3 ms·

Eyerolling politicized nonsense. So what if they are out in the suburbs? This weird, near-religious attitude about where people live gives off a really bad odor

by mzw_mzw 10y ago

Eyerolling politicized nonsense. So what if they are out in the suburbs? This weird, near-religious attitude about where people live gives off a really bad odor. Not to mention "isolated from the communities they impact"? What? People in the suburbs of Silicon Valley don't use iPhones? John Deere needs to be located downtown so it can relate to, uh... farmers? It's nuts. The casual accusation of racism ("harder to maintain an all-white workforce!") is really just the icing on the cake. That entire website should be deleted and "Hunter Oatman-Stanford" (what a name!) should give up writing in shame, retreat to a monastery and think long and hard about where it all went wrong.

mc32 10y ago
>The casual accusation of racism ("harder to maintain an all-white workforce!") is really just the icing on the cake The thing is, the phenomenon is pretty much world-wide, thus easy to prove/disprove. You see it in Mexico, in France, in Germany in Japan. Some of these places don't have the dreaded "Other" to dread, so they cannot have that motivation, unless the author thinks many, more or less homogenous places, are acting preemptively against a possible future Other.
- wizardforhire 10y ago
  Racism is what classism becomes. In America the two are confounded. People hate other people for a lot of reasons. All you're proving is that there is a lot of hate in this world.
  - mc32 10y ago
    So we're going in circles? The author ascribes it to racism not "people hate each other". However, I think racism is a facile explanation to trot out [perhaps even socially expected]. Also, I don't have to hate to not want to live next to you, nor do I have to hate my family if I don't want to live next to them.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  Redlining and block busting emptied out alot of prime city real estate.
  - mc32 10y ago
    I think redlining restricted minorities from the Suburbs, but didn't contribute to the growth of suburbs itself. What contributed to suburban growth, in my view was: 1) cars, cars enabled people to commute. They were not bound by walking and transit. 2) Population growth. After wwii we saw lots of growth and cities were not seen as a place to raise children --given the pollution and grime which plagued previous industry. People wanted nice affordable places to raise their kids, not tenement housing. 3) Decay. Cities were not always peaceful, clean places. They had labor unrest, grime, crime, noise, etc. and some people wanted to "graduate" to nicer places. I think redlining illustrates that not only did whites want to move to the burbs, but also minorities wanted to move out of cities(else redlining would not have existed as a tool to discriminate against their moving in) Modern cities are not the same as mid 1900s cities. They are cleaner, better run, better planned, more responsive, etc.
justinlardinois 10y ago
> People in the suburbs of Silicon Valley don't use iPhones? Agreed, I thought Cupertino was a silly example. It's actually funny that you say "suburbs of Silicon Valley," because the entire valley is suburban. Where's the urban area that Apple is supposed to move to? Downtown San Jose? If anything "the communities their products were supposed to impact" (Which are what by the way? Rich people?) are concentrated more heavily in Cupertino than anywhere else in the valley.* Aside from that, I'm sure Apple is enjoying the position that comes with literally owning half a city. Imagine getting any other city that obsessed with property values and traffic to approve the new campus. *Downtown San Jose's office spaces are criminally underoccupied, but I imagine there's not nearly enough vacancies to fill the needs of a giant like Apple. > The casual accusation of racism ("harder to maintain an all-white workforce!") is really just the icing on the cake. The article is massively oversimplifying, but it's not wrong. The mid 1900s saw southern, rural blacks move into cities and urban whites move into suburbs. You could write a book about the relationship between those two trends (and I'm sure many have) and I don't doubt that it played a part in corporations resettling as well, whether they had race in mind or not.
- BeetleB 10y ago
  >The article is massively oversimplifying, but it's not wrong. The mid 1900s saw southern, rural blacks move into cities and urban whites move into suburbs. You could write a book about the relationship between those two trends (and I'm sure many have) and I don't doubt that it played a part in corporations resettling as well, whether they had race in mind or not. The amusing thing is that in my tech suburb, we have a significantly higher population of non-whites because of the tech industry (employing many Asians). Moving a tech company to the suburbs actually increases their diversity.

by mzw_mzw 10y ago

mc32 10y ago

>The casual accusation of racism ("harder to maintain an all-white workforce!") is really just the icing on the cake The thing is, the phenomenon is pretty much world-wide, thus easy to prove/disprove. You see it in Mexico, in France, in Germany in Japan. Some of these places don't have the dreaded "Other" to dread, so they cannot have that motivation, unless the author thinks many, more or less homogenous places, are acting preemptively against a possible future Other.

wizardforhire 10y ago
Racism is what classism becomes. In America the two are confounded. People hate other people for a lot of reasons. All you're proving is that there is a lot of hate in this world.
- mc32 10y ago
  So we're going in circles? The author ascribes it to racism not "people hate each other". However, I think racism is a facile explanation to trot out [perhaps even socially expected]. Also, I don't have to hate to not want to live next to you, nor do I have to hate my family if I don't want to live next to them.
ryuker16 10y ago
Redlining and block busting emptied out alot of prime city real estate.
- mc32 10y ago
  I think redlining restricted minorities from the Suburbs, but didn't contribute to the growth of suburbs itself. What contributed to suburban growth, in my view was: 1) cars, cars enabled people to commute. They were not bound by walking and transit. 2) Population growth. After wwii we saw lots of growth and cities were not seen as a place to raise children --given the pollution and grime which plagued previous industry. People wanted nice affordable places to raise their kids, not tenement housing. 3) Decay. Cities were not always peaceful, clean places. They had labor unrest, grime, crime, noise, etc. and some people wanted to "graduate" to nicer places. I think redlining illustrates that not only did whites want to move to the burbs, but also minorities wanted to move out of cities(else redlining would not have existed as a tool to discriminate against their moving in) Modern cities are not the same as mid 1900s cities. They are cleaner, better run, better planned, more responsive, etc.

justinlardinois 10y ago

> People in the suburbs of Silicon Valley don't use iPhones? Agreed, I thought Cupertino was a silly example. It's actually funny that you say "suburbs of Silicon Valley," because the entire valley is suburban. Where's the urban area that Apple is supposed to move to? Downtown San Jose? If anything "the communities their products were supposed to impact" (Which are what by the way? Rich people?) are concentrated more heavily in Cupertino than anywhere else in the valley.* Aside from that, I'm sure Apple is enjoying the position that comes with literally owning half a city. Imagine getting any other city that obsessed with property values and traffic to approve the new campus. *Downtown San Jose's office spaces are criminally underoccupied, but I imagine there's not nearly enough vacancies to fill the needs of a giant like Apple. > The casual accusation of racism ("harder to maintain an all-white workforce!") is really just the icing on the cake. The article is massively oversimplifying, but it's not wrong. The mid 1900s saw southern, rural blacks move into cities and urban whites move into suburbs. You could write a book about the relationship between those two trends (and I'm sure many have) and I don't doubt that it played a part in corporations resettling as well, whether they had race in mind or not.

BeetleB 10y ago
>The article is massively oversimplifying, but it's not wrong. The mid 1900s saw southern, rural blacks move into cities and urban whites move into suburbs. You could write a book about the relationship between those two trends (and I'm sure many have) and I don't doubt that it played a part in corporations resettling as well, whether they had race in mind or not. The amusing thing is that in my tech suburb, we have a significantly higher population of non-whites because of the tech industry (employing many Asians). Moving a tech company to the suburbs actually increases their diversity.