A few months ago, David Brooks, writing in The Atlantic, contended that the nation was, essentially, self-segregated. His examples “ranged” from those living in privileged neighborhoods in the DC suburbs, to those living in slightly less privileged neighborhoods in the DC suburbs. I beleive his “example” of a middle class person was someone living in a $700,000 house—all self-segregated by race and ethnicity and income. It must have been a nice little vindication for the neo-con Brooks.
As his example of, sorry, “example” of someone working class, he theorized that baristas also live in pretty well segregated neighborhoods—a gated community of latte-artists, perhaps? We’re all supposed to feel more comfortable that way.
Excuse me, but most of the middle-class people I know (and most of the people I know are middle-class) can’t even begin to afford a $700,000 house. It might be a surprise to those who haven’t left the Beltway in several decades to know that most middle-class people make less than $100,000 a year. By Brooks’ standards, we shouldn’t even exist.
The barista is another issue. His ignorance of her life is evident not only from the fact that he must openly conjecture, but from the fact that he’s got it all wrong. You see, I also know baristas, or former ones, and most of them live in quite diverse areas of town. This is because baristas earn quite a bit less than the supposedly middle-class persons able to plunk down 700 grand on a new crib; at best they may break $20,000—and even then they’d probably have to have been promoted to assistant manager. Because of this, the ones I know all live in economically depressed areas of town, areas that house the struggling working people from just about every ethnic and racial group imaginable. In a sense, poverty knows no color.
Those of us only slightly better off often have a choice to move up and out, to pick our neighbors a bit more intentionally. Brooks would also be surprised to know that we often choose to live near people who are nothing like us. On my own street, within a three block area, stock-brokers live next to plumbers who live next to school teachers who live next to retirees who live next to factory workers. The income range on my street is anywhere from about $20,000 to probably several million dollars per year. We have recent immigrants from Mexico, black families, white families, gay people, straight people—the whole schmeer.
We’re drawn to this place because we grew up here (as did my wife), or because we like to restore old houses (the average age of a house here is probably 65 years), or because we like the close proximity to the bike path that snakes along the Arkansas River, or because we like the mature trees, or because we work downtown and don’t care to commute for an hour each way.
This is just one neighborhood in one medium-sized midwestern town. There are many more just like it. America, as much as David Brooks and the rest of the right wing would like to deny it, looks a lot more like us than like Fairfax or Georgetown. Sadly, it is Brooks and his ilk that have the ear of the policy-makers. Perhaps it’s time we started making some noise . . .
What is a barista?
-Thank You