The answer to the question, “Who cares?”
Hey, remember back when Russell and Dennis and Kazzy and Sam were all explaining why gay athletes coming out actually matters in 2014? Well, add to their arguments this bit of news:
Washington lobbyist Jack Burkman on Monday said he is preparing legislation that would ban gay athletes from joining the National Football League…
”We are losing our decency as a nation,” Burkman said in a statement. “Imagine your son being forced to shower with a gay man. That’s a horrifying prospect for every mom in the country. What in the world has this nation come to?”
(emphasis mine; bigotry Burkman’s)
Now to be fair, it should be noted that Burkman is a lobbyist and not a legislator, and that he is just publicly announcing the idea of a bill to outlaw gays in the NFL. He does not yet have a sponsor and likely may never get one; even if he does, the bill will never see the floor of either chamber. (Though he does claim that he has a senator and five reps already on board, with more expecting to sign on over the next few weeks.)
But it is just as important to note that Burkman is not some lone nutter from a backwater town. Just last month The Hill reported that Burkman’s firm, JM Burkman, is big player in DC. Last year Burkman inked 70 new clients — more than any other K-Street outfit. He is the also a regular contributor on Fox News as well as a frequent guest political “expert” on both CNN and CNBC. He is not a Donald Trump/Frank Gafney type. He doesn’t get trotted out to talk about Obama’s birth certificate and Sharia Law taking over middle America; his job in the conservative media is handling the middle-of-the-road conservative talking points. He is nobody’s fool, and he knows his target audience of mainstream conservative voters better than anyone at this site.
That is the guy who is proposing a federally mandated ban on gay players in the NFL.
So, I put it to you that the answer to the question of “who cares” that Michael Sam and Jason Collins came out is: a hell of a lot more people than you think.
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This is a massive PR stunt. Of course if a well connected guy thinks this will lead to good PR and not a massive outflow of clients and getting laughed off Fox, then that is the problem. This is a giant slow pitch softball for R’s who want to start to change the publics perception of them on gays.Report
Yup:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/02/24/jack_burkman_michael_sam_gop_lobbyist_s_cynical_ploy_to_ban_gays_from_the.htmlReport
“lobbyist of debatable repute”
Is there any other kind?Report
K,
yes. there are the notorious scofflaws paid in cocktail weenies — who work for charities that can’t afford to pay ’em more.Report
Women the world over want to know why men should be exempt from the leering gaze we’ve lived with for-fucking-ever. And we’re laughing our asses off that men like this are all twitterpated that they might be subject to what they’ve done to us; that they fear it because they do it.
Suck it up and get used to being oggled and judged as a piece of meat.
/and I apologize to all you lovely gay men for being thrust into comparison with this bunch of oggling thugs, too.
Really. Who cares?Report
twitterpated
If I recall the film correctly, that means “sexually excited”. Which makes your use of it even better.Report
In point of fact, women are essentially never required to shower with or otherwise appear naked in front of men (maybe in prison?) unless they’ve chosen to work in the sex industry.
Not only do men and women have separate locker rooms, but there are even women-only gyms and other such facilities.
This is a dumb idea for a law, even as laws go, but you’re reaching for this analogy.Report
You are totally right, men never oggle women, never imagine them neked, never speak of them in terms of objects to be had and lusted after, and this (of course!) is only the state of affairs because they don’t shower together or share locker rooms or, sometimes, even gyms. It’s not like ladies might join a ladies-only gym to avoid this or anything.
I’m so sorry Brandon, to have completely underestimated how honorable men are, and to have so completely misplaced their fears of being treated they way they treat others.Report
I dunno, BB. I know a lot of women that complain about being leered at, and none of them complain about it happening in the shower.
In fact now that I think about, one of the things I hear from men who roll their eyes when women complain about being ogled (which I suspect overlaps somewhat with men who think gays shouldn’t be in the locker room) is that it doesn’t hurt anyone, it should be taken as a compliment, and they really secretly love it.
So I do kind of see the irony zinc points out.Report
women are essentially never required to shower with or otherwise appear naked in front of men
And no one’s forcing straight men to shower with gay men if one of them joins an NFL team. They have lots of options. They could quit, they could not shower in the locker room, they could establish a separate shower for homophobes…Report
@stillwater
If God didn’t want straight men showering together, he wouldn’t have invented football.Report
Obligatory Rev. Dobson reference to the value of grown men showering with young boys…Report
Brandon,
you’ve never been attacked by a subway groper before, I take it?Report
Personally, I’ve showered with some gay dudes (in a team sport environment) and i could FEEL teh gay eyes staring all over my hetro christian boooody.
*shudders*
/sarchasm offReport
Zic:
He’s saying that men should not be exposed to the leering eyes of other men while showering. Women already have an analogous protection: women’s showers.
You say that women are not protected from being ogled on the street. Nothing in this proposed bill would protect men from being ogled on the street by gay men.
In other words, he’s asking for men (in the NFL) to have the same protection women already have, not for men to be granted a special protection that women don’t have.
And that’s all I’ll say on the topic. Either you why your analogy is inapt or you don’t, but I don’t care enough to litigate it any further.Report
@zic
That’s the minimum you need to pay for an employee to be considered exempt. If you treat them as hourly workers (e.g pay overtime), you can pay minimum wage, provided you can find someone who’ll accept that.Report
@mike-schilling I totally think you responded to not only the wrong comment, but the wrong thread?
Perhaps; but the law does indicate that part of the root causes of gentrification in and about SF are legislated, which was my point.Report
Fishing multi-tabbed browsers!Report
Can liberals be outraged by this? Is it mockworthy, or would mocking it be childish? Should we wait to see how the libs/Dems respond to this, then see how the GOP/cons respond to *that* before we can determine whether BSDI, or would that be begging the question against the above-the-fray folks?Report
It’s fine, this guy is an unmitigated twit, pushing for onerous government regulation onto job creators.Report
It’s things like this that you one of my favorite commenters here, K. I actually snored out loud when I read that.Report
Yeah, Kolohe puts me to sleep too.
(Kidding. It was funny.)Report
Humor aside, this really is an important point. Republicans have traditionally been (if only in a relative sense) defenders of property rights. Someone who argues that government should not just allow, but actually force a private business to discriminate in hiring should have to hand his card in.Report
The thing is, for most of American history, social conservatism (as one would define it today) has been more closely economic populism, not economic conservatism (again, as one would define it today). The correlation (i.e. ‘two legs of the stool’) in the modern Republican party is an ahistoric aberration, born out of suburbanization (which includes civil rights backlash, but also increasing home ownership and the (visible) spike in crime)
This guy is just trolling, but the clearer example of the potential breakup of the economic and social wings of the party is in the Arizona anti-gay bill. It’s the business interests (who are mostly Republican too, and were all Republicans while the socons daddy’s & grandpappies were Southern Democrats) that are pushing for Brewer to veto (which at last check, the word on the street is that she will)
We’ll see what traction a Huckabee campaign has this next cycle to determine if a socon can win party support with an economic populist message. (my guess is no, because the money men are an indispensable asset in the overall nomination process)Report
Kolohe, how would you reconcile your argument, that economic and social conservatism has not been historically linked in the United States till recently, with the fact that lots of emplopyers have a long history of attemptign to enforce social conservatism among their work force. Henry Ford and Pullman were the most prominent examples of this but other plenty of other businessmen had long lists of rules about what their employees could do off-hours. It wasn’t uncommon for store owners to tell their clerks that they shouldn’t go to saloons or theatre in their spare times and make doing so a fireable offense or firing a woman upon marriage on the asssumption that married women don’t need to work.
Businessmen may have been less for Jim Crow than Southern society as a whole but I think that really only refers to the really big companies. Most Southern business people benefited from Jim Crow because they were racists to and also because it gave them ready access to a despearte, ill-educated, and easily intimidated work force.Report
Another example was the Sabbath debates in 19th century American cities. During the 19th century, there were wide-ranging debates on what and should not be allowed on Sundays even though we technically had no state religion. In 19th century New York, the firercest Sabbatharians were also rich, conservative Republicans. The Met was closed on Sundays because its board was dominated by rich Republicans insisting on Sabbath observance. The working classes protested this because Sunday was the only realistic day possible for them to see the art at the Met.Report
Lee,
if your workers get sodding drunk whenever you pay them (and don’t come in to work until Wednesday of next week), yeah, you do start putting in rules about not hitting the saloon.Report
Certainly it’s richly deserving of mockery. And it’s pretty clear that both sides don’t do it—at least not in anywhere near equal numbers. This particular brand of stupidity is largely peculiar to religious conservatives.
Just remember those dumbasses throwing rocks at Google buses before you draw inferences from this to the general superiority of your preferred party.Report
This.Report
And what did I say about those people Brandon? I said it directly in response to a comment of yours, one which you responded to, so you know where I stood on that issue. Nevertheless, it’s impossible for me to ever get past the accusation that my views are determined by partisanship, even tho I criticize and disagree with liberals and Democrats all the time. I find that strange. It makes me think that people account for my disagreement with their views by attributing my views to partisanship rather than the reasons I provide. I’m engaging in a thread with Hanley right now where he specifically accused me of just that. There’s nothing to say in response to that accusation, it seems to me, since the people who accuse a commenter of being irrationally partisan view the writers words thru the lens of their being partisan.
It’s circular. Not entirely, but pretty close. That’s not to say a critique of someone’s views won’t reveal that they hold those beliefs out of partisan identification. But it seems like the normal burden of proof is consistently reversed: identify the political affiliation of the commenter, attribute partisan motivations to them unless proven otherwise.Report
This.
Really Tod? That’s all you have to say? Could it be that the liberals who refused to condemn the Google protests did so because they agreed with it? Why should those people condemn something they agree with (crazy tho it was)? What standard are you holding them to?Report
@stillwater we all seem to measure others by our own yardstick; and when someone doesn’t, when they actually consider something from beyond their own biases, nobody really believes it.
(Did you know that while reporting on doing business with the military during the mid 2000’s, I used to get invited to Bush’s fundraisers by my sources with alarming regularity; and not just mass mailing emails, but personal invitations to share a seat at their mega-bucks table for free. This really alarmed me, too; I feared I was so subsuming my liberal stripes to do my job without bias that everyone saw an elephant.)Report
I’m engaging in a thread with Hanley right now where he specifically accused me of just that.
He’s an ass. It’s obvious you weren’t being ideological, just tiresomely pedantic.Report
I’m trying to think of someone with any power in the Democratic party who encouraged people to throw rocks at Google buses or proposed outlawing them. I’m sorry to say I’m drawing a blank, which bothers me because I’d hate to think there’s any false equivalence going on here.Report
I’m pretty sure that mistakenly viewing Google buses as a symptom of the very real social inequality problem in SF is not on par with the stupidity of 99% of religious conservativism, like not favoring contraception distribution in countries that are suffering from the AIDS epidemic.
Liberal does something slightly controversial or mistaken. Conservative tears the skin off of gay person for believing in the wrong God. “Both sides do it!” “See, you shouldn’t be liberal or conservative!”Report
Sorry that should say “symbol” not “symptom”Report
@stillwater
I have no idea if this is meant to be sarcasm or not.Report
That is a particularly unkind statement to make in the context of trying to make a point about the superiority of one side.Report
James, sorry if my arguments came off as pedantic on that thread. I didn’t mean them to. I didn’t, and still don’t, understand what Tim was getting at in that post. Re: the comment here: I sorry if it sounded like a cheap shot. I didn’t mean it to and mentioning that thread over here was inappropriate on my part. Apologies.
Tod,
No sarcasm intended. You “this”ed a comment claiming that I had to remember (and presumably criticize) the GB protesters in order to have any claims to political superiority. That might be a correct view if I was arguing for party superiority here, but I’m not. The argument I’m making about BSDI is a purely descriptive one: that both sides in fact don’t do it and folks use that rhetorical device to account for partisan politics do so despite evidence to the contrary for reasons that I think beg a bunch of interesting question (especially given the dynamics involved).
Alsotoo, I actually have criticized the GBus protestors for some the practices they engaged in (which is apparently necessary for me to maintain the high ground I’m not interested in defending). But what difference does that make to the point I’m getting at? You appear to think it does, and I don’t really know why. Is my public expression of disdain for the GBus protestors necessary for my empirical claims to go thru? Do I have to criticize them to make my more subtle “above the fray” argument go thru? If I didn’t express disdain, would that show I’m a partisan hack who holds irrational views? Aren’t those all independent things?Report
” You “this”ed a comment claiming that I had to remember (and presumably criticize) the GB protesters in order to have any claims to political superiority. “
Actually, I read BB’s meaning to be something very different: that it’s somewhat helpful to remember where your own side goes off the rail as you’re criticizing the other for doing the same. And to that, I am happy to double down on my “this.”
To the larger issue, I will only say (restate? re-restate?) this:
The right is currently a clusterf**k of a mess, and has been for almost a decade — even when winning temporary small-fish elections. And because of this, liberals/leftists/Dems seem to be under the illusion that they have been given a blank check by the electorate to engage in silliness, close-mindedness, hatred, incompetence and corruption, and that it’s somehow magically wiped clean by pulling out the “false equivalence” defense. After all, if you can point to someone on the right that’s worse, where’s the harm? And for right now, that’s probably good enough.
But someday that’s not nearly as long off as you think, that mindset is going to bite you all in the ass and you’re going to be wondering how the fish you squandered what should have been an easy lock on a multi-generational majority. And you can all have a beer with Karl Rove, who will tell you he can relate, because he’s been there, brother, he’s been there.Report
If we are talking false equivalence comparing the maroons tossing stones at Google buses to some of the things religious conservatives do which almost all of us in the place dislike( bigotry, homophobia, etc) is gold medal example of the species. The GB protesters are a small bunch of loons with. Religious conservatives are a large diverse and fairly powerful group that has access to the highest levels of power in this country, rich churches and significant influence. Its an apples to oranges comparison on a number of levels and complete FE.Report
Actually, I read BB’s meaning to be something very different: that it’s somewhat helpful to remember where your own side goes off the rail as you’re criticizing the other for doing the same. And to that, I am happy to double down on my “this.”
Actually, I read BB’s meaning to be something very different: that it’s somewhat helpful to remember where your own side goes off the rail as you’re criticizing the other for doing the same. And to that, I am happy to double down on my “this.”
Well, this response misses my argument by quite a bit, but nevertheless, I have done that, Tod. What more do I need to do to have my opinions about politics viewed by you as legitimate? Should I criticize them again? Do I need to preface every criticism I make of the GOP with a disclaimer that I do in fact criticize my own “side”, so I’m a totes impartial commenter with established street cred?
/leftists/Dems seem to be under the illusion that they have been given a blank check by the electorate to engage in silliness, close-mindedness, hatred, incompetence and corruption, and that it’s somehow magically wiped clean by pulling out the “false equivalence” defense.
Yes, I’m aware that you believe this. I’m going to have to reserve judgment until you present more evidence than Josh Marshall referring to Boehner’s actions on the debt ceiling as a “cave”. I’ll also remember while reading those future posts that as a liberal I’m uniquely prevented from presenting an unbiased argument regarding the evidence you present and the conclusions you draw.Report
One other thing. This
But someday that’s not nearly as long off as you think, that mindset is going to bite you all in the ass
]
is awesome. It is a perfect example of the type of thinking I’m criticizing. It attributes to me (me personally!) an ideological driven mindset irrespective of whether I hold, as a matter of fact, any of the beliefs associated with that ideological analysis. Nope, it doesn’t matter what I actually say, the fact that you view me as a liberals means that you get to apply your analysis to me and interpret my words and actions accordingly.
just frickin amazing.Report
The best thing about Google buses is that you don’t have to actually talk about what they’re protesting or why they chose the buses. You can just say “Google buses!” and, because it seems silly that there even are Google buses, much less that someone’s protesting them, you’ve automatically undermined any comment on, say, state-level politicians in several states trying to pass laws to legalize discrimination against gays in a variety of contexts.
Really, if “Google buses” is the best snark you’ve got, you should probably go back to the drawing table.Report
And it isn’t “loony” to protest Google busses. Nor is it horrendous or vile. It is a misplaced protest against growing social inequality and gentrification and all that. I disagree with it, but it isn’t loony.
Homophobic laws in Arizona are vile and horrendous. To equate the vile and loony with the merely mistaken is the epitomy of false equivalency.Report
@stillwater,
sorry if my arguments came off as pedantic on that thread. I didn’t mean them to. I didn’t, and still don’t, understand what Tim was getting at in that post
I apologize. My comment was uncalled for.
Your style of analysis and mine are different. As you don’t understand what Tim was getting at, I often don’t understand what you are getting at.Report
I understand perfectly why they’re going after Google buses (after reading up on the protests): the buses are there. Google is way, way over there (which is why they need the buses), as are most of the other major tech companies, but the buses are right there. If Google were closer to town, they’d probably be protesting at the Google campus, but it’s not, so you go with what’s close. Is it going to get them anywhere? I doubt it. That doesn’t make it irrational. You see them now, don’t you? Some of us, at least, are talking about inequality and evictions in San Francisco.
The rock throwing and other property damage is anger overflowing. It happens. It’s better if it doesn’t, because 99.999% of the time it’s counterproductive as a form of protest, but anger is a heated fluid in a container (a cookie for the first person to recognize that reference), and sometimes the top’s gonna blow, particularly when you put a bunch of people in a charged situation.Report
Stillwater:
I’m not saying you approve of the Google protestors. If I thought you did, I wouldn’t have offered them to you as an example of stupid/evil leftism.
My point is that it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that the stupid/evil things people on the other side do are the rule and that the stupid/evil things people on your side do are the exception.
This particular stupid/evil thing is peculiar to conservatives. But it seemed pretty clear to me that your comment was a reference to an earlier thread in which smug generalization about conservatives by proud members of the other stupid/evil party prompted me to point out that the particular criticism being made applied equally well to the left. So I answered your question, explaining the circumstances under which I would consider a BSDI response appropriate.
Obviously I’m never going to convince you that both sides are equally bad, because many of the things I dislike about about the Democrats and the left are things you regard as selling points (not the bus thing, obviously, but other things) and thus not available for me to offer to you as examples.
But Jesus, does it depress me that those are our two choices.Report
I understand perfectly why they’re going after Google buses (after reading up on the protests): the buses are there. Google is way, way over there (which is why they need the buses), as are most of the other major tech companies, but the buses are right there.
The throwing of rocks at buses is the most egregious example, but the whole movement is rotten. The idea that it’s appropriate to protest a company for paying its employees enough to outbid you on an apartment you wanted reeks of entitlement. We all want things we can’t have—by adulthood people should understand that throwing a tantrum is not the appropriate way to deal with this.Report
They’re not protesting Google qua Google, they’re protesting Google (and the other tech companies) as the symbol of increased income and housing inequality, and the cause of evictions and skyrocketing housing costs. There’s nothing silly about that. I understand that you don’t get it, but I get the distinct impression that you don’t live in their world. Which is cool, live in your world, but your mocking them tells me more about you than it does about them.Report
Stillwater:
Apologies if I misconstrued your comment, and please don’t take it personally. Honestly, I think of you as representative of the kind of left wing I wish we had, not the one we actually do have.Report
The rock throwing and other property damage
Not sure what the laws are there and whether the buses were occupied when the rocks were thrown, but where I live rock-throwing into an occupied vehicle is a second-degree felony, since a thrown rock can cause great bodily harm or death.*
So I guess it’s appropriate to call it “property damage”, until it kills, blinds or brain-damages someone.
Or, we could treat it like someone slashing a knife at someone wearing a Google jacket, and only cutting the fabric. Yeah, that’s luckily just “property damage”, but we’d more properly call it an “attempted stabbing”, which I tend to take a dim view of.
*The reason I know this is because I once got clocked by a chunk of concrete thrown through a window. (Brain-damage minimal, as far as I can tlcgh.) Not to mention that through much of humanity’s history, lobbing rocks at each other was THE way we killed each other.Report
Glyph,
so, um, about as bad as what happens to the Pitt football team’s bus when they go to WVU?Report
Yeah, I don’t mean to minimize the potential (or actual) impact of violent behavior. Inevitability — and when anger and frustration reach a certain point, it is all but inevitable — doesn’t mean it’s not bad, and that there shouldn’t be consequences.Report
I understand that you don’t get it, but I get the distinct impression that you don’t live in their world. Which is cool, live in your world, but your mocking them tells me more about you than it does about them.
Chris, this is perhaps a true critique, but it is a bit too universal in that it can be applied to shut down anyone who is critical of something they aren’t a part of.Report
@brandon-berg
“The idea that it’s appropriate to protest a company for paying its employees enough to outbid you on an apartment you wanted reeks of entitlement.”
I don’t know how liberal you consider me but I criticized the protests for exactly this. To me, the attitude they expressed was decidedly unliberal.
“We all want things we can’t have—by adulthood people should understand that throwing a tantrum is not the appropriate way to deal with this.”
I work really hard on instilling this idea in my students. They’re 4- and 5-years-old. It is a remarkably important lesson to learn. And it angers me when I meet adults who not only can’t appropriately control themselves when such things happen, but who seem to actively think that they can and should have everything they want.
As I tell my students: “You share this class with 10 other children. They also want to do X. Unfortunately, not everyone can do X at the same time. That’s just how the world works.”Report
Vikram, there’s a difference between being critical and mocking.Report
@chris
they’re protesting Google (and the other tech companies) as the symbol of increased income and housing inequality, and the cause of evictions and skyrocketing housing costs.
I gotta say, Chris, that sounds an awful lot like Brandon’s “The idea that it’s appropriate to protest a company for paying its employees enough to outbid you on an apartment you wanted…”
It seems pretty stupid to me that they’re throwing rocks at Google instead of at City Hall where the construction rules are written, or perhaps at their own selves for (I’d be willing to wager, having lived there) opposing more construction.Report
James, yeah, the city hall point is valid. I’m not saying you can’t criticize them. Brandon’s just dismissed them, though, mostly mockingly. Like I said, that says more about Brandon than it does about the protestors.
Look, you’ve got people who feel powerless in the face of dramatically changing economic conditions where they live, conditions that are pushing them out of their homes and their neighborhoods. They’re going to lash out, and the Google buses are there and a symbol of the problems (they carry the people whose behavior is, in part, responsible for the changes). They’re also inconvenient for the non-Google people who use public transportation, which increases their visibility and their association with the frustration.. This is understandable.
And it’s not just understandable. Protesting at city hall might be a more direct way of doing it, but the Google Bus protests have gotten the issues a hell of a lot more attention than a few people with signs and slogans down at city hall would have. Hell, now they can move to city hall, with the knowledge that people are paying attention and will see them.Report
there are people in SF that make far more money than google programmers yet they aren’t the target of protests(for example to protesters could target the Giants and 49ers teams buses). could it be that the real reason for the protest is that the protesters hate nerds? if they don’t hate nerds why have does the fact that the riders of the buses are nerds keep coming up when people complain about them.
at the very least the google protests show that krugman is lying when he claims that the left only has a problem the top one percentReport
Maybe they’re angry at Google and the wealthy for not using their wealth more to reduce inequality.
“Stupid” is much stronger than “mistaken.” I’d say the protests are mistaken and poorly planned. Maybe even unfair to Google. But these are reasonable mistakes, not to be analogized with unreasonable, stupid, and morally vile positions.
I would reserve the word “stupid” for things like the denial of evolution or the belief that the poor are eating Tbone steaks with their welfare checks.Report
Maybe they’re angry at Google and the wealthy for not using their wealth more to reduce inequality.
the computer programmers riding the google buses are hardly the super rich, if their problem is with the super rich why not protest them, there are plenty of them in SF.Report
Their problem isn’t with the super rich. It’s the people who are moving into their neighborhoods and causing housing prices to skyrocket. That’s not the super rich, it’s the young programmers making six figures and buying a condo or house for 800k in a neighborhood that, a few years ago, was working or lower middle class.Report
The merely rich have a dity to help reduce inequality, too. I would say that they do too little and that is protestable. The Google bus protests might be mistaken, nonetheless, but protesting upper middle class behavior that worsens inequality is fair game.
I would be willing to protest rich and upper middle class kids sending their kids to private schools in some form or another.Report
@shazbot3
“The merely rich have a dity to help reduce inequality, too. I would say that they do too little and that is protestable. The Google bus protests might be mistaken, nonetheless, but protesting upper middle class behavior that worsens inequality is fair game.”
How much of an income difference was there between the current residents of that neighborhood and the new Google employees moving in? My understanding is that the difference wasn’t so stark. And also that many of the Google employees were relatively recent immigrants, many of them from awfully poor countries. Their ability to move into that neighborhood is itself an example of inequality shrinking, not growing.Report
Their problem isn’t with the super rich. It’s the people who are moving into their neighborhoods and causing housing prices to skyrocket. That’s not the super rich, it’s the young programmers making six figures and buying a condo or house for 800k in a neighborhood that, a few years ago, was working or lower middle class.
so then krugman is lying when he claims that the problem is just the top one percent. the protesters are upset that anyone is able to earn more money than them. these people are no different than working class whites who want to stop blacks from moving into to their neighborhood, both groups think they own the place and want to keep out people will change it in any way.Report
so then krugman is lying when he claims that the problem is just the top one percent. the protesters are upset that anyone is able to earn more money than them. these people are no different than working class whites who want to stop blacks from moving into to their neighborhood, both groups think they own the place and want to keep out people will change it in any way.
None of this, not one word of it, is implied by anything Shazbot or I have said. But I suspect you were going there no matter what we said.Report
None of this, not one word of it, is implied by anything Shazbot or I have said. But I suspect you were going there no matter what we said.
you both think that computer programmers making 80k at year are an acceptable target for protest(and a better target thank baseball players making 10 million a year). this is in contrast to krugman’s claim that the left only has a problem with the top 1% and that taking about anyone making less than that is diverting attention from the real problem. a was simply pointing out that krugman is wrong.Report
I wouldn’t say Krugman is lying. We just disagree, perhaps, on a subtle issue. (And you should quote him directly, because given the context, saying the 1% are the problem might be true. Depends on what problem we’re talking about.) That you say “lying” gives the game away here. I don’t think you want real conversation.
—-
Kazzy,
Depends on which protestors you’re talking about. Some were well off, I suppose. Some weren’t.
Regardless, the problems that they are upset about are real. Gentrification, loss of what made SF a great community, growing income inequality, a failure of the upper middle class to try to integrate and live with lower classes, etc.
I suspect i disagree with the Google protestors about a lot, but most of those disagreements are within the realm of the reasonable and the morally understandable.
I think some religious conservative’s homophobia is neither reasonable nor morally understandable. We should not do a “both sides do it” and give one example of something reasonable and morally tolerable (even if I disagree with it) from one side and something unreasonable and morally reprehensible from the other side.Report
I suspect i disagree with the Google protestors about a lot, but most of those disagreements are within the realm of the reasonable and the morally understandable.
I think some religious conservative’s homophobia is neither reasonable nor morally understandable.
Precisely.Report
Just so I’m clear on where I’m supposed to stand…
People who throw rocks at Google busses and employees are not allowed to be mocked, because they are people looking at changing times that are leaving them behind, and even though they’re lashing out at people and things that aren’t responsible for that, we must be sympathetic to the very real fear and anxiety that this changing world brings.
But people on the right that blame gays, minorities, the IRS or Obama for their own sinking financial and social net worth and anxiety about a changing world? Yeah, fish those guys.Report
the problems that they are upset about are real. Gentrification,… failure of the upper middle class to try to integrate and live with lower classes,
I wonder how gentrification begins.Report
I wouldn’t say Krugman is lying. We just disagree, perhaps, on a subtle issue. (And you should quote him directly, because given the context, saying the 1% are the problem might be true. Depends on what problem we’re talking about.) That you say “lying” gives the game away here. I don’t think you want real conversation.
i posted a link he implied that the left only has a problem with top 1% and that talk about people making less than the is just a diversion.
Regardless, the problems that they are upset about are real. Gentrification, loss of what made SF a great community,
that’s exactly what people in all white areas said about blacks moving in.Report
@tod-kelly
People who throw rocks at Google busses and employees are not allowed to be mocked, because they are people looking at changing times that are leaving them behind, and even though they’re lashing out at people and things that aren’t responsible for that, we must be sympathetic to the very real fear and anxiety that this changing world brings.
Feel free to mock anyone who uses violence to protest just about anything. However, how many people threw rocks? How many protesters were there? How much are the rock throwers and the non-rock throwers lumped together? Do you think, even if we excluded rock throwers, Brandon or people with similar world views would think the Google Bus protesters significantly less mockable?Report
Do you think the rock throwing was the key point in what I said?Report
@kazzy
I don’t know how liberal you consider me but I criticized the protests for exactly this.
You’re such a LINO.
Chris:
You’re right. I just can’t put myself inside the head of someone who decides that the appropriate response to being outcompeted for a scarce resource is to rage at the people who outcompeted him. Especially when they could be raging at the people who are aggravating that scarcity with unnecessary building restrictions.Report
@brandon-berg
You’re right. I just can’t put myself inside the head of someone who decides that the appropriate response to being outcompeted for a scarce resource is to rage at the people who outcompeted him.
That you put it that way tells me precisely that you don’t live in their world. Honestly, I see that way of looking at things as morally abominable, but I suspect you’d see my way of looking at it as equally so.
@tod-kelly, the rock-throwing is the only reason I think they’re mockable in any reasonable sense. I’ve said why throughout the this subthread, as has Shazbot. You may disagree, but so far only James has challenged the reasons we’ve given for seeing their behavior as reasonable (except the violence). Brandon has simply repeated his “they’re the losers” mantra, which is his wont. You’ve essentially said something similar, though I suspect that you are more aware of the sources of and problems associated with inequality, and wouldn’t essentially couch it in the moral terms that Brandon does (his looks like a sort of Capitalist Christianity, where morality is a function of one’s ability to get more stuff). I’m perfectly willing to say that they should have chosen another target, but once you admit that there are reasons why they chose the target they did, that those reasons are not silly (and, in fact, make a fair amount of sense, given what the buses represent), and that the protests may even have been moderately successful in garnering attention for the issues that were the source of their anger in the first place, it seems unfair to mock them for their choice of where to protest and how to go about it (except for the violence).
Remember: the buses are both a symbol of the gentrification issue, because they carry the people who are doing the gentrification, and they are an actual nuisance to the people who use public transportation. Is it unfair to the gentrifiers that they’re getting targeted in this way (except the violence, which is obviously unfair)? I don’t know. That’s a conversation we can have. Mocking is not having that conversation, or any conversation, though.Report
Brandon,
No worries. You’re one of my favorite commenters at this site because you’re consistently charitable, crystal clear, and respond to specific claims other commenters have actually said (not what you think they’ve said). I was a bit over the top upthread, I admit, and I’m sorry for that. I was using what you wrote more as an example to demonstrate a point than to criticize anything you specifically wrote. (Tho, I think it applies – marginally – to what you wrote.) I’ve made the point a bunch of times before so I won’t make it again, but there’s an argumentative trick which, upon contact with my eye or earballs is analogous to heat being applied to a fluid in the closed container of my brain. I also think I have an argument to express what that heat source is. FWIW. So I got *that* going for me, which is nice.Report
@chris The thing is that nothing you’ve said differentiates those concerns from the (presumably mockable) concerns raised by various social conservatives. “Gentrification” is not a talismanic word that converts the unjustifiable into the justifiable.
From my perspective, I’m someone who, thanks to the work of folks like Stillwater, has become persuaded that rising inequality is a legitimate issue. These protesters are undoing a lot of that work – to me, they really do come off as protesting rank and file workers for having the temerity to work for an employer who treats them well. Which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what I signed up for when I started taking concerns about inequality seriously.Report
Losing your apartment because of rent hikes (or the building being bought and removed from the rental market) is a tangible loss. Having to live in a world where two men can get married, much less so.Report
@mark-thompson (man, I’m actually remembering to use the @’s!)
I have a hard time seeing people whose starting salaries — starting salaries — average in the 6 digits, as “rank and file,” but I get your point. And I think it’s a valid point, and suggests that they probably should have directed their attention elsewhere. If you think that large increases in evictions as a result of rapidly increasing housing prices, to take just one example of the effects that have led to the protests, is a bad thing, then I’d ask you where and toward whom they should be doing their protesting. James says city hall. Personally, I think that while that might be a more direct route, it’s also a less effective one, because no one will care. I don’t know about San Francisco, but here the capitol and city hall are the targets of protests pretty much all of the time, so no one really pays attention unless something unique happens.
One final thing: I get the impression that the Google Bus protests were somewhat spontaneous, at least at first. What are the people who participated doing now? Are they still protesting? Where? To what ends?Report
@chris
The elephant in the room is laws on the books about rates of pay for computer-programming jobs in CA; either $40/hour or min. salary of more then $80,000. CA firms have to pay these rates to out-of-state employees, too. (I know this because my BIL owns such a company, has no ‘office,’ but international staff that all work at home.)
http://www.morganlewis.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/publication.detail/publicationID/3989632d-51ed-4da3-bed0-31703588790eReport
That may be true on the SSM issue, but there’s plenty of other issues where it’s not true – immigrant labor really is cheaper, ending employment discrimination against women and minorities increases labor supply, and affirmative action programs really do have the effect of limiting educational opportunities for lower class whites. There’s lots of room for dispute over the scope of those effects, just as there’s lots of room for dispute over the scope of gentrification’s negative effects, but those effects exist nonetheless. Regardless, that does not make the blanket targeting of anyone perceived to be in the group benefiting from those changes any more acceptable.Report
Just so I’m clear on where I’m supposed to stand…
People who throw rocks at Google busses and employees are not allowed to be mocked, because they are people looking at changing times that are leaving them behind, and even though they’re lashing out at people and things that aren’t responsible for that, we must be sympathetic to the very real fear and anxiety that this changing world brings.
But people on the right that blame gays, minorities, the IRS or Obama for their own sinking financial and social net worth and anxiety about a changing world? Yeah, fish those guys.
Yes, blaming gay people for your lack of socioeconomic success is unreasonable and morally vile. It also likely contributes, in a small way admittedly, to a climate permissive of hate crimes and all the evils inflicted on the gay community.
Blaming problems like gentrification, rising housing prices in SF, loss of community in SF, etc. on the tech sector, Google, and Google buses is something I disagree with, but it is reasonable. Moreover, it is not morally vile to protest gentrification. Maybe counterproductive, maybe not. But not morally vile.
I appreciate the centrist vibe here. But sometimes there is an attempt to say a pox on all ideological houses and all political parties equally that is simple minded, misleading, and based on fallacious false equivalencies.Report
Protesting against gentrification is fine. It might be pointless or misguided, but fine. Tossing rocks at buses as part of that protest is wrong and stupid and should be mocked among other things.Report
I’m someone who, thanks to the work of folks like Stillwater, has become persuaded that rising inequality is a legitimate issue. These protesters are undoing a lot of that work – to me
Mark, I’ve got mad respect for you, but surely you want to take this back or revise it.
Reason, evidence, and argument has convinced you that current and rising inequality is a social problem in need of a solution. Good. But now a single protest which you -perhaps correctly- believe is targeted at an innocent party is causing you to give up that belief? Did the reasons and evidence and argumentation get changed by the protestors? Did they go back and time and change the facts and moral premises of the arguments that convinced you?
Sorry to be nitpicky, but you appear to be engaged in some form of fallacious hippy punching ad hominem. “P1: Those hippies did something weird in that protest. C: The conclusions that hippies in general argue for are false.”Report
1. Whoops. Forgot to quote Mark above.
2. I’m fine with mocking rock throwing.
But imagine someone analogized the throwing of rocks at these buses with killing abortion providers and said “See, both sides use violence to get their political point across. So stop singling out right wing violence.”
False equivalency.
A version of that is what is happening here that Chris and I are pointing out.Report
rIt’s simply this: to the extent rising inequality is a problem (and it is, at least as I understand it), an obvious part of any solution is more companies treating the majority of their employees well. These protesters are, at root, targeting a company, and the rank and file thereof, for doing exactly that. That tells me that their notion of rising inequality and mine are extraordinarily different, and indeed directly at odds. Indeed, they’re so far at odds that I have real trouble distinguishing between their protests and people who complain about birthright citizenship.
If being concerned about rising inequality means I have to respect complaints that companies treat the majority of their employees well, then maybe I’ve been misled about what concern over rising inequality means.Report
“Protesting against gentrification is fine.”
White people leave the cities in the 70s & 80s and were blamed for all the resulting problems in the city.
White people return to the cities in the aughts and the 10s and are still blamed for everything.Report
@shazbot3 I think the more apt analogy would be to Tea Party protesters who openly carried their AR-15s to Tea Party protests.Report
@kolohe Yup i’m fine with people protesting whatever the hell they want. Doesn’t mean i agree or don’t think they are wrong. Just a free speech thing.
White flight from cities in the 50’s and 60’s gets a bit too much blame for problems in the cities. There is far more to it than that. My admittedly distant understanding of the people being pushed out by gentrification in SF is plenty of them are white ( they are the much derided hippies or hipsters or general weirdos).Report
That tells me that their notion of rising inequality and mine are extraordinarily different, and indeed directly at odds. Indeed, they’re so far at odds thatThat tells me that their notion of rising inequality and mine are extraordinarily different, and indeed directly at odds. Indeed, they’re so far at odds that I have real trouble distinguishing between their protests and people who complain about birthright citizenship.
Mark, tons of respect for you, but … why do you think they have a notion, of any kind, about rising inequality? I mean, you do, of course. But why do you think they do? Is the claim that they should?
What they clearly have (based on the reporting anyway) is views about gentrification in their neighborhoods, which is a consequence (maybe, anyway) of rising inequality. But they needn’t hold any developed views about advanced economic models and effective political strategies in order to feel that something is at stake when wealthy people buy up housing and drive up the cost of living in the areas where they live. The birthers were fabricating an issue out of whole cloth to (what?) express disapproval and undermine the legitimacy of a President they didn’t like.
Given that, where’s the trouble in seeing a distinction between the two groups? That’s not to say that all the behaviors exhibited by the GB protestors were justified on instrumental or moral grounds. Clearly, throwing rocks and stalking the guy at his house are wrong (from my pov). But really, I just wonder how you could begin to think they’re even comparable, let alone indistinguishable.Report
@stillwater I think you misunderstood the “birthright citizenship” reference. I’m referring to conservatives who want to eliminate birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants because they insist that immigrants are destroying their neighborhoods.Report
Losing your apartment because of rent hikes (or the building being bought and removed from the rental market) is a tangible loss. Having to live in a world where two men can get married, much less so.
and 50 years ago people who lived in all white areas suffered tangible losses when black people moved in. that doesn’t make the way they treated black newcomers acceptable.Report
@zic The elephant in the room is laws on the books about rates of pay for computer-programming jobs in CA; either $40/hour or min. salary of more then $80,000.
I’m not sure if you meant to imply otherwise, but to be clear, this is not a minimum wage for computer programmers. You can pay computer programmers $9/hour, or whatever the local minimum wage is. You won’t be able to hire any at that price, but you can legally try.
This is a minimum wage for overtime exemption. Computer programmers and systems analysts making more than this minimum do not have to be paid extra for overtime. In other words, this isn’t a special privilege for computer programmers—it’s an exemption that explicitly makes computer programmers less “protected” than other workers.Report
Why do us straight guys always assume that gay guys are secretly lusting after us?
Seriously man, have you ever seen a gay porn star? Then looked at yourself in the mirror?Report
Hey, I’m standing right here.
Gays could at least pretend I’m gay-desirable. It’s not like it would kill them.Report
There is a sub-genre called “bears”, for the record.
I mean, I’m just sayin’.Report
Bears are adorable.Report
LWA:
Are you now the spokesman for us straight guys? Why do you assume you know what all straight men think? I always wonder about folks that assume that others are watching them.Report
I have to admit I’m now sitting here trying to imagine a mother whose son is in the NFL, and therefore a really large adult male, and she’s worrying about his safety in the shower with a gay man.Report
They must be thinking of kickers.Report
Yeah, safeties should be fine.Report
I have to admit that I’m not a fan of the idea of showering with a gay man. Or, you know, any man. Or even with a woman unless we’re both into each other.
But they do make these things called shower curtains, and I think that might be the best, most cost-effective solution.Report
but the water bills!!Report
Do communal showers actually use less water? Every one I have ever seen still has one shower head per person. I struggle to identify any benefit to them.Report
I imagine the benefit is space efficiency. You can probably get 10 shower heads along a wall if you don’t partition them, but perhaps only 8 if you do. Depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, the former route might be much preferred.
Also, when I talk about “showering with other men”, I’m referring to the entire process from undressing to showering to dressing. Basically, the whole “being naked” part. While individual showers can probably be reasonably accommodated, individual dressing rooms isn’t realistic in most scenarios.Report
Vikram,
This is a joke. It is funny because a lot of teenage guys masturbate in the shower.
Supposedly, lack of curtains reduces such behavior, which takes a good deal longer than a boy really needs to clean sweat off.
(note: yes women masturbate in the shower too. how many places without shower curtains are there for women, though?)Report
Again, they make these things called towels.
Even if a dressing room is open, you can still get dressed with minimal exposure. Showers don’t give you that ability.Report
Vik,
standing close to the wall and facing it doesn’t work?
I mean, sure people can get incidental looks while you go in and out…Report
@vikram-bath
But why is minimal exposure the ideal? I mean, if people want to limit their exposure, so be it. But I think the default towards that is based on a broader, more harmful prudishness about the human body.Report
One man’s harmful prudishness is another’s protective prudishness.Report
Can you elaborate @vikram-bath ?
My point is that a societal tilt towards prudishness gives us all sorts of complexes about our own bodies, most of them harmful. People shouldn’t inherently feel ashamed of the fact that they have body parts. I’m not advocating we go full on nudist. Only that a better appreciation for the human body might mean less anxiety around the potential for nudity.Report
I’m OK if *you* get all in-touch-with-your-body by yourself over there. I just don’t think that building architectures should necessarily be designed around those priorities. I’d prefer having the option of privacy and if the people who want to be naked around each other want, then maybe there can have their own room where they can do that.
I don’t have much more of an explanation other than I like having my privacy. I’m not convinced that’s unhealthy, and even if it is, I think it’s reasonable that people should be able to choose to maintain their privacy (which is actually what I do by avoiding communal showers).Report
This whole subthread makes me long for the public baths of yore. Not.Report
@vikram-bath
If I’m a gym owner and I have the option of using X sq. ft. on a locker room with communal areas or 4X sq. ft. on a locker room with private areas, I’m going to prefer the former. Likewise if I’m a school. Our older students who change for gym/athletics do so in front of one another. I don’t know how many of them get down to their birthday suits (I’d venture to guess only the older ones who might don athletic cups or some other such equipment). I do know that the girls scramble to take advantage of the three stalls available to them because of how self-conscious they tend to be. That saddens me. While I’m sure there is a certain amount of inherent self-consciousness that accompanies adolescence, I do think we would be well-served to promote a healthier sense of one’s body… especially if we are only going to give two dozen girls just three stalls.
Some people are going to be private no matter what. Such is life. Some people are going to be exhibitionists no matter what. Such, too, is life. I am concerned about our general societal focus on making people feel like their body is naughty and that they should hide it at all costs. There is nothing inherently gross or naughty about the human body. People shouldn’t be trained to feel embarrassed about changing in front of one another. ESPECIALLY if we are going to de facto demand it in certain places.Report
I’ve shared communal showers with men. I’ve been hit on by gay men. Though never at the same time. The former was a bit weird at first but eventually became mundane. The latter never really bothered me. The only times it did was when it crossed a line that I would draw regardless of the gender of the person. Overly aggressive? Non responsive to indications of a lack of interest? Out-of-control? Those things are off-putting no matter who was doing it. And the frequency* of them happening is far, far higher with women than men in my experience.
* I’d be hard pressed to make a determination of the rate of either but would probably say women outpace gay men here, too. Again, in my personal experiences.Report
Now you’re just bragging.Report
Heh. Whatever it takes to get a free drink.Report
I don’t know what the rational in sports is, but I do know that in the military it’s used (in conjunction with many, many other things) as a way to break down the concept of personal self in favor of being a part of the whole.Report
Great. Now even the military is going commie.Report
@shazbot3
(DOWN HERE!)
“Regardless, the problems that they are upset about are real. Gentrification, loss of what made SF a great community, growing income inequality, a failure of the upper middle class to try to integrate and live with lower classes, etc.”
How can you complain about gentrification AND a refusal to integrate? Gentrification REQUIRES integration of the classes.Report
@kazzy Good catch.Report
Actually, gentrification generally results in the removal of one class from an area, even if it takes time. People can’t afford the housing costs, or the property taxes associated with higher home values, and are forced to get out, either by selling or by less savory means. It’s happened quite starkly here in parts of East Austin, where housing costs in some of those areas are now as high as they are in some of the traditionally wealthy neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods look all white, and all yuppie now. Integrated they are not.
Look, these are complex issues, with a lot of difficult choices involved. Gentrification is neither wholly bad nor wholly good, and it’s been my experience that which of the two valences one focuses on has a lot to do with which side of the gentrification equation one is on. That is, except perhaps at first when home prices are still relatively low and stores that wouldn’t have come within 2 miles of a neighborhood start moving in, the people who already lived in a neighborhood rarely find gentrification beneficial. Particularly not when they’re packing to move. You can either dismiss these problems by saying, “Eh, they’re the losers in life,” as Brandon essentially does, or you can start talking about why they happen and how we might go about dealing with them without losing some of the good things about gentrification.
Unfortunately, people with money run things, and people with money tend to be more like Brandon than me in their view of gentrification and what the winners and the losers deserve, so the conversation often doesn’t happen, or doesn’t go anywhere, until people get so angry that they start protesting Google Buses. Doubly unfortunately is that our response is to mock them because they are protesting what we (but clearly not they, on the ground) see as the wrong target. And we mock them without, in the vast majority of cases, suggesting any other course of action.Report
@chris
I agree with your general assessment of gentrification. I am of a mixed mind on it, in part because no two gentrifications are identical. It gets my goat when supposed liberals protest the arrival of a Whole Foods in Jamaica Plain (Boston) because of “what it symbolizes”, ignoring that the long-time locals welcome it because it means they, too, can indulge in overpriced gluten-free kale. Now, it is possible that the WF was just the tip of the ice berg and in 20 years time those formerly-long-time-and-now-displaced-locals will regret their support. But the condescending attitude within that particular protest made me want to shake someone.
Similarly, when a friend told me that the residents of Columbia Heights (DC) always had Southeast if they got priced out, I wanted to scream. It’s like he didn’t understand how ghettos worked.
So, I totally get what you’re saying.
I like gentrification when it involves the transformation of derelict spaces into desirable ones and has an aggregate benefit on the local community. When the abandoned building on the corner gets turned into a hip restaurant whose patrons heads to the decades-old bakery down the street for pastries afterward. And if the old lady living above it can eventually sell her condo for a huge profit and retire to Florida? Gangbusters!
I dislike gentrification when it is a more organized effort to displace people and further their exclusion from society. When city governments refuse to put money into areas until after they are gentrified, when landlords chase out long-standing tenants, when the new residents treat the older ones with disdain. That sucks. Hard.
As I understood the Google bus protests, it seemed more about symbolism and The Cause (TM) than actually making a real change. That piece of liberalism pisses me off.Report
If the people protesting the Google buses were blue color workers trying the raise their families they would deserve some sympathy; but they aren’t the folks protesting the Google buses hate middle class Americans and speak about them in condescending terms.
How many of the people protesting the Google buses are SF natives trying to raise families? Based on the pictures I’ve seen almost none. The people protesting the buses are hipster transplants who have most likely lived in the area for less than 10 years. If rents go to high it’s not like these people will end up living under a bridge, they’ll just have to live in a slightly less trendy area.
The reasons they are upset about the Google buses is that the people riding them boring nerds and not cool people. The protester hate middle class tastes (I’d bet money that most of them have spoken about people who drink mass market beer in a condescending way). Computer programmers inspire of their incomes still often have middle class tastes and it drives hipsters nuts. To hipsters living near people with middle class tastes is a fate worse than death.
The protesters don’t care about middle class America they hate middle class America.Report
@dand
(I’d bet money that most of them have spoken about people who drink mass market beer in a condescending way).
Dangit, now I’m starting to sympathize with the protestors!Report
james,
there’s a difference between not liking mass market beer and mocking anyone who does. and the mockery is part of a larger problem.Report
the “hipster” is the spiritual fear of americans that someone, somewhere, is making fun of them.Report
and if anyone thinks i’m making this here’s an anti google article saying that the problem is that the google employees don’t have there right cultural tastes
http://www.zdnet.com/culture-wars-in-san-francisco-neighborhoods-7000017228/Report
dand,
To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a joke is just a joke.Report
gentrification generally results in
Yes, but as I asked above, how does gentrification begin?Report
Often, it’s with the building of a new highway. Of some sort.Report
Generally with someone deciding to put money into a neighborhood, usually by buying property and building better homes on it, or fixing up existing homes.Report
Gentrification is what happens when White Flight has successfully ruined a community.
Edit: dangit, Kohole already made this joke.Report
“Often, it’s with the building of a new highway. Of some sort”
More often, it’s the result of tearing old ones down.Report
Gentrification begins with well-off but conventional people moving into a neighborhood because it has interesting and unusual qualities and ends when all the people who made it that way have been priced out.Report
Different causes in different cases. Many and varied causes in each case.Report
Mike Schilling gets the prize for being by the closest to the target.
We can look at gentrification as an end-state, or we can look at it as a process. Looked at as an end-state, “refusal to integrate” looks like an accurate statement. Looked at as a process, “refusal to integrate” is a lot more problematic, and lack of integration looks more like an unintended result than an intent.
Of course states are easier to think about than processes.Report
Are there any examples of neighborhoods that were in the process of gentrifying then stopped (and perhaps even ungentrified)?
It might make for a fun comparison to the gentrified ones, if we can look at one of those.Report
@jaybird this ‘stop’ you refer to happened all over the place when the housing boom collapsed.
Such neighborhoods, hell, is some places whole states, litter the map.Report
Such neighborhoods, hell, is some places whole states, litter the map.
Am I misreading this sentence if it seems to imply that the places that were gentrifying and then stopped are somehow less awesome than the places that kept on gentrifying?Report
Jaybird,
you could try Greenfield.
I think most people are missing the problem with gentrification.
The question folks are asking is “why aren’t we getting rich?”
And the ANSWER is racist policies. Often, but not always, old policies,
many off the books now.Report
And, wait, it seems like the housing bust would have resulted in housing being even *CHEAPER* in places worth gentrifying.Report
“Are there any examples of neighborhoods that were in the process of gentrifying then stopped (and perhaps even ungentrified)?
It might make for a fun comparison to the gentrified ones, if we can look at one of those.”
@jaybird
I can’t really write it up in a way that would make sense, but when I lived in Yonkers, my immediate area was trying hard to gentrify with mixed results. They overestimated demand, meaning brand new waterfront high rises were half empty. They were only able to “reclaim” a few blocks, meaning we were still surrounded by a lot of abandoned houses. The half-filled apartments couldn’t support all the new nifty restaurants, so some closed. The ones that did best were either so good that people were willing to drive through (like the one that extended out over the Hudson and had a celebrity chef involved) or the one that could cater to the long-term locals (like the sports bar I frequented). It had all the pieces that could have made it a really dynamic and truly integrated place, but for a host of reasons it didn’t quite make it. Some were bigger issues (e.g., the high rises were finished right around the time the economy collapsed) that couldn’t be avoided while others were probably the result of poor planning, poor execution, and poor understanding of the town and community.
I actually really liked living there. I loved that I could look out my window and see the Hudson Palisades. I liked that Zazzy and I could hit up the fancy restaurant for brunch. I liked that I could bring my friends to that sports bar. I enjoyed my long runs northward that took me past handshake drug deals and million dollar homes. I liked that I could find a good basketball run within walking distance. I liked that some people looked like me and some didn’t. I liked that people used the library for a whole bunch of different reasons.Report
Am I misreading this sentence if it seems to imply that the places that were gentrifying and then stopped are somehow less awesome than the places that kept on gentrifying?
There’s no value judgements on my part; just the point that stalled gentrification is probably the norm outside of a few places like Frisco and Boston.Report
I’m in a currently-gentrifying neighborhood in Dorchester, a traditionally blue collar neighborhood of Boston.
Not sure what to say about it. I like the low rents. I like the fact it is slowly becoming a “gay-borhood.” I love the two-or-three nice restaurants.
I don’t like the blue collar bar I have to walk by on my way to one of the nice neighborhoods, because I get harassed. (I rather suspect if I went inside I would get beat up.) I don’t like the young swaggering males who laugh at me and get in my face. I don’t like feeling unsafe.
I ride the subway like everybody else.Report
Dorchester? Ever read any Dennis Lehane?Report
@mike-schilling — No. Should I?Report
Mystic River is a terrific book by any measure. His earlier ones are over-the-top violent, twisty, somewhat Raymond Chandler-ish mysteries that I enjoyed, but would recommend only to people who like that sort of thing. (One of them is Gone, Baby, Gone, which you might have seen the film version of.) But the reason I brought him up is that they’re all set in Dorchester.Report
No, that is exactly (one of) the problems that people complaining about gentrifying are complaining about. There is a difference between living in the same neighborhood as X and integrating into X’s group, especially when the very act of large numbers of people moving into X’s neighborhood drives all the X’s out.
For an extreme, over the top analogy, settlers in East Jerusalem aren’t integrating with Palestinians, even though they’re living in their neighborhoods. Granted gentrification is not the same thing as that kind of settlement at all. But it shows that moving in to a neighborhood isn’t the same thing as integrating with its prior inhabitants.
Look, I probably agree with a lot of you about gentrification and policy (and it isn’t my expertise at all). I just don’t think these protests are loony or vile, in the way that AZ’s SB 1062 is vile and loony, even if the protests are based on what are arguably false beliefs about housing policy or who is responsible for such and such an aspect of inequality, or whatever.Report
Well, as long as we’re all agreed on who gets to decide what counts as sufficient integration…Report
Kazzy:
Maybe Spike Lee can answer that questions given his racist rant about white folks.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/spike-lee-amazing-rant-against-gentrification.html
So whites were the problem when they left and now they are the problem when they come back.Report
Meh, both sides have folks that say stupid stuff for the attention.Report
I’ve met people like that.Report