Whereas I have much to finish on my previous series here, I decided I was in the mood to share some perspective on the supreme court's recent decision regarding race, as I recognized a very clear analogy to the situation we have regarding governmental segregation/desegregation. Most of what I want to talk about here is in a reaction to some who claim that racism is the largest part of the issue of people leaving urbanized centers/large cities for suburban locales.
I think this is fairly off the mark, in a very destructive way, and completely ignores the level of violence to people and property occuring in many decaying urban cities, especially in the midwest.
A few months ago, I bought my first "brand new" car after a few years of continuously fixing my ten year old car that was used when I first bought it. I enjoyed fixing it and the sense of ownership I had of it, but it was a beater, and had a lot of cosmetic damage, so I never particularly cared where I parked it in any parking lot. What's another dent.
But, when I bought my brand new car, I convinced myself that I didn't want it to even be slightly dinged, as I will be paying it for the next 5 years, and actually will have a lot more invested in it in terms of my time and money. I'm a realist however, and therefore know there is no such thing as perfect security, but came to decide that the further I parked my car from whatever door I would be entering, the safer my car would be, since most people seem to cluster their cars near each other and near the doors, and parking further away would keep people from scraping it while parking poorly, or opening their door hard into the side of it, but also keep my car away from people who don't really care if their car gets damaged, whom I don't have much trust in since I was once one of them before.
Of course, there is always the possibility that some helpless madman will careen into it while letting his pet hamster "take the wheel", but for all intents and purposes, my car is in the clear.
In my mind I simply only think about this in two ways: one, I like to walk even far distances, and two, I have to assume the majority whom are not disabled do not like to walk, and therefore must be somewhat lazy. Seeing how it only takes a reasonably mobile person a minute to walk to the door from further in the parking lot, I can't really imagine they park close to save time.
Now, I suppose in this analogy that I should spell out that I see the doors as whatever purpose we are attempting to acheive in our life (the choices we choose to make on our own), I see the cars clustered near the doors as a modern urban city, and I see my lonely car far out in the distance of the parking lot as my land and home in a suburban/rural area.
As I hope you'll be able to see from my analogy, race doesn't enter the picture whatsoever in terms of my choice of where to park, as it is unconsequential because everyone is a human being and operates in accordance to human psychology and human behavior regardless of their skin color. And what I'm stepping away from by parking further away is a certain psychological attitude shared by most individuals regardless of race in a clustered area about property and the respect individuals should show to the property of others, and should receive the same respect in return.
The interesting thing about the other people I see parking their car far away from the cluster is that they don't park their car right next to mine in this concrete wilderness, and I wouldn't park my car next to theirs either. I don't all of a sudden find a certain degree of trust in another individual simply because they happen to believe the same way I do in regards to parking further away. Not parking next to each other is a sign that we respect each others and our own property though.
Now, the real benefit in parking near the door is that you are closer to it. In terms of this analogy, New York City and Los Angeles and most other urban centers offer very strong benefits, especially in terms of employment opportunities and entertainment. But I don't have to live there to take part in it, it will just take me longer to get there.
But with these opportunities in an urban center comes risk. The reality is that, for their close proximity, people have not come together working together with each other to create a better community, and in my analysis that all comes down to the disrespect for property pervasive in the urban areas, this disrespect in many cases goes to its furthest extent possible, a disrespect for another person's most valuable property, theirself. Their own body, mind and spirit. This disrespect is being played out in the many murders in urban areas especially revolving around people of one race killing other people of the exact same race.
And we need to counter this disrespect in a more proactive way. We need to teach about property and respect for property within the urban centers in a new way that galvanizes a movement of respect that will allow strong communities to be formed because the people have a core ideal of trust which they can build on with each other.
I do want to point out that I am making this analogy in terms of the individual people of each society and the concept of shuffling them about based on their race, and that is a core principle here which is worth considering.
Which I mustn't forget is part of the Democratic Racism I wanted to point out in this situation. Some here would argue, in terms of the analogy, that I should be forced to park my car in the cluster on account of my race, or that people parked in the cluster should be forced to park right next to my car on the furthest reaches of the parking lot.
Neither does anything whatsoever to address the core issue of respect of my or their property, and in fact promotes the spread of the same psychological disrespect in the entire parking lot as a whole. And doing so because of race is such a falacy when you consider that I don't want any individual, regardless of their race, who shares that disrespect for property to be anywhere near my new car. We need to foster a culture of respect for each other's property, and thus each other, in order to form stronger communities in the future. I live in a suburban area wnere we do respect each others property, there are multiple races on our street, and we speak with, respect, and know each other. I think you will find examples of that throughout the US where people have come full circle and have integrated their communities out of the creation of respect for each other which is clearly missing in large parts of our urban areas.
So, until Dems realize that assigning any type of integration forcefully by methods of race, or socio-economic factors, instead of focusing on the core issue of disrespect for property, that they are in fact abusing race and thus practicing racism, they will never fix the problem which we have now. Seeing as how this devisive racism is a core plank of the party, I can't imagine any Dem politician leading the charge on this, as it has been a primary tactic of fear they use on communities in order to secure votes.
And it is very important to point out that popular music and videos have definitely tarnished the concept of personal property, and has promoted a culture of personal corruption. I don't believe in censoring, but I do believe people have to take that factor into consideration while they are attempting to teach someone about respect for property when they are absolutely absorbed in a culture of destruction.
And finally, obviously some clustered areas can boom, but when they shrink, I find it quite a mistake to blame the issue on race, as so many here have in the past few days. I definitely don't rule out that there are in fact some utopian urban areas that have actually acheived the respect for property necessary for a community to flourish though, but I think we know that forceful movement of individuals based on their race is not what created that respect.