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
