Assignment #1

Wow, am I sheltered.

The mere week that I have been in this class has really started to open my eyes. Heck, the two articles that we had to read, as well as Aloft, smacked me in the face so hard that I feel like I have welts on my face! I always thought that I was really lucky growing up in my little ‘burb, but I have lately come to the realization that I have been walking around with my eyes pretty much closed for the past 21 years. Pathetic, I know.

White Diaspora basically describes suburban life as bland. Jurca reiterates how suburbs seem to promote, “mass production, standardization, dullness, and conformity.” Unfortunately, this appears to even include race. I could always kind of see how blah a lot of the architecture in most ‘burbs is…House after house looks exactly the same. However, I never really experienced this first hand until right before I moved out here to LA. See I grew up in Oak Park (aka the OP), the suburb that is the proud home to Frank Llyod Wright’s home and studio. So, needless to say, we most def didn’t have the boring, old cookie cutter houses. However, when I started high school, a lot of huge, overpriced condos started appearing in the most random parts of the OP. That irritated me a little, but after some of the discussions we had in class and reading this article, I am starting to see how the OP fits more and more into the nasty rep suburbs have acquired throughout the decades.

I do disagree that suburbs can suffocate one’s creativity. What does a canvas look before an artist creates a masterpiece? That’s right…It’s blank. Creativity, although can be enhanced by outside forces, comes from inside.

Now some of the facts in, “Policing the Third Border,” made me absolutely sick. I cannot believe that some communities reduced park hours and charged families with over four members admission to parks just to keep the “riff raff” out. That’s totally ridic! Everybody has the right to go to the park and shop wherever they please. If a poor person wants to spend his every last penny on Rodeo Drive and bring his family of 5 to do it, that’s his prerogative. Grrrrr!

Closing off streets is kind of nuts too. Oak Park actually kind of does this. It’s the first suburb west of Chicago. So, you can literally cross Austin Blvd. and you’re in the West side of Chi-town. Most of the Oak Park streets that intersect with Austin are cul-de-sacs so people driving around in Chicago can’t get into the OP quite as easily. Davis and Moctezuma speak of a similar situation in SoCal: South Pas shouldn’t close off streets to, “prevent drive by shootings,” and the residents on the other side shouldn’t assume that everybody who has a luxury car zooms through everywhere, running over local children. It’s so sad that everybody is constantly stereotyping each other with little-to-no evidence to even back up their generic claims.

Kind of random question…Are cul-de-sacs uber suburban?

Now all of this stuff seems to tie into race. The suburbanites who appear to want conformity are the middle-class white citizens. Those who want a little taste of suburban life are the minorities who are not as well off. These opposing forces seem to constantly be at war. You can see this in the articles with all the border issues, admission to parks, etc. It’s also clear in first part of Aloft. Jerry, like many people today, is very hung up on racial issues. He was shocked at first to discover that Hal was black because Shari looked like, “your typical Long Island white lady.” Why is she all of a sudden abnormal because she is married to a black man? It’s sad to hear how hard it was for the black families in the novel to sell their belongings. It amazes me that families did not want to pay a lot of money for a house that was previously owned by a black family. That’s so dumb. All of this is just so hard for me to swallow because I have just learned to tune out race. Being biracial (half white half black, baby!) I have never really experienced racism, so it’s something that I still just don’t get. I never really understood why some people were so stuck up on skin color, but I guess when you have constantly run into issues that are directly linked to race, it becomes difficult to just let it slide. I need to stop seeing the world through rose-colored glasses.

Hm, looks like I have been ranting for quite a while now. This is my first blog that doesn’t just consist of me whining about my lack of a love life, so I’m sorry if my thoughts are absolutely all over the place. If you got bored and skipped thorough some of my paragraphs, just take note that the basic gist of this entry was that I [sadly] have a lot to learn. I have grown up around a lot of very open-minded, non-judgmental suburbanites. After reading these three works, that sounds like an oxymoron…I promise it’s true! Lol.

I’m really excited to continue reading the novel and everything else for this class. I feel like I have already learned more in this class than an entire semester in ENGL 261 (stupid English Lit before the 1800’s). Sorry if anybody liked that stuff – those works were the bain of my existence last semester. On that note, I’m going to hush before I wrote myself into a hole. Adios, all. See you in class mañana.