozens of people have been murdered in the Lloyd Center area. You couldn't pay me to go there." Actually, ONE person had been murdered.

It was December, and a couple of weeks later, the Oregonian ran a feature story on all the murders that had occurred in the metro area during the year. Almost half of them were in the suburbs, and most of the ones in the city were gang-related.

Why would the media promote fear of crime? One reason could be to promote the building of prisons, and I have to say that the tactic has worked.

[ibegurpard]

13. Ha!

I used to walk to and from downtown Portland at 2 AM and never had problems. Lloyd Center dangerous? Whatever.
Unbelievable how clueless people can be.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. Never did that, but I worked with street kids in downtown PDX and

used to walk from the Burnside area to the MAX stop on Pioneer Courthouse Square at 10PM. I was NEVER scared in downtown Portland, not once in 10 years. Annoyed, yes. Grossed out, yes. Scared, no.

[hunter]

10. Great post!

"...the spotless, pristine, all-white environments these people live in, I can imagine that a place like my neighborhood in SF would look intimidating."

I love San Francisco. I can't afford to live there, but my family and I live in another place with a rainbow of people and cultures.

I get very uncomfortable in the monochromatic places you've described above, especially when I visit some suburban shopping center where most of the kids are white, wealthy, protected, and so damned lost.

Rural areas can be the same way. People are afraid of anyone who isn't like them. Outside their home turf they are timid and afraid, and the media feeds those fears -- telling them that the stranger is always someone to fear.

It's sad, but it is human instinct to accept the man or woman we see every day on the television as a "familiar face" and we assume that it's somehow a two-way street, when nothing could be further from the truth. The man or woman on the television set is actually selling your fears to the highest bidder, selling you out, trying to push you into a cloistered place disconnected from the harsher realities of the world.

In this cloistered place George W. Bush is not a monster who kills people, or gets people killed, instead he is a down-home hero with a friendly face, a nice fellow doing his best to fill Ronald Reagan's boots.

How do I get through the barrier? Mostly I don't. But sometimes I notice a thin spot in someone's bubble and I'll gently brush against it. If the bubble pops, I welcome them back into the world.

[RainDog]

11. they're afraid because they have bad consciences

people who live in gated communties, who act like they are constantly threatened and are irrational are, imo, trying to suppress their knowledge that they do not deserve all the things they are given as a fluke of birth, while others, by that same fluke, have drastically different options.

Yes, the media plays on fears, but those fears come from a deep down knowledge that they haven't earned their exalted status at the expense of their fellow citizens.

They can only stand themselves when they isolate themselves and deny the wretchedness at the core of their souls.

[maxsolomon]

12. these are the people David Brooks praises.

can their absurd lifestyles outlast $4/gallon gasoline?

by the way, no planners would be a fucking disaster. the problem is not planners, its fucking civil engineers planning neighborhoods.

no i'm not a planner, but i work with them.

[RegexReader]

14. this has been heard before

But she insisted on this idea that there were bogeymen ALL AROUND, ALL THE TIME.

one of the marks of a society going down the tubes. THEY are out to get us!!

This rampant paranoia is not exclusively for the geriatric centers. It is in the centers of *'s government.


RegexReader
$USA =~ s/Republican/Democrat/ig;