Your right!! Thanks for speaking up. It's risky
sometimes on this thing.
--- "Greg R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, 10 Nov 2000, Barbara Lickness wrote:
>
> > I think this attitude has nothing whatsoever to do
> > with the image of Minneapolis or whats going on
> here.
> > It has everything to do with perception from
> people in
> > the suburbs who simply aren't comfortable with the
> > density in the city life and the diversity. They
> fear
> > anything that looks different than they do. Oops,
> > there I go generalizing. Sorry about that.
>
> It's the typical fear of the unknown. They've been
> fed, through a
> variaty of sources, the idea that the Inner City (da
> da dum!) is a Bad
> Place. This fear can be unlearned.
> Most of my experience with this is in the teenage
> age-group.
> This last autum I was a referee for High School
> soccer in the SE suburbs.
> One thing that struck me at most every game was the
> lack of racial
> diversity on those teams, as compared with the teams
> I played with/on back
> when I was at North. As a capper to the season, I
> got to do a playoff
> game at Rosevelt's field (Rosevelt vs. South) where
> there were more
> identifiably minority players on the field then I
> had seen in quite some
> time.
> The most effective diversity training one can have
> is to live and
> work (attend school) in diverse situations. The
> kids I officiated for
> this Fall don't seem to have that same advantage as
> those of us who grew
> up in the Inner City (da da dum). This is one
> reason why I'd like to see
> the High School athletic leagues of Mpls and StP
> start playing non-City
> teams.
>
> I had my fear of the racially-unknown worked out of
> me by
> attending the Minneapolis Public Schools. It
> started in Kindergarden,
> where we had a batch of Hmong kids who didn't speak
> english yet. Later,
> when the school I was in was reorganinzed, I
> attended a school in the
> heart of one of the poorest parts of this city. And
> finally, I myself was
> a racial minority at my high-school. Immersion
> learning, as they say in
> language classes.
> But had I grown up in the high-school of the town I
> now live in
> (South St Paul, older than chunks of Minneapolis), I
> wouldn't have. The
> largest racial/ethnic minority around here is a
> sizable Hispanic
> community. We have some Somali around, but not all
> that much yet. This
> is an o-l-d blue-collar community that saw a sizable
> immigrant influx
> during the last bout of european migration, lots of
> eastern Europe, so
> this isn't anything truely new. It is only the
> current generation and
> their parents that haven't had the same
> indoctrination as the Inner City
> folk get all the time.
>
> And those $150-220K townhomes developers love so
> much will, quite
> probably, look very different in 50-75 years. After
> the lumber has
> settled down finally, all the construction kinks
> have been worked out, and
> an addition or two slapped on, the housing stock
> will look not quite so
> Bright 'n Shiny Suburbia. In a hundred years those
> very housing tracts
> may look like those "Victorian Slums" did back in
> the '70s, targets of
> urban removal, er, renewal.
> Towns have an aging process like people do. Most
> of those 'burbs
> weren't even in existance in 1950. Some were
> villiages that once were
> surrounded by farmland, and now are begining to face
> the first twinges of
> 'urban problems' like poverty, and crime.
> I'm lucky enough to live in a town, considered a
> suburb, that has
> been in existance for over a hundred years. The
> housing stock ranges from
> the late 1800's to a new development, a small one,
> that went up two years
> ago. My own house was built in 1909, older than my
> parent's house in
> Seward (1928, if I remember right). In terms of
> diversity we've been
> through this once before, just not in the last 30
> years. We HAVE a 'poor
> section' of town. We've got housing stock that is
> falling apart from lack
> of maintinence, and enough of it to drive a
> city-sponsored redevelopment
> program.
> Some of these other suburbs have housing stock old
> enough that
> maybe half of the houses /may/ have two layers of
> shingles by now. I like
> to think of Minneapolis (and Saint Paul) as mature
> Cities. These other
> towns are still in their childhood years, though
> some are getting into
> adolesence. Adulthood is scarry, it always is.
>
> Greg Riedesel
> South St Paul
>
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