Diversity

I laugh when I hear white people from Montgomery County, MD, talk about how they believe in diversity. If you go into most of the middle size single family home areas in that county, you will see that the vast majority of the residents are as white as can be. I guess that's diversity. There are Hispanic neighborhoods and Black neighborhoods, but you don't see a lot of diversity, except in the condo communities, because of the cost of housing. The single family homes in the Hispanic and black neighborhoods, tend to be small, and those neighborhoods are not all that safe. Yes, that's diversity. You have economically "gated" communities to help you celebrate diversity.

Now, over here in good old College Park, Prince George's County, MD, currently majority black with a mostly black county council, we are quite diverse. At one time, College Park was all white, except for one area, Lakeland. That area is still  90% black, with a smattering of Koreans thrown in for good measure. Originally, Lakeland was the only area in College Park where blacks were allowed to live, welcome to the South, so they tend to continue to live there out of tradition, and a desire to have their own community, even though they are no longer restricted by covenants from other neighborhoods. Except for the university, most of College Park was as white redneck as they come. I found that out when I moved here. I'm from the north, and I'm not used to Southern culture to begin with;
all things considered,  I am not comfortable with Southern working class, redneck culture. It is too foreign to me being a Yankee.  Back in the old days, most of Prince George's County was majority redneck white.

Times have changed. In my neighborhood, which was mostly white redneck when I moved in, there are white families, black families, mixed race families, gay families, lesbian families, Asian families, Hispanic families, and every combination that you can think of. Why? Because, this area is reasonably affordable. Most of the people that live in my area, except for a small representation of lawyers, doctors, and other professionals, are lower middle class white collar workers, or lower middle class blue collar workers. A $250,000 single family home here, would go for over $450,000 in Montgomery County. We haven't been able to price ourselves out of celebrating diversity, by being able to keep our neighborhoods 99% upper middle class white economically gated communities.

Yes, we have Starbucks, but no Whole Foods or Trader Joe's. As a side note, I wish we had a Trader Joe's. We have an Aldi up the road in Beltsville, and if we had a Trader Joe's nearby, that would be the best of both worlds. We do have an REI Sporting Goods, and a MOM's Organic Market, and the Berwyn Heights area has a vegan coffee house and cafe, but we don't have the designer boutique shops and restaurants like they have in the next county.

Also, unlike Montgomery County, except for Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, our public schools are quite sub-standard. Despite having the University of Maryland College Park, the flagship university of the state university system, we are lacking in quality public education. Hopefully, this will change as more and more lower end professional families move into the area. You are seeing this in the Hyattsville and Mount Ranier areas, which are becoming quite gentrified. This, however, could still be offset by the fact that there are a vast majority of families that are blue collar lower middle class, and they tend not to put a high value on quality education. Those that do, send their children to either religious schools, or if they can pass the entrance exams and get a scholarship, the private schools in Montgomery County. Many families concerned with the quality of education, home school. Prince George's County, which is majority black, has the largest black educated upper middle class in the country. Most of them send their children to private school or home school. They don't sent their kids to the low quality public schools in this county. Quite a few of the black students in the Bullis School, a high-end private prep school in Potomac, MD where I teach, are scholarship students from Prince George's County. Of course, they had to pass the same entrance exams as anyone else, and there are no Affirmative Action points for race. You either can cut it or you can't. More to follow...

My Crazy Mixed Up Beliefs

.Recently, I finished reading a book by Michael Lind, called "The Radical Center." After reading his book, I can identify with most of what he talks about. I disagree with Lind on some specific details of certain issues. However, I do agree with most of his reasoning. I consider myself to be a Radical Center Conservative. I'm sure that many Liberals would consider themselves to be Radical Center Liberals. If that were the case, we could fix a lot of the problems in this country, by agreeing on 90% of most issues, and agreeing to disagree on the other 10% where we don't agree, but are willing to wortk together to reduced that 10% to about 5%.

What a  lot of it boils down to is the fact that we are not really a red America or a blue America. We are a purple America. Some of us lean more to the red side of the purple and some of us lean more toward the blue side of the purple. For example: I can't think of any conservative senior citizen that would be willing to give up their social security checks that they get each month. They may bitch and holler about handouts and entitlements, but don't you dare touch social security or medicare.

With these thoughts in mind, here are where I currently stand on certain issues. I can't name them all, because things change over the years. I'll add posts as I think of things to say...