(Source: countrywisher, via everyonelikedbubbahotep)
Quoting myself because it’s relevant to an argument going on on my dash…
Good post but this:
Where is it that your piece is set that there just aren’t any POC there? I mean, I’m sure there are places like that. Wherever it is that white people fly to when they take white flight comes to mind. Maybe you’re writing a story set in a gated community in the suburbs of Portland (Ranked Whitest city in the US based on census data!)
As someone who A) lives in Portland and B) has done all of her significant undergraduate research (and is currently writing her senior thesis) on racial make-up of Portland neighborhoods, “gated community in the suburbs of Portland” as a place where the white people in this city are is really, really inaccurate. First of all, there are very few (if any, I honestly don’t know of any) gated communities in the Portland metro area. Secondly, the suburbs are not where white people are flying in Portland. Like many cities, the actual inner part of the city (which used to be a ghetto for racial minorities) are being “renewed” and gentrified and taken over by wealthy white people. With every passing year, Portland PoC and working poor are pushed further outside the city. Chinatown is the middle of downtown, but actual Chinese people? Can’t afford to live there, and their community is around SE 82nd Ave, on the edge of the city.
If you look at demographic trends, Inner Portland neighborhoods are getting whiter, and Outer Portland neighborhoods (especially in East County) are becoming more diverse, and as a result, becoming stigmatized. Trendy bourgeois white people love to live downtown or on the inner East side and commonly mock the suburbs as “trashy” or “dangerous” because, guess what — the suburbs are where the poor and minorities live. They HAVE to live there, because rent downtown is fucking expensive.
We really need to stop thinking about the suburbs as a luxurious place to live within the context of metro areas. Living far away means being further away from jobs and resources, and when it’s really expensive to own a car, can mean hours on public transit to get to work or to the grocery store. The people who really NEED to live downtown, where it’s close to everything and they can walk there, can no longer afford to, because middle-upper class white want to be cool bohemians living in the trendy city and urban “renewal” projects have kicked minorities out of their historical homes.
Sorry to go on a wall of text about this, but neighborhood dynamics are what I do and there’s a really flawed perception of what it means to live in the suburbs or the city in 21st century America that needs to change. Acting like the suburbs are a place of luxury obscures the very real problems of gentrification displacing poor people and minorities from cities.
I love your comment, cleo, and I find it really interesting as someone looking for decent, affordable housing in or around Portland. After scouring several apartment rental sites, Reddit (I know, I know, nevergoonreddit), and city-data forums, I haven’t found any listings for gated communities, either, although I have found some for buildings with secure access (tenants need keycards to get in). I’m sure you can guess what the price range for such buildings is like.
Another thing I frequently encounter is people condemning the suburbs as “boring” and “soulless” and that “your friends will never want to drive out to hang with you.” lol what kind of shitty bougie friends do you have that they wouldn’t be wiling to drive 20 minutes out of the city to hang.
Gated communities are a phenomenon that is not prevalent in every part of the US. They usually exist for one of two reasons: it’s legitimately a dangerous area (yes, there are poor areas where gated communities are very common and actual poor people live in them! Gasp!) or in wealthy areas where there is a lot of anxiety about cultural change and people have a fondness for “the good old days.” Not surprisingly, the latter kind is what you’ll find in conservative regions: the south, the non-coastal mountainous parts of the west, etc. But Portland (and really the whole NW’s) culture is very much against such regimented, planned communities. I think because there’s such a “green” mentality in the NW, people don’t want to live in strict subdivisions with gates and severe rules, it’s just part of the regional attitude.
Derision of the suburbs to me definitely has a sinister tone— it places where people live as being mainly a source of entertainment or being “cool” or “hip” or “modern,” when the reality is that for marginalized people, where you live is not about those things— it’s about where you can survive. I also don’t think it’s remotely coincidental that here in PDX, people trash the suburbs now when the outer areas are becoming home to poor people and minorities. People trashed inner cities as cesspools when marginalized people still lived there. Now that cities are scene as “cool,” people trash the suburbs as boring or soulless or whatever.
(Source: moniquill)
I have so many feelings about incorrect perceptions about cities and neighborhoods, you have no idea
Quoting myself because it’s relevant to an argument going on on my dash…
Where is it that your piece is set that there just aren’t any POC there? I mean, I’m sure there are places like that. Wherever it is that white people fly to when they take white flight comes to mind. Maybe you’re writing a story set in a gated community in the suburbs of Portland (Ranked Whitest city in the US based on census data!) Maybe you’re writing a story with a very limited cast, like a family saga of a white family, or a Protagonists-vs.-nature survivalist story where there just aren’t very many people.
But even if that’s the case?
It is relevant to ask yourself why you chose to set it there.
Because this brings back the argument of ‘It wouldn’t be realistic to have POC there!’
I mean, it’s not TRUE that there were no POC in medieval Europe… But it’s a well-accepted cultural myth. And given that myth, the question still begs: Why are so many people so eager to choose to set their stories there? Why are people deliberately choosing places where the audience will accept ‘POC just don’t exist here’?
Why are the fairies in Ferngully white, when the movie is set in Australia?
Why is it that the only black people in Middle Earth are orcs?
Why are there Chinese words but no Chinese people in Firefly?
Why did Pixar make a movie set in (whitewashed) Medieval Scotland?
What’s the explanation for the overpowering whiteness of LA in Buffy The Vampire Slayer?
Why are white Disney Princesses from ahistorical fantasy-worlds, but POC princesses have to be from quasi-historical locations? Pocahontas is from Virginia. Mulan is from China. Tiana is from New Orleans. Meanwhile Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, and Aurora are from unknown and untagged Kingdoms. Ariel lives in what appears to be a Caribbean reef, but all the humans and mermaids are white. Why do the POC princesses need scaffolding to explain why they’re there? Why are the POC Princesses -not actually Princesses- (unless they marry into it, in Tiana’s case)?
The answer to all of these is, of course, ‘creator choice’. Individual TOTALLY NOT RACIST (tm) people made individual choices.
But these choices aren’t made in a void.
So, yeah. If you don’t have POC characters in a piece with a sizable cast, it’s probably pretty racist. Even if you set it somewhere where GOSH, there just AREN’T any POC and that’s not your fault! They just aren’t there!
Because why are you setting it there?
Does the story REALLY demand that? I mean, some stories do; Downton Abbey is set in WWI Era England among a particular rich, landed family; the story is kind of about how awful that place and time was. The Secret of Roan Inish is set in a remote area of Ireland that hasn’t seen immigration since the vikings stopped showing up, which is relevant because some dude decides to fuck a sealfairy because she’s a slightly different shade of white and that’s kind of a crux of the story. Both of these are good and sense-making narratives where POC are thin on the ground.
They still don’t exist in a void.
The creators chose these stories about white people as the important ones to tell.
That’s worth looking at critically.
Good post but this:
Where is it that your piece is set that there just aren’t any POC there? I mean, I’m sure there are places like that. Wherever it is that white people fly to when they take white flight comes to mind. Maybe you’re writing a story set in a gated community in the suburbs of Portland (Ranked Whitest city in the US based on census data!)
As someone who A) lives in Portland and B) has done all of her significant undergraduate research (and is currently writing her senior thesis) on racial make-up of Portland neighborhoods, “gated community in the suburbs of Portland” as a place where the white people in this city are is really, really inaccurate. First of all, there are very few (if any, I honestly don’t know of any) gated communities in the Portland metro area. Secondly, the suburbs are not where white people are flying in Portland. Like many cities, the actual inner part of the city (which used to be a ghetto for racial minorities) are being “renewed” and gentrified and taken over by wealthy white people. With every passing year, Portland PoC and working poor are pushed further outside the city. Chinatown is the middle of downtown, but actual Chinese people? Can’t afford to live there, and their community is around SE 82nd Ave, on the edge of the city.
If you look at demographic trends, Inner Portland neighborhoods are getting whiter, and Outer Portland neighborhoods (especially in East County) are becoming more diverse, and as a result, becoming stigmatized. Trendy bourgeois white people love to live downtown or on the inner East side and commonly mock the suburbs as “trashy” or “dangerous” because, guess what — the suburbs are where the poor and minorities live. They HAVE to live there, because rent downtown is fucking expensive.
We really need to stop thinking about the suburbs as a luxurious place to live within the context of metro areas. Living far away means being further away from jobs and resources, and when it’s really expensive to own a car, can mean hours on public transit to get to work or to the grocery store. The people who really NEED to live downtown, where it’s close to everything and they can walk there, can no longer afford to, because middle-upper class white want to be cool bohemians living in the trendy city and urban “renewal” projects have kicked minorities out of their historical homes.
Sorry to go on a wall of text about this, but neighborhood dynamics are what I do and there’s a really flawed perception of what it means to live in the suburbs or the city in 21st century America that needs to change. Acting like the suburbs are a place of luxury obscures the very real problems of gentrification displacing poor people and minorities from cities.
(via vegetariand0rk)
I get that, because I’m about 234243% happier when it’s a gloomy day outside. And then the sun comes out and I start pouting and suddenly the whole day is ruined. I would miss thunderstorms, though. Not that we get many fantastic thunderstorms in NJ
Thunderstorms are cool. I do miss those about Florida. But there have been maybe five or six thunderstorms in the whole nine years I’ve lived in Portland and it’s always really funny because the locals FREAK THE FUCK OUT. The local news is all, “EXTREME WEATHER HITS PORTLAND!!!!” and I’m like lol what it’s a fucking thunderstorm calm down now
also
i like how joan is picking up on all this sherlocky type trivia things so quickly
like handwriting analysis and etc.
she is every bit as smart as him, and she could easily have learned all the things he knows at this point, she just doesn’t yet because she was off doing things other than being a sherlock type person
she’s not an observer or a sidekick, she’s his equal and partner
wowww
Yeah, but I think she is also absorbing the ‘negative’ side of this job and mentality. First we have her not being present in her friends’ lives anymore (and not because Sherlock is allmighty, but because she doesn’t have time, she is working like crazy and studying).
We never saw her running anymore, drinking her healthy milkshake in the morning, dating, visiting her therapist. She even started to sleep in the sofa too! These little details show how Sherlock’s lifestyle is difficult because he is always working and aprimoring himself and explains how he is a lonely person. “It has it’s costs, learn to see the puzzle in everything” (1.03 Child Predator).
Joan is absorbing these little things too.
Oh wow, I hadn’t noticed these things, but you’re right.
re: Joan’s friends. I don’t know. They kind of seem like jerks to me? That Emily person has been shown to A) set her friend up on blind dates WITHOUT WARNING and B) judged her for her life choices and CALLED HER MOTHER as well as STAGED AN INTERVENTION (and the other friends, the couple, WENT ALONG WITH SAID INTERVENTION) about it. Honestly, if any of my friends did those things to me, I would not have been nearly as forgiving as Joan.
As for the running, healthy milkshake, seeing the therapist… we don’t really know she’s not doing those things. We just haven’t seen them, because the plots in the back half of the season have been a lot busier than they were in the early half, and screentime is at a premium.
T__T I’m sorry you have to leave that behind. Ugh I think I’d love to live in Portland the weather sounds fab tbh. I WOULD EMBRACE YOU, RAINY DAYS.
It’s really nice. Most of the year it’s just mild and gloomy with mist/light rain.
I had a philosophy professor who, when giving his lecture on Taoism, talked about how privileged we are in the Pacific NW to be so connected to the water cycle: snow-covered mountains, fog, mist, rain, rivers. Water is in this place in all its beautiful forms and we sort of flow with it. It hardly ever rains REALLY hard (thunderstorms are so rare) but it’ll often drizzle/mist all day so the rain his this sort of steadiness to it. There’s something about the air itself here that makes me feel at peace.
Also I get wicked fucking headaches from sunlight, so there’s that.
It’s chilly and it’s been raining all day. The world has been utterly gray and nearly everyone I encountered when I went out into the world complained about it, saying it was miserable. And yet, I spent every moment outside, breathing in the cool air, umbrella and hoodie keeping me dry, and thinking to myself that in about a month, I’ll leave this perfect gray-skied place where the rain makes everything on the ground a luscious green behind, and walk right into the mouth of hell, aka Miami, and it makes me really fucking sad. And kind of resentful of everyone who’s complaining about the rain, because they get to stay most likely, and I have to go.
The weeks keep passing by and I keep getting closer to leaving, and it’s as sad to me as the bright, chokingly humid sunny days I’ll have to deal with for the next six-seven years. And it’s one of many reminders that I often feel like I just don’t fit in the world the way people are supposed to fit. People are supposed to love sunshine, and socializing, and warm weather, and the beach, and sleeping at night, but my body utterly rejects all of those things.
