City People vs. “Real Americans”: A False Dichotomy?
People occasionally ask me if I have any juicy robbery or assault stories from my three years of living in Philadelphia. I tell them all the same thing: that I feel just fine living in the city, and that I believe the vast majority of people—regardless of race, class, or ethnicity—are fundamentally incapable of serious violence. But one never knows what can happen and where. The first time I was randomly assaulted, I was idling in my car when a man kicked in my door so hard the car started to lift. It needed more than a grand in body work. The second time my assailant had the advantage of a car while I was on foot. When he failed to run me down the first time, he backed up and tried again.
It isn’t hard to imagine such bedlam in the city of brotherly love. According to a Gallup survey, only 53 percent of Americans think it is a safe place. Truthfully, I do get a little nervous walking down vacated streets at night. Not necessarily because of the two times I was attacked—those both happened in a small town in California with 4,200 people. But when I tell people how I grew up in such an idyllic place, no one asks if I’ve been shot, stabbed, robbed, or, more to the point, nearly run down by a madman in a BMW. The public image of most major cities, at least in terms of safety, has improved since Gallup started surveying national attitudes on this question in 1990. Still, only 40 percent of Americans say New York is safe, even after its dramatic drop in crime and a murder rate that is the lowest since the city began keeping reliable records in 1963.
These polls, which survey all Americans, not just those living in the 16 major cities in the questionnaire, are more reflective of the exaggerated images of inner city life that come off the Hollywood conveyor belt. Anti-hero Travis Bickle’s apocalyptic New York depicted in Martin Scorcese’s Taxi-Driver was a fiction even in the Bronx-is-burning days of the 1970s. So was the ultra-violent and ultra-laughable Death Wish, in which “the vigilante” played by Charles Bronson murders his way to justice because crime in New York is just too much to handle for the incompetent NYPD. Ditto for its recent successor, The Brave One, with Jodie Foster taking on the Bronson role after the NYPD wouldn’t bring her husband’s killer to justice.
Why do we think of cities as such cesspools? That question is too big for one web log, but it’s clear that cities have a serious image problem. Enter this year’s presidential election. You don’t exactly see any of the candidates on a major ticket bragging about their big city values. Forget Sarah Palin’s rhetoric. Listening to Barack Obama talk about his background, you’d think his values and world view were derived solely from El Dorado, Kansas (whose “small town virtues” we need to “rediscover”), not Boston, Chicago or New York. The fact that he has lived in all three of these major metropolitan areas is more of a liability than an asset in the culture war that pits the Chicago of Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright against Palin’s virtuous Wasilla, Alaska. In reality, the $27 million in federal dollars netted by Palin for tiny Wasilla would impress even the most gratuitous Chicago fat cat.
Even though these urban versus rural tactics seem to work, I can’t help but think that the Obama campaign tacked the wrong way. For someone bent on proving he’s in touch with “real Americans,” he’s sticking way too close to the cable news definition of the term — working class whites, and no one else. That’s why El Dorado, where Obama has never actually lived, makes such great theater on the theme of “real Americans.” According to the 2000 census, 94 percent of its 12,000 citizens are white, and the median income of the town is less than the national average. But why isn’t Obama expanding on this narrow conception of “real Americans?” After all, there are also 2.23 million very real Americans in Queens who speak nearly 170 languages. Many of whom are just as working class as Obama’s faux home in Kansas. Obama should emphasize the commonalities that all of these voters have, especially in terms of economic interests. He could start by calling out the Republicans for painting small towns as inherently virtuous and cities as shiftless dens of crime and corruption, creating a phony divide for political advantage.
Josh Leon is a regular contributor to Next American City.
MIkeM in NYC on Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 8:47am
Very well written piece. I think it’s funny, however, that you pit Obama against Palin, and not McCain. Is it so far gone a conclusion that he’ll die and she’ll run the country?
I come to Philly often, and don’t often feel worried - I tend to hang out just inside West Philly - but my understanding is that the murder rate is actually quite high.
Your friends want a juicy story? I was at an art gallery opening on first Friday and this girl was telling a story about how she found this nice suitcase on the street, and she thought she’d take it home. But it was really heavy, so she opened it to see what was inside and found a human body cut into pieces!
Doc Barnett in New York on Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 5:41pm
McCain is too boring for words, so we talk about Palin.
Whatever “small town values” are supposed to be I wouldn’t go looking for them in Wasilla, now largely a suburb of Anchorage and whose rapid sprawl was fueled by air and oil profits of the past decade. Palin at least grew up there, unlike so many recent Mat-Su émigrés participating in a final (and most ridiculous) wave of white flight. Who knows what motivated her parents to move there from Idaho, other than a genuine interest in moose hunting, but she of course has no connection to the American Indian populations that Wasilla and everything around it are named after.
There is nothing “small town” about 2008 Wasilla. It’s extreme suburban America and extreme suburban American values, with everything that implies for transportation and land use. They don’t deserve that cozy, sepia-toned “small town” moniker as their Chevy Suburbans bear down on an underclass with no sidewalks to take refuge upon. Are they the Real Americans? Do they have superior values to the cities they’ve long since fled, later to flee from first and second ring suburbs, and finally cut and run from the contiguous 48 altogether? Only if being a Real American means constantly running away from problems—sounds more like a Real Chicken to me. Our cities are still standing and even have drug treatment clinics and programs, for example. Meth addicted Wasilla teens have a hockey rink.
I second the call for Obama to be proud of his urban heritage (while also, necessarily, emphasizing his varied background and experience). Our cities are nothing to be ashamed of, especially compared to most alternatives.
Michelle Kuly on Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 12:31pm
I agree wholeheartedly with your column, Josh—and with your comment, Doc. I have a hard time believing that many small town Americans buy into the utopian rural picture that gets painted every time this country elects a new president. Would love to hear your thoughts on this CONFOUNDING image problem that persists for cities across the country.
Tamra on Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 4:36pm
This is yet another thing that drives me straight up the wall about presidential election politics. The audience on both sides is too big for the candidates to attempt to engage with them meaningfully, so they resort to this absurd “He’s not like you, I’m like you” business. That then degenerates into at least one candidate becoming convinced that he/she needs to conceal things about his/her background that really are value-neutral, or to fake having some subjective attribute which, in the context of being President of the United States, doesn’t matter AT ALL. It’s completely beneath the dignity of the office they’re seeking.
It reminds me of Giuliani’s display of insincere, transparently tendentious and wholly unconvincing offense when he made that crack about being “sorry” that Palin’s town wasn’t “sophisticated enough” for Obama. If (in another universe) Giuliani was campaigning against Palin for national office he would mercilessly mock her small town mayor status up, down and sideways. But, because he has an axe to grind, all of a sudden it’s noble.
I’m convinced that “real Americans” is a dog whistle code word from the class envy playbook. What politicians are saying to working class white voters is “I know it seems unfair that people in bigger cities, who have more money than you have all the influence and privileges, but don’t you worry. They’re shallow and amoral, and their permisiveness and corruption are what got us into this mess. You are The Real Americans, not them. (Mind you, we’re not going to do anything for you, just comfort yourself with the certainty of your moral superiority while we carry on ignoring your interests.)”
I think it’s a lot like the reflexive assumption that “good-looking = stupid and/or manipulative.” (Mind you, women are saddled with this far more often than men.) It’s as if we can’t bear to believe that one person or group could have more than one desirable quality, or, at the very least, really be scarcely any different from us in the ways that matter. So juvenile.
Josh Leon on Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 4:41pm
It’s hard to say, Michelle, if these tactics really work. I’m guessing they do help moblize the “values voters” in the Bush constituency. Whatever else you can say about him, Karl Rove does have his finger on the pulse of socially conservative voters. Nevertheless, it probably won’t amount to much now that the winds of change are clearly at Obama’s back. Which begs the question, why is Obama still professing his supposed “values from the Kansas heartland” (see the second sentence in his bio)? Cities are such a huge advantage for the Dems. Every last one with a population over 500,000 went for Kerry in ‘04. Thier concentrated populations make mobilization efforts much easier. Why not run with it and focus directly on thier issues?
Thank you all for the interesting discussion,
JKL
Roxie in Cincinnati on Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 12:12am
Notice the ridiculousness of Palin’s recent comments about “what she likes to call ‘real America,’” the rura; towns that are “very pro-America,” in this critical video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrnG619iCmI
Jon Stewart blasted her similarly, saying “So people in cities aren’t “real Americans??” ... “Bin Laden must be mad, thinking ‘I bombed the wrong America! You mean that wasn’t America?” It’s even more ridiculous when a VP candidate is proudly declaring it.
Roxie in Cincinnati on Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 12:15am
*rural
P.S. Be sure to read the video info there, too - it summarizes and lists some relevant points.
brook on Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 2:32pm
Wow! it is fantastic article about the city. it impressed me very much.
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Brook
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