August 31, 2013

In defense of Allison Benedikt

A couple of days ago I suggested that Allison Benedikt's much-denounced manifesto "If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person" was tendentious but understandable. In many gentrifying neighborhoods, the public schools would become a lot better if, say, the lower half of private school families in wealth all switched to public schools, which would benefit the upper layer of current public school families by providing their children with better classmates. And would it be so bad for the more hard-up private school families (who could use the free tuition)? The more who make the jump with them, the better.

But, organizing collective action is always a struggle.

Here's a previous article by Benedikt that lays out her family and financial situations.
Is Waiting to Have Kids a Big Mistake? 
With a third kid on the way and a 1,100 square foot, one-bathroom Brooklyn apartment, my husband and I talk a lot about when we’ll be able to afford a home to comfortably fit our family. I’m 35, he’s almost 40, and neither of us thinks we can even begin to contemplate shelling out for a mortgage or higher rent for another five years. In the fall of 2018, all of our kids will finally be in public school, and we will have the $5,000 we pay in child care every month back in our bank account. I will be 41, my husband will be 46, and perhaps then we can start to consider a second toilet. 
Not all of that $5K will go toward a family home—to pay for preschool, we stopped contributing to our 401K years ago. So 2018 will also be the year we start paying into it again—not that we will ever be able to retire—and, hey, let’s put some away for college, shall we? 
Let me just stop you mid-eye-roll to confirm that yes: We are, by the standards of most Americans, rich. My husband and I both have steady jobs, make good salaries, and are lucky enough to be able to live in one of the most expensive cities in the world simply because we want to. As Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan wrote earlier this year, we can’t cry poor just because we don’t have a lot of money left after we’ve spent it all.

Here is the couple's New York Times wedding announcement from 2003. I would guess they just barely made the cut for making the NYT.

Having multiple children is a lot more affordable if you can find public schools with tolerable demographics, so it's perfectly understandable to try to induce other desirable demographics into public schools.

But, why the white v. white shaming language instead of the language of mutual self-interest?

It's not uncommon in Southern California to see Chinese get together and pick out a small school district to take over and remake to meet their needs. Arcadia, east of Pasadena, where my cousins went to school, is an example: a nice but nondescript suburb where the high school is now 69% Asian. Asians hate paying for private schools when they could instead take over a public school by concentrating their forces to avoid being diluted. I've never read the inside story on how the Chinese coordinate this process -- why Arcadia rather than all the similar suburbs? -- but a fly on the wall would probably hear some frank statements about whites, blacks, and Mexicans.

In contrast, white people are more likely to run than to work together the way the Chinese do. To get white people to work together, they need some kind of ideological cover story, like ... uh ... diversity! We should all agree to stop paying private school tuition and send our kids to public school in the name of diversity! (If we all say that, then we can make the honors classes at the neighborhood public school less diverse.)

Moreover, while Asian people can work together to take over Arcadia out of conscious racial self-interest, white people can only be publicly motivated to work together out of stated animus toward other white people. For example, disarming urban blacks and Latinos can be justified only as a byproduct of the War of Liberal Self-Defense Against Armed Racist Rednecks, and so forth.

Similarly, the upper level of whites with children in public schools very much want whites with children in private schools to join forces with them, but ... blunt Chinese-like statements like "We need to team up to keep our kids from being overwhelmed by all the Mexicans" are nonstarters.

Thus, among whites, everybody denounces everybody else all the time.

139 comments:

carol said...

Arcadia was already one of the better high schools before the Chinese took over, as I'm sure you know. Only San Marino was higher rated. I think they've made big inroads too, but I can see why they targeted Arcadia. Lots of apartments in that area and easier to get a foothold until buying a house.

I tend to think whites didn't work together because as the majority, they felt generic and prone to loathing each other, as the Chinese probably loathe each other in the PRC.

Anonymous said...

Steve, very peeceptive. I live in manhattan beach because i have the money. But i always wondered why whites that can not afford the west side do not move to inexpensive chinese neighborhoods like arcadia.

Anonymous said...

iSteve: the hermeneutics of contemporary liberalism.

Posts like this are the reason I come here.

Anonymous said...

I don't have a problem with what she's saying, so much as the self righteous dog whistling. Everything - EVERYTHING - she and her ilk say about public schooling is predicated on the idea that the rich are smarter and more organised and, well, care more about their childrens' futures than do the poor; that their mere presence in public schools will not only drag the average scores up, but also the overall atmosphere and values of the place.

Fine. Say so. And admit your general disdain for poor people and their values, and that you don't think they're all that smart or good at long term thinking. Don't skirt around the issue. And certainly don't write obnoxious link bait where you admit you're appallingly ignorant and castigate everyone else for not inflicting that on their own children as a sacrifice for the "greater good". Especially not when you're silent on issues that are ensuring that the "America" they're being sacrificed for probaly won't exist in 50 years time and will hate them.

Anonymous said...

Moreover, while Asian people can work together to take over Arcadia out of conscious racial self-interest, white people can only be publicly motivated to work together out of stated animus toward other white people. For example, disarming urban blacks and Latinos can be justified only as a byproduct of the War of Liberal Self-Defense Against Armed Racist Rednecks, and so forth.

Was there an actual coordinated conspiracy among the Chinese, or was it mainly a byproduct of like flocking with like? In gentrifying urban neighborhoods for example, there's not really a coordinated conspiracy among white gentrifiers to become the majority in the neighborhood. It's mainly a product of like flocking with like.

Anonymous said...

I've read some of her other personalized articles... She is special.

As for the Chinese taking over Arcadia, I don't think it was as coordinated as you suggest. With Chinese and Asians in general, these things just happen, just like it does for any race or ethnicity. You wouldn't say White flight was coordinated, would you?

Arcadia seems to be a natural move for established Chinese from Alhambra and Monterey Park. Some people move in and word spreads that it isn't too expensive, nor too far, and the schools are good.

Also, Chinese are good/natural at networking with one another.

fnn said...

I tend to think whites didn't work together because as the majority, they felt generic and prone to loathing each other...

A meeting of whites conspiring to take over a school district? The first things one thinks of are ruinous law suits,govt investigations, heavy fines and maybe federal prison time.

JayMan said...

This illustrates two interesting facets at work, in one case with Whites vis-a-vis East Asians (Chinese in this instance) and American Whites vs. other American Whites.

"It's not uncommon in Southern California to see Chinese get together and pick out a small school district to take over and remake to meet their needs...Asians hate paying for private schools when they could instead take over a public school by concentrating their forces to avoid being diluted."

"In contrast, white people are more likely to run than to work together the way the Chinese do. To get white people to work together, they need some kind of ideological cover story, like ... uh ... diversity! We should all agree to stop paying private school tuition and send our kids to public school in the name of diversity!"

This is the atomization of (Northwestern/Germanic) Europeans vs everyone else in the world, particularly the Chinese, at work. As per HBD Chick:

An HBD Summary of the Foundations of Modern Civilization | JayMan's Blog

As for the second part,

"Moreover, while Asian people can work together to take over Arcadia out of conscious racial self-interest, white people can only be publicly motivated to work together out of stated animus toward other white people. For example, disarming urban blacks and Latinos can be justified only as a byproduct of the War of Liberal Self-Defense Against Armed Racist Rednecks, and so forth."

The Yankees/blue Midlanders might view it as a defensive war, but they often historically been the aggressors against the armed racist Greater Appalachians/Deep Southerners/Tidewater folk.

A Tentative Ranking of the Clannishness of the “Founding Fathers” | JayMan's Blog
Flags of the American Nations | JayMan's Blog
Maps of the American Nations | JayMan's Blog

(Well, the Greater Appalachians were actually aligned with today's blue folks during the last "war of Northern Aggression, only to switch sides after the Yankees made them a pet project - see Sound Familiar? | JayMan's Blog, as well as after they experienced many of the other after effects of the Civil War).

One of the best things my wife and I love about being here in Maine (deep in Yankeedom) is that even in the worst case scenarios, the schools are generally pretty good. This is precisely because in most places here, my child and I would visibly contribute to the "diversity."

And thanks for the congratulations on our bundle of you! ;)

Anonymous said...

"But i always wondered why whites that can not afford the west side do not move to inexpensive chinese neighborhoods like arcadia."

I've often wondered this myself. Given that districts with large white majorities are so hard to come by these days, why don't whites look for a majority-Asian district? Whites don't have the visceral (and justifiable) fear of Asians that they do of Hispanics and especially Blacks. Their kids are no more likely to get jumped by a gang of Asians than they are by other Whites. Of course, Asians can be clannish and racist, and have other, more subtle ways to make Whites feel unwelcome. Still, small price to pay to have your kids grow up in a safe neighborhood with good schools.

anon said...

But, why the white v. white shaming language instead of the language of mutual self-interest?
because thats their whole identity. Its insane I too live in Brooklyn and my take home pay is what they spend on childcare - I make 90K a year what the hell do they do with their money I just bought a 5000k foot historic townhouse in a gentrifying neighborhood- no I would not send my kids to public school here its all black and a few particularly self hating whites whose children will hate them forever for their naivete. Im sure they chose to live somewhere like Park slope because they dont really want diversity but the illusion of it. so instead of a working class white neighborhood and or possibly Catholic school [where most kids these days will be diverse but well behaved] that was my parents solution.
Whats with the delusions of grandeur their parents are decidedly middle class they went to average schools but are desperate to appear Ivy League. while my daughter was growing up we moved to the suburbs actually Sag Harbor a old town in the Hampton s which off season was still quite Irish a wonderful school district.
But they hate whites they couldnt possibly live as an actual white suburbanite or working class Brooklynite they can only be ironically white

countenance said...

So your thesis is that Benedikt's rant was loaded self-interest on her part? You're probably right.

You ask:

But, why the white v. white shaming language instead of the language of mutual self-interest?

I answer:

Because the former comes off as high minded, broad minded and righteous and politically correct, while the latter is easily visible for what it is, pure self-interest, which is bad bad bad naughty naughty naughty. Your own theory on the 2A politics of urban SWPL applies here, that they're most likely to be "gun" victimized by Africanus Bellcurvius primarily and the young raging beta male SSRI-addled dweebs among them secondarily, but they lash out at working class rural whites because they're an easy PC target. Bashing the blacks is racist, and they can't bash the latter because the latter type reminds them too much of themselves.

About that, proof that you're right about that can be found locally here in St. Louis among young white usually liberal urban gentrifiers. Almost to a man and woman, they despise "hoosiers" (St. Louis parlance for lower-working class rough whites), even though the biggest chronic threat to their safety are blacks. They hate hoosiers mainly because of all the horror stories their parents told them as they were growing up in St. Louis's old money suburbs. The irony of them doing that is twofold: One, none of the St. Louis yuppie gentrifiers are old enough to have even seen a real St. Louis hoosier, much less experienced the now all-but-extinct hoosier culture first hand, (I'm barely old enough and well placed enough to answer yes on both counts), and two, hoosiers and their keeping the black undertow away is the reason why certain St. Louis city neighborhoods were in a good spot to be gentrified by the people who hate hoosiers so much.

The long and short of that is that, you're right, urban liberal white people will manifest their fear of protected classes on working/lower class whites.

Anonymous said...

A meeting of whites conspiring to take over a school district? The first things one thinks of are ruinous law suits,govt investigations, heavy fines and maybe federal prison time.

Even the most pathetic attempts, such as an elderly guy trying to get a dozen or so whites to move in with him into a town in the middle of nowhere gets slammed with negative attention from the media and political organizations:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/us/white-supremacists-plan-angers-a-north-dakota-town.html

Most ordinary whites probably couldn't care less that some guy wants to live in the middle of nowhere with whites. But it's a minority of people in the media and in these activist organizations that care and stir people up to care, mainly white urban liberals who are a minority of the white population.

William said...

Sorry, Steve, but this was the kind of reasoning that underpinned busing. Black children would almost certainly do better in classes that had more white children, but at the cost of poorer education for those white children. Similarly, intelligent, well-educated parents who send their children to public schools will end by increasing the quality of those schools, but at the cost of providing their children with a poorer education than they would have received at a private school.

Mike said...

She could choose to move to a Dallas suburb. For the rent she pays in Brooklyn she would pay less on a mortgage for a four bedroom house in the suburbs of Plano or Allen.

This would help with her retirement too.

Moving to some place like Dallas would be taking responsibility for her situation.

Instead she wants to try and shame others into sending their kids to crappy schools? Forget that. Not only for all the reasons cited by Anonymous at 2:12pm, but also because there is little hope for wresting control of the school districts away from the leftists that consider it their birthright to run such organizations. Let alone having any influence with all the Federal oversight of local school districts.

Anonymous said...

Moving to some place like Dallas would be taking responsibility for her situation.

I believe both are online writers, so what's stopping them? Probably self-absorbed SWPL pride.

Perspective said...

Anonymous said:
"I've often wondered this myself. Given that districts with large white majorities are so hard to come by these days, why don't whites look for a majority-Asian district?"

Probably for the same reason every other group congregates together: tribal instincts.

Steve Sailer said...

"Moving to some place like Dallas would be taking responsibility for her situation."

"I believe both are online writers, so what's stopping them?"

Funny how this whole Information Superhighway-Live Anywhere thing hasn't quite worked out as promised.

Anonymous said...

As for the Chinese taking over Arcadia, I don't think it was as coordinated as you suggest .... Also, Chinese are good/natural at networking with one another.



One of these things can be true, but not both.

Cail Corishev said...

"But i always wondered why whites that can not afford the west side do not move to inexpensive chinese neighborhoods like arcadia."


I always wonder why they don't get out of the city altogether, and live in a small town where people don't need to lock their doors, the cost of living is a fraction of what they're used to, and going to school still sucks but at least isn't a mortal danger.

Then I remind myself to shut up and just be glad they don't.

countenance said...

Sailer writes:

Funny how this whole Information Superhighway-Live Anywhere thing hasn't quite worked out as promised.

I respond:

Awhile back, and I can't remember where, I read a pretty long piece that the ISH hasn't done what they thought it would do, and that is, turn every place into every place else, but what it has really done is turn every place into more like itself. Whatever reputation the place had before the ISH came along, it got it in spades almost to the point of ridiculousness in some cases after.

Mike said...

Moreover, while Asian people can work together to take over Arcadia out of conscious racial self-interest...

We have some nice elementary schools here in Dallas. But getting the whites together to take over an entire high school cluster would be impossible. Barefoot Sanders may be dead, but there are a number of judges waiting for the opportunity to have the same level of personal glory.

Anonymous said...

A better way of keeping one's kids from having to go to school with a bunch of poor Mexicans is to stop letting so many poor Mexicans immigrate here.

Anonymous said...

One of these things can be true, but not both.

Just because members of a group communicate and helps one another, doesn't mean they do everything together.

Steve Sailer said...

You might think, but then thinking is suspect these days.

dearieme said...

Someone should cheer her up by explaining that how her children turn out will depend more on their genetics than on their school.

Anonymous said...

"Thus, among whites, everybody denounces everybody else all the time."

White Liberals are like rich people who wanna be rich but sound egalitarian.

And this may be why conservatism lost the urban rich.

Urban rich wanna be rich but sound compassionate and cultured.
But conservatism was all about rich happy being rich and materialistic, like Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh. That is so boorish and low class, no matter how rich you are.

But the New Liberalism offered the urban gentry a means to sound 'progressive' and 'compassionate' while offering more opportunities and means--via section 8 housing, gentrification, aristocratization of liberalism via 'gay rights', and globalism--to become fabulously rich.

Maybe the problem with white people is the underlying principles of Christianity. Most people are not political but socio-cultural, and social values are determined by the underlying cultural concepts of a civilization.
As Christianity is the basis of Western values, even non-political whites(who are either Christian or Christian-influenced-even-if-secular) feel a certain degree of universalism and egalitarianism.

But Chinese have a different underlying value system that focuses on their unique culture and Confucianism that stresses family and education. As such, even apart from political considerations and affiliations, Chinese are less likely to feel that they have to live up to any higher values outside Chineseness.

So, the problem among whites may be deeper than political or ideological. It could be socio-cultural. With Christian values as the underlying and defining cultural signature of the West, white folks are bound to feel that they must let go of tribal loyalties. Even though the white west in the past was very racial and tribal as well as Christian, the influence of Christian values had a gradually erosive effect on feelings tied to tribalism and nationalism.

Chinese never thought to convert the world to Chineseness, but the West did have a dream of uniting the world under Christianity. Since Christianity is supposed to unite all men, it is a culture that is essentially anti-cultural. If non-whites must lose their cultures to become Christians, then whites must lose their own cultures and tribal identities at least halfway to arrive at a common ground with all the other peoples united under Christian values.

So, when people like Buchanan defend both Christianity and white identity, they are blind to the cultural problem inherent in Christianity itself.

Anonymous said...

i would love her here responce to this. her head would probably blow up. too much truth.

Anonymous said...

http://webschoolpro.com/arcadia-high-school_CA19642611930288/school-enrollment-characteristics.html

Interesting resource

Anonymous said...

First, I'm white and live in Arcadia. It is not inexpensive to live here. There are more Asians, mostly Chinese, than anything else and more blacks than you might think. The Chinese have essentially taken over Arcadia, Alhambra, Monterey Park, Rowland Heights, San Marino and South Pasadena. San Marino is aka Chan Marino btw.

Second, the Chinese are essentially loners but with strongly shared biases which is why they "take over" a place. It just happens because of their biases. They do not like Blacks or Hispanics and tolerate whites as useful but not harmful. It is rare for Chinese and Whites to be true friends. I know; I was married to one once.

Anonymous said...

Funny how this whole Information Superhighway-Live Anywhere thing hasn't quite worked out as promised.


It's called pride. Again, "What states are there west of the miss. river" In her case as with most Jews, it's not going west of the Hudson, unless it's DC; Chi; LA or some other moneyed place of influence.

The south? The heartland? EWWWWWWW! Grits? YUCK!
They don't even have good chinese food!!!

Anonymous said...

It is not clear White people get along with each other as well as you suppose. Or even share similar values. Silicon Valley types might not get along that well with police fire types, ect.

Income is a better determinant than race. For example wealthier Asians in Queens NY seem to end up in Jewish Forest Hills rather than one of the grittier new immigrant Chinatowns.

Religion can be a common denominator, for New York Whites that means Catholic, where I see some income mixing in White areas. Religious Jews in NY seem to live in income mixed areas.

Anonymous said...

"disarming urban blacks and Latinos can be justified only as a byproduct of the War of Liberal Self-Defense Against Armed Racist Rednecks"

I'm going to use that one!

Daniel said...

Some whites do have a plan (Bloomberg). But he is so rich and liberal that he is impervious to criticism. Other will have to learn to be adroit and subtle.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/hoboken_ethnic_cleanse_alcBUQXgjmVkUW5Ww0UycL

Dutch Boy said...

Chinese are an ethnic group, whites are not.

Anonymous said...

One of the best things my wife and I love about being here in Maine (deep in Yankeedom) is that even in the worst case scenarios, the schools are generally pretty good. This is precisely because in most places here, my child and I would visibly contribute to the "diversity."

A close friend of mine lives in Maine with her husband, who teaches at a junior high school. The latter criticized his school's administration on the grounds that the "Merry Christmas" sign at the school was insufficiently inclusive of the town's Somali Muslim refugee population.

It's quite frustrating to think that some of the regions of the country with the most favorable demographic compositions and the strongest traditions of education, work ethic, community, etc. are precisely those blue regions where open-borders multiculturalist nonsense is most espoused. New England and the Upper Midwest come to mind.

The "invite the world" ethos was once antithetical to Calvinist Yankeedom. The Pilgrims didn't even want anything to do with their fellow Englishmen, let alone Somali Muslims.

Personally, an aversion to the outside world in practice, tempered by high-minded universalism in principle, sounds pretty agreeable.

So how about "SWPLism In One Country"?

Anonymous said...

"Chinese are an ethnic group, whites are not."
White Americans are.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, but she needs to stop masking her private desires as public interest. She isn't being honest about her family's financial interest, and then implying people in a better position economically are bad people because they won't team up with her to help her out. Naked self interest disguised as public interest, the typical MSM leftist worldview.

Anonymous said...

Anon hawks this same sociological analysis every time and its always a crock. The Republican Party has never ever been the party of the louche rich. For a hundred years the GOP was the party of the upper upper crust. perhaps your grandparents waited at some of my grand parents GOP fundraisers. im sorry if they were a bit snobby but it was how the were raised. The new
Class and my grand parents class are completely distinct and really had nothing to do with each other. what liberalism did was capture the professional classes vastly expanded by the huge expansion in college attendance. College indoctrination creates made at their rich parent liberals who due to the farcical social justice sheen of new liberalism remain liberals even as they grow older and wealthier. Loud Texas oilmen and the nouveau riche were democrats for most of this nations history. I really don't understand where you get the idea that Donald Trump as the paradigmatic GOPer. It's weird and ignorant.

Anonymous said...

New York's prestigious high schools draw from all the five boroughs. That means you could have kids communing 2 hours in each direction. If, much maligned/ridiculed/parodied Long Island were to do the same, they would beat the pants off any of them. Long Island's good old neighborhood high schools rival the very elite schools of "The City" without the commute and with good sports teams. Middle class Asians are well aware of this and they flock to Great Neck, New Hyde Park, Rockville Centre, Bellmore, Merrick, Cold Spring Harbor, Manhasset and Garden City to live the suburban American Dream that the founding stock of these areas have abandoned to live as eunuchs/Hipsters in Brooklyn. There are very few neighborhoods in NYC that can rival LI in academic accomplishment, and if there are, they are probably suburban-flavored neighborhoods of Queens-historically secular Jewish Forest Hill, Douglaston, Little Neck, etc.

Maybe NYC should cut out the whole commuter school thing and force the local inhabitants to concentrate on their neighborhoods.

PS The biggest drawback of LI is the lack of good restaurants, even Italian ones, which is mid boggling considering the number of Italians - I guess they cook at home. I have a theory that LI commuters only eat fancy when they are in Manhattan when The Company is footing the bill. The best LI restaurants are all in The Hamptons area.

Anonymous said...

Historically the Civil Service patronage has been divided up in New York City by race and religious groups who try to pass their civil service positions down from one generation to the next. So you will see a surprising number of Irish cops even though Irish stopped being really important as criminals for at least a hundred years and really are more of a provocation to the lower classes than an asset these days. Jews on the other hand took ownership of the school system patronage as evidenced by Jewish leaders of the UFT since Albert Shanker. "If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You Are a Bad Person" by Mrs Benedikt could be interpreted as an attempt to keep that patronage system intact. Since defunding the Educational system is beyond ordinary mortals the only choice is not to have children or not to send them to a New York City public school. Mrs Benedikt seems very concerned about people choosing either possibility.

IMO the threat to the NYC education establishment is currently homeschooling as private school has mostly been killed off except for a few really wealthy types, but homeschooling is possible for a middle class person. A surprising number of formerly religious independent schools have been brought into the public school portfolio through conversion into Charter schools.

Woody Allen's thoughts on Albert Shankar:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Shanker#

Shanker plays the anti semitism card while Blacks play the racism card.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_teachers'_strike_of_1968#Racism_and_antisemitism

Anonymous said...

In her case as with most Jews, it's not going west of the Hudson, unless it's DC; Chi; LA or some other moneyed place of influence.

You obviously didn't click on Steve's link to Ms. Benedikt's wedding announcement. She grew up in Youngstown, OH and attended college in Ann Arbor, MI.

Anonymous said...

OT: The Porn Search Term map via the Daily Mail. Definite HBD aspects in both terms and intensity.

Anonymous said...

You obviously didn't click on Steve's link to Ms. Benedikt's wedding announcement. She grew up in Youngstown, OH and attended college in Ann Arbor, MI.


Ann Arbor? U. of Michigan? And she didnt read and learn academic stuff that would normally get you in.

Ok, then she's a wannabe. How sad. If from Youngstown she should have no qualms about moving to Huntsville or Biloxi. She could then afford that 2nd toy-dee. And a house.

Thanks for agreeing.

Anonymous said...

Somone hasn't been told that noticing patterns is raciss

guest007 said...

For those who would argue that being white (like Maine) is enough to ensure good schools need to look at the NAEP scores.

Just looking at the NAEP 8th grade math scores, Maine's whites score below the average of all whites and score below the average for whites in Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina.

Anonymous said...

If an anthropologist were to look back at everyday life in the 2000s USA, I think some of the female writers you've noted, Penelope Trunk, Katie Roiphe and Allison Benedikt would paint a more accurate picture than most males. Few men are willing to reveal themselves to such an extent and in such detail. Few men are willing to air their anxiety. I doubt Allison's husband would ever pull back the curtain as far as she does. She may not be honest, but at least she gives us lines to read between.

There was a time, not long ago, when women with their educational attainment and appearance, barring bad luck, would be living charmed lives. It looks like life is getting worse for the upper middles and lower uppers. The upper uppers are pulling even farther away. My God, imagine two college educated people having one bathroom and being short on bedrooms back in 1975 - unthinkable.

Anonymous said...

If I were Chinese I would put it bluntly: Whites have a lot of traitors among them. :)

The truth is, plenty of Whites want explicit racial consciousness but they have been shouted down by the SWPL types for 3 generations.

JayMan said...

@Anonymous:

"It's quite frustrating to think that some of the regions of the country with the most favorable demyographic compositions and the strongest traditions of education, work ethic, community, etc. are precisely those blue regions where open-borders multiculturalist nonsense is most espoused. New England and the Upper Midwest come to mind.

The 'invite the world' ethos was once antithetical to Calvinist Yankeedom. The Pilgrims didn't even want anything to do with their fellow Englishmen, let alone Somali Muslims."


This symbolizes perfectly the Yankees' transformation from the unforgiving Puritans of old:

PFA | JayMan's Blog

You might or might not be loved, but you will still always be a PFA.

Historically, Yankees were (and still remain, in many places up here) indifferent to outsiders. Absorption of the immigrants in New England was a long process for them. I think it may have only gone over with Yankees today because diversity is the current Puritan cause. Even still, as many of you have noted, unlike say the Midlanders, Yankees preach "diversity" but make the place unwelcoming to people unlike themselves.

Anonymous said...

I dunno, JayMan. Where do you live, the coast from Freeport on south to the NH border or Up the County?

For those not familiar, Maine's south coast isn't really part of the "true" Maine, but a suburb of Boston. Portland itself is as SWPL moonbat a city as exists in New England, (it's also the best eating and drinking town in the entire region). Ogunquit, south of Portland, is the new gay Mecca for the boys from the North Shore of Boston, as Provincetown is for those from the South Shore.

As a mixed-race Caribbean black, you may not be lumped in with Portland's most visible new vibrants. Somalis with the full towel were everywhere my last visit.

North and west of Portland, starting at around Gray, you're in Appalachia.

One question narrows it down, JayMan: do you have a "sled" and a "camp"?

Hacienda said...

There are ten of thousands of high schools in the USA and many thousands of them in California that are white controlled.

If you define control as who sets the agenda, then all schooling is white controlled.

Steve, quiet often, you are the most overrated, sinister blogger on the internet.

n/a said...

diversity is the current Puritan cause [. . .] Yankees preach "diversity"

Please enlighten us with a list of some of these "Yankees" who are so prominent in "preaching diversity" today.

Anonymous said...

Of course this goes beyond guns and schools. Remember that article the NYT did about the Dakota natural resource boom and how the author was wringing their hands with how all these awesome paying jobs didn't require a college degree? There was also the side story about the waitress with stupid tattoos who go hit on and how it offended her sense of propriety or some shit I don't know.

Just saying its on all fronts and this urban/rural divide is as old as Rome.

Anonymous said...

If you define control as who sets the agenda, then all schooling is white controlled.

White control of education is an illusion. At most, it's influence. But even that is meaningless, since White interest's worst enemy are other Whites?

Anonymous said...

"Ann Arbor? U. of Michigan? And she didnt read and learn academic stuff that would normally get you in."

I thought that major news organizations gave general knowledge tests to their new employees, if they hadn't distinguished themselves elsewhere. I guess she had a rabbi.

Even a dark nihilist like me, who considers most of what constitutes an education to be vain meaningless window dressing, knows that if you want to share your opinion, you must sprinkle your work with enough allusions, quotes, and novelty to make it aesthetically pleasing to the kind of people who actually do read books. Though BrainyQuote and Wikipedia sure do help make up for past indolence.

Anthony said...

White parents won't move to majority-Asian neighborhoods because then their kids would get lousy grades and not get into the right colleges. Really, the best is racially-mixed but with enough whites and Asians to keep prices high enough to keep out the dangerous riff-raff, but to allow enough peaceful riff-raff to take all the low grades.

Look at the racial breakdown of your local schools' test score. Until a school gets to where it's all disruption all the time, whites will generally score about the same whether the school is all white, or rather diverse.

Anonymous said...

Puublic schools are pretty centralized now. There are lots of state and Federal rules they have to follow. If local school boards had more autonomy this Sailer idea would make more sense.

Truth said...

""But i always wondered why whites that can not afford the west side do not move to inexpensive chinese neighborhoods like arcadia."

Two reasons:

1) they don't want their kids in remedial classes

2) The Asians collude to keep inferiors and undesirables out of the neighborhods.

I guess you could start filing civil-rights housing discrimination suits.

JayMan said...

@Anon:

I'm nearly as far up the coast as you can go, deep in the "other" state of Maine. ;)

Maine does have a fair number of Scot/Scotch-Irish, (as do the Maritimes further east). Though Appalachia (as in the Borderlanders sense) is a bit of a stretch (even though Maine and the Maritimes are physically part of Appalachia).

The SWPLs are the literal modern Puritans, remember.

That said, many northern New Engladers write off the area south of I-90/I-495. As my wife says "that's not New England." Considering how heavily suffused it is with stock that's not the original Puritan/old Scot, she has good reason.

Anonymous said...

I thought that major news organizations gave general knowledge tests to their new employees, if they hadn't distinguished themselves elsewhere. I guess she had a rabbi.

in one of her posts, she admitted she got her job through nepotism.

Anonymous said...

"I tend to think whites didn't work together because as the majority, they felt generic and prone to loathing each other, as the Chinese probably loathe each other in the PRC."

I live in China. In fact, Chinese treat foreigners substantially better than they treat each other when it comes to service.

A little OT, but this article tells the story of a German Christian family that tried to get refugee status in the U.S. because they could not homeschool their children in Germany. The Obama administration appealed a lower court's decision granting them asylum and won. The family bounced around a bit until they wound up back in Germany where their children were just taken from them in an armed raid by police on the family's home. Talk about white westerners having scorn for other white westerners...

PropagandistHacker said...

Anonymous guest007 said...

For those who would argue that being white (like Maine) is enough to ensure good schools need to look at the NAEP scores.

Just looking at the NAEP 8th grade math scores, Maine's whites score below the average of all whites and score below the average for whites in Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina.
------------------------



I don't know whether what you say is true, but if it is true, that raises an interesting idea: the whites in maine don't have to compete against nonwhites and mostly importantly immigrants taking their blue collar jobs. So they don't have to study as hard to get white collar jobs. The blue collar jobs are there for them because they don't have to compete with nonwhites for those jobs.


Anonymous said...

"Two reasons:

1) they don't want their kids in remedial classes

2) The Asians collude to keep inferiors and undesirables out of the neighborhods.

I guess you could start filing civil-rights housing discrimination suits."

How do you think blacks will mesh with people who encourage ego-death? "I am somebody"= blasphemy.

Asians like White American spontaneity and Blacks and Browns like White American civility. Asians don't immigrate to Africa and African don't immigrate to Asia and Americans don't immigrate to either, so it must be something special we have here. Eliminate the European founding stock and the whole thing crumbles.
In the tiny little place, your heart of hearts, you know it's true; Blacks would woefully miss the White culture they so denigrate, but Whites would get by just fine without Black vibrancy.

Anonymous said...

Interesting.

50 years on, all that can be said is that Brown v. Board of Education was a catastrophic mistake, as was 'bussing' and all the rest of the 'civil rights' bandwagon.

That's where the last vestige of white self interest died. Of course, just look at the Norman Rockwell pictures of black girls going to school - if you oppose that you are officially a 'nasty bastard'.People at te time predicted this outcome, byt they were widely denounced and vilified.

Mr. Anon said...

"Is Waiting to Have Kids a Big Mistake?"

For Allison Benedikt, having kids is a mistake.

Mr. Anon said...

"Steve Sailer said...

Funny how this whole Information Superhighway-Live Anywhere thing hasn't quite worked out as promised."

Probably because there is no such thing as an online cocktail party or online golf game.

Discard said...

Regarding Chinese taking over Arcadia and how they go about it: About 25 years ago, I saw six new houses going up on a short cul-de-sac off Baldwin Ave. For the uninitiated, that means living next to a major thoroughfare, not in a quiet, tree-lined neighborhood. The two story, 2000 sq ft cracker boxes were advertised on an English language sign for $720,000, an absurd amount for that location in those days. I was curious and made a point of seeing who moved in. Yep, all six houses were soon filled by Chinese.
Are Chinese really so willing to throw money around? No, rich Chinese aren't fools. They pay the price, after suitable negotiations, that is advertised in the Chinese press. The sign out front is just to scare off the Foreign Devils. True, Chinese would pay a premium for having Chinese neighbors, but not double what a house would otherwise be selling for.

Cail Corishev said...

It looks like life is getting worse for the upper middles and lower uppers. The upper uppers are pulling even farther away. My God, imagine two college educated people having one bathroom and being short on bedrooms back in 1975 - unthinkable.

That depends on whether the 1975 couple tried to live in an upper-upper neighborhood. I don't disagree that the gap is widening, but that just means it's getting stupider for the others to try to keep up with them. She says herself that they're rich enough to "live in one of the most expensive cities in the world," but she wishes they were richer so they could live even better. That's not surprising, but it's a choice they made because rubbing elbows with the right people was a high priority for them, so I don't have much sympathy. They're getting what they want, after all.

Where I live, that $5000/month that she's talking about would buy several nice houses. For that matter, she could have been getting child care for a fraction of that and had a nice house all along. But they chose, as she said, to sacrifice to live with the upper crust who are richer than them. When you do that, you're always going to struggle with envy, whether you're an upper-middle-class couple living in an upper-upper region of NYC, or living in the smallest trailer in a park where everyone else has a nice double-wide.

Unpersoned at iSteve said...

Life After Zionist Summer Camp
Allison Benedikt | June 14th, 2011

Jill said...

In East Ramapo, New York, the Orthodox Jewish Community send their children to private schools. As a community, they vote down public school budgets, vote in Orthodox Jews to the public school board who, in turn, vote to cut programs and teachers, thus keeping property taxes very low. The same school board maintains district resources for transportation, books or special education for their private schools.

http://tinyurl.com/mc9wzjo

Joe Schmoe said...

I'm white and live in the majority Asian city of Monterey Park. We don't send our boys to the local schools for two reasons. First, the local schools just aren't that good. They are "good" when your basis of comparison is the public schools in neighboring communities like East LA and Montebello, but they aren't really "good" when compared to truly excellent public schools like NYC magnet schools, Chicago's New Trier, etc.

I think this is because many of the parents in Monterey Park aren't that well-educated. They are Asian immigrant from the PRC, so education is very important to them, but they aren't doctors or engineers; most of them don't have advanced degrees, they own (or work for) small businesses -- restaurants, coffee shops, convenience stores, etc. For example, the guy who just bought the house across the street is a superintendent at an apartment complex.

In my experience, some blue-collar Asians aren't nearly as into education as their white-collar peers; while an FOB Asian immigrant engineer might be a fanatic about education who forces his kids to study 12-14 hours per day, a sizable minority of blue-collar Asians have attitudes toward education that are more like those of upper-middle class whites -- it's important but happiness is more important, my son is more into karate / violin / baseball / cars than math, and if that's what makes him happy it is OK with me so long as he keeps his grades respectable, etc.

Moreover, even when the blue-collar Asians are into education -- and some of them can be just as fanatical as well-educated Asian immigrants -- they don't really have a sense of what a "good education" is in the US context. This leaves them at the mercy of school administrators and curricula. They know that Harvard is a good school, that straight A's are important, and that their kids will need to do well in math in order to become doctors / engineers / accountants. But that's basically all they know. They have no idea whether their kids should be reading "The Stranger" by Camus, or "The Outsiders" by S.E. Hinton in the junior year of high school. This leaves them at the mercy of the local educrats, who tend to be graduates of third-rate local universities like Cal State LA and seem largely content to just collect a government paycheck and don't have a burning desire to strive for absolute academic excellence at all times.

(More below)

Joe Schmoe said...

(Continued from last comment)



The better-educated Chinese immigrants in places like San Marino, on the other hand, have a much better idea of the US educational system -- many of the first-generation immigrants have graduate degrees from US universities, and a significant minority of San Marino Chinese with young children in the San Marino schools are second-generation parents and were educated entirely in US schools (like San Marino). Also, a lot of those folks have hereditary wealth from overseas, most people in San Marino did not start out washing dishes at a Chinese restaurant and work their way up through diligence and the American Dream. Most of the San Marino Asians that I know are from wealthy families in Asia. The bottom line is that they are far more sophisticated than blue-collar Asian immigrants.

The other reason we don't send our kids to the Monterey Park schools is because we don't believe in Asian educational methods. . IMO there is a reason why Europeans invented 99% of everything that defines modernity, and the 5,000 year-old Chinese civilization invented nothing. The Europeans have a demonstrated track record of success and the Asians don't. IMO it is because the Asians believe in a meritocracy of effort, while Westerners believe in a meritocracy of results. Asians are all about rote memorization and drilling because, at least in theory, anyone who studies hard enough can memorize all of the facts needed to do well on an entrance exam, even if they aren't that bright. Americans are all about SAT scores and jocks vs. nerds because we recognize that some kids are bright and others aren't as bright. The parents of jocks know that there is no point forcing them to study math for 14 hours per day, Chinese parents have a much harder time accepting that. Also, I don't think that forcing kids to study 14 hours per day leads to the best outcomes -- see again the fact that the West invented 99% of modern technology.

2. Why don't middle-class whites move to Asian school districts?

Well, here in Los Angeles County there aren't that many middle-class whites, period. But some Hispanics choose to send their kids to majority Asian school districts because the schools are better. For example, the Monterey Park schools are about 20% Hispanic. Most of the parents tend to be blue-collar or lower-middle class second or third generation Hispanics who are well aware that Asians value education and send their kids to school in Monterey Park for this very reason.

In fact, some good friends of ours came here as illegal aliens in the 1980's and got their green cards in Reagan's amnesty. They are very, very poor. They had three kids and lived in the 250 square foot guest cottage behind my wife's parents' house for ten years so that they could send their kids to school in Monterey Park. You heard that correctly -- a family of five living in 250 square feet. The parents aren't well-educated -- the wife graduated from high school in Jalisco and the husband made it through the sixth or eighth grade in Mexico City. But they made this unbelievable sacrifice because they didn't want their kids to go to school in the ghetto. Their kids were always in remedial programs in the Monterey Park schools, but the parents were OK with that -- at least they didn't wind up in gangs or pregnant at 16.

Joe Schmoe said...

One more thought -- I do think that Asians are somewhat frightened of all-white school districts. For example, here in the San Gabriel Valley, the South Pasadena schools have been the last ones to go Asian. South Pasadena is right next to several Asian communities, but they have remained mostly white until recently. South Pasadena is a classic SWPL suburb, not wealthy but well-educated, the kind of place where every Slate writer aspires to live.

But South Pasadena has tons of cheap apartments and pretty excellent public schools, so the Asians could have taken it over if they had wanted to. My theory is that the Asians were somewhat intimidated by its cultural cohesiveness, and that is why it is the last of the local communities to go Asian.

Jonathan Silber said...

In the announcement in the NYT of the wedding of Ms. Benedikt, her mother is described as being "a computer programmer in Youngstown" without identifying any place of employment, past or present--in contrast to the description of the father.

From that I infer the mother is unemployed, and that she may not ever have worked as a computer programmer, whatever her education or training for the job.

So the mother is likely a housewife, a "stay-at-home" type,
which in the eyes of the Times and its readership is discreditable, and properly concealed in the announcement.

David said...

Steve and bullshit are like matter and antimatter. This post is an example.

Unknown said...

Anonymous #1 said:
[i]Was there an actual coordinated conspiracy among the Chinese, or was it mainly a byproduct of like flocking with like?[/i]

Anonymous #2 said:
[i]As for the Chinese taking over Arcadia, I don't think it was as coordinated as you suggest. With Chinese and Asians in general, these things just happen
......
Also, Chinese are good/natural at networking with one another.[/i]

This reminds of what a waitress answering the phone at a restaurant said to someone asking to make a reservation: "I'm sorry sir, we don't reserve tables but if you leave me your name and tell me when you're coming I can hold a table for you."

The Chinese didn't conspire, they just effectively networked and consciously acted as a coordinated group.

Hunsdon said...

Hacienda said: Steve, quiet often, you are the most overrated, sinister blogger on the internet.

Hunsdon said: Steve Sailer, silent but deadly! Oh, did you mean quite? Besides, I still think Perez Hilton is far more overrated than our host.

Svigor said...

Because the former comes off as high minded, broad minded and righteous and politically correct, while the latter is easily visible for what it is, pure self-interest, which is bad bad bad naughty naughty naughty.

Because the organs of decision-making and perception-sharing have been captured.

And this may be why conservatism lost the urban rich.

Conservatism and liberalism, the blues and greens. Wake up already. They're just two heads of the same critter. Left-liberalism and right-liberalism. Both have as aim the preservation of the status quo and the prevention of prole revolution.

"disarming urban blacks and Latinos can be justified only as a byproduct of the War of Liberal Self-Defense Against Armed Racist Rednecks"

I'm going to use that one!


There is some merit to this fear. Blacks and browns are not going to be the ones mounting any insurrections. Prole whites aren't, either, but they're a hell of a lot more likely to do so than NAMs or yellows.

Anonymous said...

Makes me think she and her husband had and are having kids because it's cool to do so, not because the streets of NY offer their kids a chance to run around like kids and play, which, I don't mind saying, is much more important to growing kids than visiting museums and every variety of restaurant in their toddlerhoods and youth.

The childcare of 5K? Oh, of course, why not have kids and see to it someone else raises them? So cool, so sophisticated. What rot.

countenance said...

Jack Hanson

SWPLs don't like the domestic oil business because they're jealous that a white man who didn't go to college is making more money in it than white people with useless college degrees. It's pure jealousy.

Anonymous said...

I have noticed in northern New Jersey, upper middle and upper class towns with great school systems, getting flooded with asians. But, it is a little different than most commentators have noticed in others parts of the country. In NJ it seems that asians are targeting towns with great high schools and don't really care fot elementary education.

In NJ, asians tend to rent houses or smaller apartment complexes that were built in the 60's-70's-80's, when the towns and the renters were originally white.

So now, asians rent an apartment/house for 4 years, take advantage of great high school systems that were built by whites over the years, and then after 4 years they leave. The property tax imputed through rents is lower, so they are obviously not paying their "fair" share. They don't add to the communities or care to integrate, just parasites exploit and move onto the next victim.

One good side effect, is that people have become more vocal about voting down developers from building new apartment and housing complexes. I am aware of a few small apartment complexes that were voted down in northern NJ over the past 2 years, and there is a good chance that keeping asians out was a reason for that.

astorian said...

It seems to me that the proper conclusion to be drawn from Alison Benedikt's column is the opposite of what she'd intended.

She's telling well-off white people "Send your kids to crappy public schools because, hey, the schools won't really hurt the kids. You're smart, your kids are smart, and they'll probably turn out fine."

In other words: Schools don't really matter!

Again, that's not what she meant to say, but it's precisely what she DID say! Schools don't matter. Smart kids from good families will do fine even if their schools suck and dumb kids from dysfunctional families will founder in great schools.

So, the next logical question is, if schools don't matter, why bother having public schools at all?

Anonymous said...



in one of her posts, she admitted she got her job through nepotism.



Aha! It's not what you know, it's WHO you know. No wonder she doesnt want to to go to Hunstville or back to Youngstown Ohio. Can't say blame her much on that one.

Guess living in the Brook's worth not having a 2nd toydee.

stari_momak said...

"Probably because there is no such thing as an online cocktail party or online golf game."

You mean World of Warcraft isn't good for networking?

Mr. Anon said...

Hey, here's one of those benefits of the kind of public education that Allison Benedikt was extolling - sex-ed for five year olds:

Obama Advocates Sex-ed for Kindergarteners

And to think that some - horrible, retrograde, neanderthal - people don't want to send their kids to public school?!

Anonymous said...

****Please enlighten us with a list of some of these "Yankees" who are so prominent in "preaching diversity" today.****

I'm really tired of the Yankee-bashing. If WASPS failed to halt demographic change in America post-1960s, so did every other white ethnic group. But for heaven's sake, Yankee WASPs gave us the 1924 Immigration Act!

The idea that current policy, or culture, is dictated by WASPs is a joke. It's like something out of Caddyshack. It has no relationship to the present reality.

Anonymous said...

"Anon hawks this same sociological analysis every time and its always a crock."

Anon who?
That's like saying 'the guy with the tie-dye t-shirt' at a Dead Concert.

PS. Your mama.

Anonymous said...

The property tax imputed through rents is lower, so they are obviously not paying their "fair" share.

I think that depends. Usually owner occupied property gets more deductions and tax breaks than rental property, so a higher tax can be indirectly passed on to the renter.

Anonymous said...

Hey question for Joe Schmoe. You said a lot about Monterey Schools.

A friend of mine sends his kids to Diamond Bar High School, supposed to be pretty good. What do you know about Diamond Bar?

n/a said...

"The SWPLs are the literal modern Puritans, remember."

I don't think anyone "remembers" that, no.

The overwhelming majority of left-leaning, aspirational urban whites have no particular connection to the Puritan settlers of New England -- no special connection culturally and certainly none genealogically.

And again: start listing by name some of the "Yankees" who are "preaching diversity" today, or admit you're just grabbing for shiny abstractions and don't actually understand what you're talking about.

Anonymous said...

Long Island's good old neighborhood high schools rival the very elite schools of "The City" without the commute and with good sports teams. Middle class Asians are well aware of this and they flock to Great Neck, New Hyde Park, Rockville Centre, Bellmore, Merrick, Cold Spring Harbor, Manhasset and Garden City to live the suburban American Dream that the founding stock of these areas have abandoned to live as eunuchs/Hipsters in Brooklyn.

Garden City is a most interesting case. It's a very prosperous community, with huge expensive homes on tree-lined streets and a very upscale shopping district. But drive south along one of the main roads, past Meadow Street which (roughly) forms Garden City's southern boundary, and within a couple hundred feet you are in a completely different world. You're now in Hempstead, which while not quite a ghetto is pretty close, vastly poorer than Garden City. Crossing Meadow Street is like crossing from the First into the Third World, both economically and demographically.

On a wider point, while the Long Island communities mentioned in the quoted material indeed have excellent schools, they also have staggeringly high property taxes. Schools are only part of it. Nassau County, in which these towns are located, has the highest paid police department in the country: all of the cops earn in the six figures, and in some cases the leftmost figure is not "1." Some towns also have their own police departments to supplement the county force. Needless to say, Garden City is one of them, though the residents probably don't mind paying the extra taxes if the cops keep the Hempstead-ites south of Meadow Street.

Peter

Anonymous said...

And again: start listing by name some of the "Yankees" who are "preaching diversity" today, or admit you're just grabbing for shiny abstractions and don't actually understand what you're talking about.

There's a handful of amateur HBD bloggers out there who've been relentlessly promoting the completely unsubstantiated claim that "preaching diversity" and contemporary liberalism in general is a "Yankee", "Puritan","Northern European", etc. thing in genes and culture.

Anonymous said...

The property tax imputed through rents is lower, so they are obviously not paying their "fair" share.

I think that depends. Usually owner occupied property gets more deductions and tax breaks than rental property, so a higher tax can be indirectly passed on to the renter.


When I originally posted this comment I mentioned that these are upper middle and upper class towns. A good portion of these taxpayers will be hit with the AMT (alternative minimum tax), and ultimately unable to deduct state, local, and property taxes.

On the other hand the asians just pay the rent for 4 years of high school, and leave. I can't speak for the taxes that the apartment operators pay, but I would not discount that fact that they may receive a different rate due to different zoning possibly due to a HUD or state mandated affordable housing requirement.

If there is one lesson to learn, it is to make sure that if any developer attempts to build affordable housing or housing tracts/apartments, you should protest or suffer property and quality of life deterioration.

Joe Schmoe said...

Anon 3:52-

Diamond Bar is a sort of an upscale version of Monterey Park. Mostly 1st generation Asian immigrants. Most of them are college educated, but in Diamond Bar -- unlike San Marino -- there are also a few blue collar Asians who have worked their way up from a cramped apartment to a McMansion. I don't know have any personal knowledge of theDiamond Bar school system, but I have heard that it is excellent. Logically speaking, it should be excellent because the residents are focused on education and are themselves better-educated than residents of similar communities like Monterey Park and Alhambra.

All of the Asian suburbs east of Los Angeles -- except for the really crappy ones like Rosemead, which is a depressing dump -- are great places to live. Most of those communities started out as middle or lower-middle-class suburbs in the 1950's, and they largely retain that character. There is zero crime within the community -- sometimes NAMs from adjacent towns will burglarize houses or shoot one another, but there is no indigenous crime in Monterey Park or Diamond Bar. The schools are good.

Most of these communities are 70% to 80% Asian, and IMO Asians tend to be great people with solid values. If you can cross the cultural divide you will really like most Asians once you get to know therm. They are great neighbors and alll-around solid people. Most of them have very middle-class attitudes and tastes, which makes them easier to relate to as people.

Asians tend to be excellent parents. Sometimes they drive their children to the point of abuse, but most of them are good people who love their kids very much and are trying to do what they believe is best for them.

Because Asians focus so much on their children, cities like Monterey Park offer some really cool activities for kids. For example, my kids take Tae Kwon Do from a 70 year-old Korean guy who never really learned to speak English all that well. He's a far better instructor than most non-Asian martial arts instructors, who tend to be UFC types or the kind of guys who never went to college and are always attending seminars taught by motivational speakers. (I was a black belt myself back in the day; please understand that I am not idolizing Asian martial artists, many of them aren't very good; I am just saying that when your kids are 8 years old, you want an old-school Korean with old-school values to teach them, not a Tony Robbins wannabe.)

Similarly, my kids' violin instructor is a TIger Mom from the PRC, an absolutely brutal slave driver. Although she attended Juilliard, she uses nothing but old-school Asian teaching methods I sent my kids to her because I wanted them to get a little exposure to that sort of thing. They attend a private school in Pasadena where everyone is very polite and gracious, so I wanted them to get a little taste of a harsh authority figure who screams at them every once in a while so that they will have an easier time dealing with difficult bosses and clients when they get older and enter the working world. It is really easy to find excellent teachers for your children in the Asian suburbs. My perception is that it would be a lot harder in the Westside, Orange County, or the IE. Diamond Bar is very similar to Monterey Park, except that it's a little nicer, so I am sure it is a great place to live.

.

Anonymous said...

One more thought -- I do think that Asians are somewhat frightened of all-white school districts.

I'm Korean and that thought never crossed my mind. I doubt it crossed my parents' mind either. In fact, for many Korean families, you could say the opposite was true. In the 70's, the area that's now known as Koreatown, was pretty much ghetto and was being gentrified by Koreans. While the area became a place new immigrants called home, families that could afford to move, eventually did. In addition to providing a safer environment, a major motivation in moving out of Koreatown was to ensure that the kids grew up to speak proper English. Since immigrant kids weren't going to get English reinforcement at home, a good school district in the burbs was essential. That was mentality at the time, anyways.

Koreans in southern California are pretty spread out. Not as spread out as Japanese, but more spread out than other Asian groups. There are many Korean hot spots (Northridge, Glendale, La Canada, Diamond Bar, Hacienda Heights, Cerritos, Irvine, Fullerton, Buena Park, Anaheim Hills, Torrance, PV, etc), but I can't think of any where they're predominant. Koreans aren't even predominant in Koreatown; never have been in terms of population. Perhaps Koreans aren't very good at "coordinating". Comparing ethnic enclave might offer a good metaphor. Korean businesses are spread out over two square miles that is Koreatown. Chinatown is only a square blocks, but everything in it is decidedly Chinese. I see this contrast all across the country.

Anonymous said...

A friend of mine sends his kids to Diamond Bar High School, supposed to be pretty good. What do you know about Diamond Bar?

It's mostly Asian, probably about two thirds. Of the 2/3's, about 2/3 are Korean and the rest are mostly Taiwanese. Great extracurricular opportunities.

Jehu said...

Universalist rhetoric disgusts me. Open slugfests about self and group interest are fine. Non-elite white people need to get with the pogrom and start openly fighting for their self-interest, and punishing, by whatever means necessary, their enemies. Ballot boxes are only the least effective means of administering punishment. Jury nullification in both civil and criminal cases is among the more effective ways of building the solidarity you need to compete as a group. But the first step is can the universalist cant, and can the speakers of it. Put the elites of your denomination on notice that they are for you or against you. Don't let them spin a web of sophistry. Make their position miserable if they don't comply. Ditto your union leaders or other institutional leaders. Most people can't stand much criticism, especially if it is visceral and nonstop. Work in shifts with those in solidarity with yourself. If nothing else, the stress you inflict on them will worsen their lives.

Drunk Idiot said...

When Ms. Benedikt wrote that going to public school allowed an otherwise upper middle class Jewish girl like her to (paraphrasing) experience the joys of slumming it up by getting getting drunk on Thunderbird, or tweakin' on meth, or huffing 87 octane, or whatever redneck means of intoxication she enjoyed (ironically, of course!) before high school basketball games with the Conservative Republican Christian white trash kids who lived in the trailer park near her house, I was pretty sure that she was just trying to come up with a cover story that explains to her Manhattan/Brooklyn media peers:

A.) that yes -- she does, in fact, come from the upper middle class

B.) why she didn't go to an elite prep school (e.g., Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville, Choate, etc.), and then on to an Ivy League school.

She screwed up by admitting that there were conservative Christians in her home town, and that the trailer park where her white trash friends lived was near her house, though. Should have at least written that it was on "the other side of town," or "on the other side of the tracks."

Anyway, reading her wedding announcement from the NYT confirmed my suspicions (and yeah, Ms. Benedikt and her contemptible man-boob of a spouse must have juuussst squeaked by the NYT cut):

Allison Lee Benedikt, a daughter of Myra and William Benedikt of Youngstown, Ohio... [It doesn't get more stereotypically Rust Belt and Midwestern blue collar than Youngstown] Ms. Benedikt, who is keeping her name, graduated from the University of Michigan... [Michigan is prestigious, but it's a fall back school for kids who didn't get into Northwestern ... which is, itself, a fall back school for kids who didn't get into one of the bottom tier Ivy League schools] Her father is the general manager of the Youngstown branch of BakeMark, a company that distributes baking ingredients and supplies... [To be sure, a good, solid, Middle America-type middle, to upper middle class career ... but something that a status-obsessed Brooklyn SWPL writer/editor might feel the need to compensate for if her friends' dads were partners at elite Manhattan law firms, or executives at investment banks, etc.] Her mother is a computer programmer in Youngstown and was until June the president of the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation... [Now we know why Ms. Benedikt's wedding announcement probably squeaked past the NYT cut: It's probably safe to say that having a mom who's a a computer programmer in Youngstown probably didn't knock 'em over in the Times building, but having a mother who's the president of the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation is probably just prestigious enough].

BTW, Ms. Benedikt didn't actually write that the conservative Christian kids with whom she went to school lived in the trailer park by her house (still can't believe she slipped up and admitted the trailer park bit). But her juxtaposition of the two groups in successive sentences leads readers to associate the two groups as being one and the same.

Must have been an accident.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
A friend of mine sends his kids to Diamond Bar High School, supposed to be pretty good. What do you know about Diamond Bar?

It's mostly Asian, probably about two thirds. Of the 2/3's, about 2/3 are Korean and the rest are mostly Taiwanese. Great extracurricular opportunities.



Yes, but Diamond Bar has one recently famous person now: US Womens Soccer national team Alex Morgan.

She attended Diamond Bar HS and graduated in 3yrs from Berkeley. Diamond Bar is ranked in CA's top 75 schools. It's an excellent school or supposed to be.

Anonymous said...

I think the GOP should use a strategy of shaming the white urban leftists as bigots against working class whites. A good example of urban liberals hatred of working class whites is songwriter Randy Newman who basically made a career attacking them.

Anonymous said...

"Perhaps Koreans aren't very good at "coordinating""

There just aren't enough Koreans to make such a difference on the local level. Practically every Korean in SoCal would have to move to one single city in order to take it over and change the schools to suit their needs.

Anonymous said...

NEWMAN!

JayMan said...

@n/a:

"The overwhelming majority of left-leaning, aspirational urban whites have no particular connection to the Puritan settlers of New England -- no special connection culturally and certainly none genealogically."

Of course, you're wrong (read Albion's Seed or American Nations). But humor us, where do you think they come from?

Anonymous said...

"Koreans aren't even predominant in Koreatown; never have been in terms of population. Perhaps Koreans aren't very good at "coordinating". Comparing ethnic enclave might offer a good metaphor. Korean businesses are spread out over two square miles that is Koreatown. Chinatown is only a square blocks, but everything in it is decidedly Chinese. I see this contrast all across the country."

Chinese are prouder and clearer in identity cuz they created their own culture.
While Koreans have their own language and are different in temperament--which is why they are crazy in all them movies--, their cultural mode was to borrow and copy. Since Koreans don't have pride of creation, the only way they can 'own' anything is to borrow something and be more fanatical about it.

So, Korean Confucianism was crazier than Chinese Confucianism. Korean Christianity is crazier than European/American Christianity. Korean communism is crazier than European communism.

In America, Koreans try to become Americanized, so Korean Americanism can be crazier than American Americanism. Koreans have stronger personalities than Chinese and Japanese, but the Korean way is to follow other cultures and make them their own by being more Other than the Other.

Just look at Psy. He tries to more Negro than the Negro.
Look at plastic surgery, which Korea leads. They wanna look more white than whites.

So, the essence of Korea town is to imitate other towns/peoples/nation that are superior. Koreans seem to have no curiosity about people/nations/cultures deemed inferior.

JayMan said...

@Anonymous 9/1/13, 4:56 PM:

"There's a handful of amateur HBD bloggers out there who've been relentlessly promoting the completely unsubstantiated claim that "preaching diversity" and contemporary liberalism in general is a "Yankee", "Puritan","Northern European", etc. thing in genes and culture.

There is no question that it is part of the culture of Northwestern Europeans today; where else in the world do you find such sentiments?

And of course, let us remember that all human behavioral traits are heritable.

You'd be wrong if you don't think that genetic differences are involved in the deep regional differences in attitudes in the U.S., (see, again, Maps of the American Nations | JayMan's Blog).

The traits of the more outbred groups – individuality, weaker in-group favoritism, etc. (see A Tentative Ranking of the Clannishness of the “Founding Fathers” | JayMan's Blog), were amenable to the current "diversity" and "inclusion" ethos. I see you and others criticizing these claims, yet I see little by way of anything disputing the evidence presented. Do you have any specific criticisms to level?

Anonymous said...

I know the neighborhood in Brooklyn she lives in. It's 'Park Slope' a very expensive area with decent public schools.

Great for her to send her kids there. But most public schools in Brooklyn are filled with violent disinterested kids from ghetto areas.

http://www.whitepages.com/name/Allison-L-Benedikt/Brooklyn-NY/4kpfi4d

Anonymous said...

@ Drunk Idiot -

The Jewish community doesn't consider being president of a small city's Jewish Federation to be very prestigious. The wealthier families in the locality who care about the Jewish Federation (not all of them) would sit on the board. Even that is of only limited prestige in s small city with a small Jewish population. I think it more likely that the announcement made the cutoff because she and her husband were professional journalists at what was then a reputable big city paper.

Anonymous said...

"I think the GOP should use a strategy of shaming the white urban leftists as bigots against working class whites."

Strategy is useless without control of media and academia.
It's like arrows are useless without the bow and bullets are useless without the gun.

Simon in London said...

Yeah, gimme a 60% white-British-non-underclass school and I'll be right there with my sprog. Hell, 30% white British but 50% middle class would do at a pinch. But as long as I have two of her Majesty's pennies to rub together I'm not sending him to be the only white British boy in his class.

realmatt said...

I hate everybody.

Anonymous said...

So you see... all you have to do is put on these "Koreans are crazy" glasses and everything about them makes sense. They are crazy. Everything they do is crazy. See what I mean?

Anonymous said...

I see you and others criticizing these claims, yet I see little by way of anything disputing the evidence presented. Do you have any specific criticisms to level?

That's because you have no evidence for your claims. Just lots of unfounded assertions.

Read n/a's blog. And read some population genetics too.

Anonymous said...

I was told by a Korean that the Chinese have moved into Alhambra, Arcadia, Monterrey Park, San Gabriel and South Pasadena because that particular block of cities is shaped like a dragon on the map and dragons, of course, are good luck.

Anonymous said...

My perception is that it would be a lot harder in the Westside, Orange County, or the IE. Diamond Bar is very similar to Monterey Park, except that it's a little nicer, so I am sure it is a great place to live.



Way way way. Hold it. Isn't Diamond Bar east enough that its part of IE? Where do you exactly consider the IE to begin? Which towns? Diamond Bar is pretty close on the edge or part of the IE, yes no?


But then to say that the West Side (where the bucks are) and Orange County (Newport) don't have the schools to match?? Come on! What about the 'bu?

If your area has the bucks, then they definitely got the schools to go with it. Never heard once of a wealthy and ultra wealthy area that does NOT also have excellent schools. They go hand in hand.

Wealthy rich area automatically mean top notch schools cause the top 5% and 1% won't accept less.

Anonymous said...

****There is no question that it is part of the culture of Northwestern Europeans today; where else in the world do you find such sentiments?****

Among Southern Italians, for example:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10265116/Italian-coast-feeling-force-of-Arab-Spring-as-1000-migrants-arrive-in-one-week.html

As I wrote at 9/1/13, 1:00PM, If WASPS failed to halt demographic change in America post-1960s, so did every other white ethnic group.

Anonymous said...

"But then to say that the West Side (where the bucks are) and Orange County (Newport) don't have the schools to match??"

Most of the West Side is within LAUSD territory, and LAUSD schools resemble each other no matter where they are located: violent, chaotic, and run poorly. There are some very wealthy neighborhoods which have horrible schools thanks to LAUSD.

JayMan said...

Anonymous 9/2/13, 9:05:

"****There is no question that it is part of the culture of Northwestern Europeans today; where else in the world do you find such sentiments?****

Among Southern Italians, for example:"


I actually like this part:

"Until two weeks ago we were sending them straight back. But two Egyptians have arrived since then, and they are going to be allowed to stay and seek asylum."

And this:

"'Some people are good about it, and want to help them,' she said. 'But others are really racist and just tell them to go home.'"

I'd bet more of those "really racist" ones come from the South of the country, and the ones who want to help the refugees more from the North.

"If WASPS failed to halt demographic change in America post-1960s, so did every other white ethnic group."

You're seriously going to tell me that every White ethnic group in America, particularly the Southern Italians you mentioned, got on well with the newcomers?

Additionally, how "other" are those "other White ethnic" groups in America today?

Anonymous said...

Most of the West Side is within LAUSD territory, and LAUSD schools resemble each other no matter where they are located: violent, chaotic, and run poorly. There are some very wealthy neighborhoods which have horrible schools thanks to LAUSD.


So then,....are you saying that these neighborhoods don't have any PRIVATE schools as another option? I assume that Bel Air, Bev Hills, the bu etc if they want something bad enough (getting their kids the best ed possible) they have options, perhaps ones not readily available to others but that they do have options.

The 1% in SoCal are no different than 1% in rest of US. The options are there.

Anonymous said...

So then,....are you saying that these neighborhoods don't have any PRIVATE schools as another option?

Exactly what from the statement "...and LAUSD schools resemble each other no matter where they are located: violent, chaotic, and run poorly. There are some very wealthy neighborhoods which have horrible schools thanks to LAUSD." do you infer that he was saying that there are no private schools? I'm actually curious.

Anonymous said...

Exactly what from the statement "...and LAUSD schools resemble each other no matter where they are located: violent, chaotic, and run poorly. There are some very wealthy neighborhoods which have horrible schools thanks to LAUSD." do you infer that he was saying that there are no private schools? I'm actually curious.



Yes, I'm sure that you are.

What he seemed to be implying was that neighborhood doesnt matter IF you are a part of the LAUSD. OBVIOUSLY, if you have the means to afford a private school then it doesnt matter, does it?

The top 1% and 5% don't have to worry about LAUSD since they don't (I would assume) don't have to send their kids to those particular public schools. They can send them someplace else including private schools.

Before we all forget so quickly, that's largely what Benedikt's column was about that this blog's dealing with; namely, that private schools DO exist as an option for parents who DONT want to send their kids to substandard schools. Seemingly, that's one reason why Ms Benedikt isn't too happy about that fact.

Question though: In wealthy areas (at least in most areas of US) the wealthy suburbs make real sure that their public district schools don't have these societal problems. Since busing isn't a threat to ruin their own applecarts, I had assumed that such wealthier districts in LA would have the same latitude. That is, that the local school district can determine and decide for themselves HOW they want "their own" public schools to be run.

Much like what some previous posters have stated regarding Diamond Bar and Monterey. THOSE school districts appear to be well run and seemingly lack the major societal problems that the LAUSD
schools have.

In most of US, local school districts determine their own public schools. That deals with quality of teaching as well as makeup. Busing doesnt really exist in the liberal sense and thus certain problems dont come up much. At least, not in the top 1% and top 5% areas. So I assumed it was the same in wealthier school districts of the LAUSD.

But that's another issue entirely.

Anonymous said...

So I assumed it was the same in wealthier school districts of the LAUSD.

In Los Angeles, even the wealtier areas have lots of mid to lower income apartment complexes as part of their high school area and there is still some voluntary busing from overcrowded schools to non overcrowded schools. Off the top of my head, the only high school area that doesn't have an abundance of mid to lower income apartments is Palisades Charter HS, and even it's about 45% NAM.

The problems with the LAUSD goes even deeper than student body demographics. It also has a difficult time attracting and retaining quality teachers. Because of union seniority, older teachers generally choose to work in the nicer areas and younger teachers are left to work at the ghetto schools. Many good young teachers don't last more than a few years, if that, before moving on to schools like Diamond Bar or changing careers altogether.

Joe Schmoe said...

I was talking about extracurricular activities. Obviously the private schools in rich neighborhoods can be just as good, or better, than any public school. But I actually think that Asian culture creates better extracurricular opportunities for children.

Suppose you live in Brentwood or Pacific Palisades and want to send your kids to karate class. Their instructor is probably gong to be the Israeli equivalent of a white guy who never went to college and is always attending seminars by motivational speakers. "Master" Golad, with his "fifth degree black belt" of...ahem... dubious provenance, is a good guy, but his Ju-Jitsu / Krav Maga / UFC school is just a business to him. If he wasn't doing that, he'd own a cell phone store, and he is still thinking about going into the import-export business with his cousin. When he originally opened the gym he envisioned it as a 1980's-style meat market filled with hot aspiring actresses, but he quickly discovered that kids are what pay the bills so he added more kids' classes.

My kids Tae Kwon Do instructor, OTOH, came to the US from Korea back in 1973 to teach kids Tae Kwon Do, and that's all he's ever done. He never gave any thought to opening up a cell phone store. The TKD school was in the ghetto originally, since he could not afford the rent in nicer neighborhoods, but he devoted everything he had to his business and still devotes everything to it.

You'll have a hard time finding people teaching children's extracurricular activities who have values like that, or devotion like that, on the Westside.

Similarly, my kids' violin instructor is a brutal slave driver from the PRC; she does not have any kids of her own, but if she did her picture would be in the dictionary under "tiger mother." Now, not everyone wants an instructor like teaching for their kids. I wouldn't ordinarily want that either, but our boys go to a private school that is mostly attended by very wealthy children. We're not rich, so I sometimes think that our kids need to be exposed to a little more adversity, because their lives aren't going to be as easy as those of many of their classmates since they do not have a family fortune to fall back on.

Anyway, on the Westside their violin instructor would probably be some nice middle-aged lady, a well-brought-up spinster who needs to teach violin to pay the property taxes on the aging condo in Brentwood that she inherited from Grandma. She's a good person, and an excellent teacher, but she's no Tiger Mom, even if she is "strict" she's not going to terrorize your kids into practicing until their fingers are sore.

Extracurricular activities are all about teaching values to children, and a lot of Asians have old-school values that make them excellent teachers. I think people like that aren't as common on the Westside; that's what I meant.

Anonymous said...

****You're seriously going to tell me that every White ethnic group in America, particularly the Southern Italians you mentioned, got on well with the newcomers?****

Yes, I would say that later white immigrant groups--Irish, Italians, Jews--certainly did more to bring about the immigration "reform" of the 1960s than WASPs. The still Yankee-dominated Republican party had just pulled off Operation Wetback under Eisenhower. It was the Teddy Kennedys and Emmanuel Cellars of the Democratic Party that pushed through the 1964 act. Their voting base was overwhelmingly white immigrant and southern (non-Yankee).

Anonymous said...

" I assume that Bel Air, Bev Hills, the bu etc if they want something bad enough (getting their kids the best ed possible) they have options, perhaps ones not readily available to others but that they do have options."

Beverly Hills has its own school district. Malibu is part of the Santa Monica school district. Both of those districts are not part of LAUSD, and are much better than LAUSD. (Not sure why Pacific Palisades is part of LAUSD rather than SMUSD.)

Few families living in wealthy LAUSD areas send their kids to LAUSD schools.

Anonymous said...

Not sure why Pacific Palisades is part of LAUSD rather than SMMUSD.

The Palisades neighborhood is part of the City of L.A. Santa Monica is its own incorporated city and Malibu is unincorporated. SaMo High is really not too different from LAUSD High Schools in wealthier areas. Santa Monica has a lot of rent control/lower income areas and over 1000 students attend Santa Monica schools, majority being HS students, on inter-district permits from LAUSD.

Anonymous said...

Few families living in wealthy LAUSD areas send their kids to LAUSD schools



Then you just made my larger point: OPTIONS DO EXIST for the 1% and 5%. They're obviously not about to squander their kids' educational futures in substandard squalor (academically speaking)

Welcome to the real world.





Santa Monica has a lot of rent control/lower income areas and over 1000 students attend Santa Monica schools, majority being HS students, on inter-district permits from LAUSD.




EWWW. Why is that? In most parts of US, the wealthier neighborhoods keep OUT the wrong sort of folks (they don't lower and keep the rents high for just that reason) They also dont allow too many new apt complexes to be built/developed in their district for that very reason.

According to figures, Malibu HS is about 83% white. Guess that's pretty good for SoCal schools. Most NAMs are Asian and hispanic even though few reside in that area. But I would guess that bu has its own private schools as well for added insurance to safeguard vs this sort of thing ('todays paradise tomorrows slum)

Anonymous said...

EWWW. Why is that?

Although Santa Monica has always had it's wealthy area (north of Montana), up until the mid 90's, the rest of SM was mostly middle class or working class with modest post-WWII era homes and apartment complexes. Since then, the entire city has been, more or less, gentrified (which started in the mid 80's) except for the rent-controlled buildings and the existing apartment complexes, which are financially prohibitive to convert or demolish (renters' rights laws). To give you an example of how much housing prices have gone up in SM, I know an older couple that purchased a modest home during the early 80's for under $150k and sold it during the boom for over a million.

Malibu High School was only opened in 1992, when the flavor of the city became less middle class and more divergent at extreme ends.

Regarding the inter-district permits, I'm not too sure, but I think originally it was a way for wealthy folks in Brentwood and Palisades to be able to send their kids to a SMMUSD school, instead of the LAUSD school that their neighborhood was drawn for due to distance. And then the program kind of took on a life of its own.

Anonymous said...

Malibu High School was only opened in 1992, when the flavor of the city became less middle class and more divergent at extreme ends.


Now come on. Malibu itself has had a reputation ever since the 20s. Most of its inhabitants, shall we say, are among the top 1%. Sperlings cost of living rate it something like over 250% above US average, mainly due to housing. Therefore, you better have it to live there. There aren't that many poor destitute folks living there. If the official census and population stats etc are to be believed, its a place where mostly the 1% live. Being "middle class" there means you're "only" in the 5%. (ex. Can't quite afford that 2nd Bentley and have to get by on a Cayenne instead)

Population's only about 12k. They like it that way. "Us four, no more."

Steve likes to talk about the small towns/cities of Marin County/silicon valley area, but in its own way, the bu is quite similar to that. A somewhat sleepy beach town area that houses some of the wealthiest citizens around. Maybe Atherton is more super zip code a la Charles Murray's list, but Malibu is certainly up there.

They just dont advertise it as loudly. Its well known. Obviously subtle. And "us four, no more."

And that's probably just the way they like it and want it to stay.

Of course, since its fairly cut off from LA proper and somewhat harder to get to easily, it should be easier to fend off any outrageous spikes in sudden population.

Anonymous said...

Now come on.

I guess I didn't make it very clear. Before Malibu HS opened, all of Malibu was zoned for SaMo HS. For some kids, this meant a 50 minute/30 mile bus ride, each way. SaMo HS was the only high school in the district. This didn't bother anyone until the demographics of SaMoHi began to change in the 80's. The solution was to make a combined Jr/senior HS out of an existing JrHS campus.

Anonymous said...

Malibu High School was only opened in 1992, when the flavor of the city became less middle class and more divergent at extreme ends.

In other words, Malibu and Santa Monica are two distinct areas, 25 miles apart separated by a piece of Los Angeles. Malibu HS was opened when the demographics changed in Santa Monica, which shared the same single high school with Malibu and Topanga.

Anonymous said...

For some kids, this meant a 50 minute/30 mile bus ride, each way


I didn't catch that. WHAT? 30 miles in only 50 minutes one way? In LA? On the freeways?? Is that possible?

Even if you don't use the freeways, 30 miles in 50 minutes? Really? In SoCal? When one of US's national long standing jokes about how bad the traffic is in LA area?

Better check that. 30 miles would probably take more like 90 minutes. Closer to 90. Especially in the morning rush hour.

No way 30 miles can be covered in 50 minutes. Friends who live in Santa Monica won't go to the beach cause it takes near 90 minutes during the day. Said they'd have to start out before 7AM. Plus they really dont like the 405.

So something as slow as a school bus? During morning rush hour? No way. Closer to 90 minutes.

Again, getting their own HS, smartest thing they could do. No ones breaking down the door to get to their school and they dont have to leave their own district. Smart.

Anonymous said...

For some kids, this meant a 50 minute/30 mile bus ride, each way.

No way. In SoCal? Traffic being what it is? During rush hour in the morning? Freeway or no freeway? Come on.

No way 50 minutes for 30 miles. More like 90 minutes for 30 miles. Especially during rush hour. And if you were to take the 405...would take forever.

Anonymous said...

Friends who live in Santa Monica won't go to the beach cause it takes near 90 minutes during the day. Said they'd have to start out before 7AM. Plus they really dont like the 405.

If your friends have to take the 405 to go to a beach in Santa Monica, they don't live in Santa Monica. If it's another beach they are trying to go to, then yes, it could take 90 minutes, but it all depends on which beach. Also, traffic difference from the 80's to today are stark, to say the least. Please use Google maps to better orient yourself to Santa Monica and Malibu before dismissing the information I'm providing.

Anonymous said...

Just thought of something. Few posts back said that Malibu is part of the SaMoSchoolDistrict. Is it still that way? Even though Malibu now has its own HS so shouldn't they have their own school district now as well?

Because if Malibu is still part of Santa Monica School District, does that mean that Santa Monica parents can decide to start sending their kids to Malibu HS in droves?

Is that what this is? Ewww.

Anonymous said...

If your friends have to take the 405 to go to a beach in Santa Monica, they don't live in Santa Monica.

Again, THEY live there. Never said I did, so whatever highway they use. They were pretty insistent that it takes a lonnnng driving time from Santa Monica to Malibu. It certainly isn't any 25 minutes unless you leave before 7AM. Rush hour? Forget about it.




Also, traffic difference from the 80's to today are stark, to say the least.


Like duh.





Please use Google maps to better orient yourself to Santa Monica and Malibu before dismissing the information I'm providing.


AGAIN, I NEVER SAID that I lived there. I have said my friends do. I have visited the area over the years. It does seem impressive, at least parts of it do. But the traffic is just....wow. When you actually see 6 lanes of bumper to bumper....wow. Even I know there is no way on earth that you could take a 25 mile commute to school in 50 minutes. No way. Unless there are a lot of shortcuts that the locals know about. But then, wouldn't other locals know about the shortcuts as well?

Thats what my friends keep telling me. Traffic is like nothing you've ever seen before. Everyone drives 90 minutes just for dinner and think nothing of it. Commutes can be brutal, to say the least.

Are they wrong? From what I saw, I think they're telling the truth.

Notice you didnt answer my other question, regarding: If Malibu is still part of Santa Monica School District, does that mean that Santa Monica area parents can decide to start sending their kids to Malibu HS? Oh boy. If that should start happening...oh boy.

Anonymous said...

Swipple Forced Busing is an idea who's time has come.

Anonymous said...

'SaMo High is really not too different from LAUSD High Schools in wealthier areas."

Not true, it's still white majority. No LAUSD school is white majority.

The interdistrict permits came about because of money. More attendance means more state money

Anonymous said...

Not true, it's still white majority. No LAUSD school is white majority.

You're wrong again.

Samohi
http://webschoolpro.com/santa-monica-high-school_CA19649801938000/school-enrollment-characteristics.html

Two LAUSD schools with higher White proportion than Samohi. There's a few more.
http://webschoolpro.com/palisades-charter-high-school_CA19647331995836/school-enrollment-characteristics.html

http://webschoolpro.com/el-camino-real-senior-high-school_CA19647331932623/school-enrollment-characteristics.html

Anonymous said...

>>>In NJ, asians tend to rent houses or smaller apartment complexes that were built in the 60's-70's-80's, when the towns and the renters were originally white.


So we agree that the asians did not create the vacuum; the whites did that - then the asians noticed it and filled it.



>>>> So now, asians rent an apartment/house for 4 years, take advantage of great high school systems that were built by whites over the years, and then after 4 years they leave.


How long did white families stay in these rentals during ==their== era.... 23 years?

If you don't like population turnovers, don't allow rentals.

Anonymous said...

>>>> So now, asians rent an apartment/house for 4 years, take advantage of great high school systems that were built by whites over the years, and then after 4 years they leave.


How long did white families stay in these rentals during ==their== era.... 23 years?


You missed it. Circa 25 yrs ago, its not clear that these apt complexes were even built yet. Small sleepy NJ towns were originally purely residential. This is a relatively new phenomenon (less than 25 yrs, perhaps as recent as 15-18yrs in some cases)





If you don't like population turnovers, don't allow rentals.



NO, if you dont like the population turnovers then dont continue to build apartment complexes and then over time slowly start to sell the "older" complexes out to business and/or real estate developers (e.g. ones who will instead build housing developments that start at mid-high six figures or lower end "mcmansions") In this way, you've basically solved the problem and the original demographics can continue as before, at least for the most part.

QED