111–120 of 350 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, is Philly considered Midwestern, not East Coast?
Not Midwestern, but Rust Belt.
Speaking as a Midwesterener, it was a valiant attempt to examine the Midwest without descending into contempt and cliches, but alas, it ultimately failed, and failed hard . Partial credit given for making it for a few paragraphs before descending into the usual trite analysis.
Speaking also as a Midwesterner, I would disagree. I was born and raised in Michigan, and have not really left much other than to couch hop and envy the lives of my friends who've moved out to the coast. I feel that the contempt the author descends into is self-inflicted, and may representative of the culture and authors midwestern upbringing. From what I've observed, midwesterners are brutally humble, almost to a fa…
Thanks for letting us know that some people think it's humble to be xenophobic. Funny thing: my in-laws are from the Midwest, and they've never spoken like this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first thought is how we need to start developing a better working vocabulary around having racist attitudes. Like the big-R Racist is the white power asshole who wants to create a white ethnostate--that's one that's easy to spot, and most of us can say we're not that. The real pernicious damage to communities of color comes from the little-r racism that SO SO MANY people carry around totally unthinkingly. Like eve…
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I grew up in the Midwest and moved to Silicon Valley. I think that people here don't understand what this author describes as "Midwestern history is a study in racial quarantine." I would go as far as to say that racial is the wrong word to describe what happens in the Midwest. I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us." This can be affected by where…
I think you're missing a familiarity with a good chunk of the history of systematic racism in the U.S. There are reasons homogeneous communities form in the U.S. A few of those reasons have to do with city planning and legislation. City planning can be racist in nature and promote exclusionary communities. Redlining, while not typically state legislation, is a good example of practices that contributed to the formati…
What you're talking about are things that happened in larger cities, but that's not the whole world and that doesn't match the history of much of the midwest.
The parent was right, if there is discrimination it's about culture not color. There were a few adopted children with heritage from different parts of the world and as far as I could ever tell, they were treated the same as anyone.
The discrimination you did see to any degree was on a protestant/catholic split and whether you lived in a relatively richer part of town.
I just didn't see racial hatred growing up. Actual racism was a foreign concept until I left. Something you saw on TV, not in real life. I'm aware that it isn't necessarily something I would have always seen... but I have seen racism since I left in a way that I definitely did not before.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My first thought is how we need to start developing a better working vocabulary around having racist attitudes. Like the big-R Racist is the white power asshole who wants to create a white ethnostate--that's one that's easy to spot, and most of us can say we're not that. The real pernicious damage to communities of color comes from the little-r racism that SO SO MANY people carry around totally unthinkingly. Like eve…
I think you are on the right track to try to develop a better vocabulary about racist attitudes. But it needs to be more nuanced than the Racism/racism distinction you draw. Lets flesh out the pricing algorithm example. Lets say a home security company want to provide per zip code prices. The inputs they use are population density, crime rate, and availability of installers. This will lead to black neighborhoods bein…
I grew up in the Midwest and moved to Silicon Valley. I think that people here don't understand what this author describes as "Midwestern history is a study in racial quarantine." I would go as far as to say that racial is the wrong word to describe what happens in the Midwest. I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us." This can be affected by where…
Flatness is mentioned five times. Not where I grew up and there are certainly days in the warm months when I struggle to ride my bicycle up hills that I wish all of the midwest was flat.
Nobody carries on about Texas being flat and boring, yet it's only marginally less flat than Kansas.
I grew up in the Midwest and moved to Silicon Valley. I think that people here don't understand what this author describes as "Midwestern history is a study in racial quarantine." I would go as far as to say that racial is the wrong word to describe what happens in the Midwest. I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us." This can be affected by where…
For example, divesting from your neighborhood out of concern for your property value when PoC start to move in does not necessarily reflect an individual racial bias. It could be a purely rational economic calculation based on other people’s biases. It’s still the bread and butter of the system of racism.
Just like discrimination that branches on culture or class and only incidentally produces outcomes along racial lines.
I grew up in the Midwest and moved to Silicon Valley. I think that people here don't understand what this author describes as "Midwestern history is a study in racial quarantine." I would go as far as to say that racial is the wrong word to describe what happens in the Midwest. I think that communities in the Midwest have tighter cultural restrictions on what it means to be "one of us." This can be affected by where…
As a Midwesterner, this is incredibly accurate. I personally don't like multiculturalism, and I don't know of many people in my area that do. In my opinion and experience, multiculturalism in society makes a sense of community very difficult if not impossible to create. Having standard methods of communication, standard social and moral norms, and standard goals and beliefs makes empathizing with my neighbor so much…
Is the fact that cultures are represented unevenly in society the fault of the non-dominant cultures or the dominant culture?
Is poverty and chronic stress cause by culture or is it caused by racist systems?
It might be a cycle but if people weren't racists then it might be easier to break the cycle.
Personally, I love multiculturalism. Being a white guy growing up in an almost exclusively white area gets to be monotonous. Dealing with people from other cultures is a lot more fun than dealing with people like me.
> In a 2015 essay for Slate, “The Rust-Belt Theory of Low-Cost High Culture,” reporter Alec McGillis marveled at the cheapness—and, it seems, the mere presence—of good orchestra and museum tickets in interior cities: One fact of history that’s often overlooked is that patronage has left an incredible legacy in places like Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc. For example, one of the finest collections of…