A few readers have asked about my assertion below about the causes of the quick collapse of the Haight-Ashbury Summer of Love in 1967 ("If you're going to San Francisco / Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair" -- Johnnie Rotten's least favorite song of all time, by the way). My source was my recollection of my old Rice U. history professor Allen Matusow's 1984 book The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s. Looking it up, I see that on p. 302, Matusow writes:
Haight-Ashbury was already dying. It's demise, so similar to the demise of hippie ghettos elsewhere, resulted from official repression, black hostility, and media hype. In San Francisco where city fathers panicked at the prospect of runaway hordes descending upon them, police began routinely roughing up hippies, health officials harassed their communes, and narcotics agents infiltrated the neighborhood. Meanwhile, black hoods from the nearby Fillmore district cruised the streets, threatening rape and violence. Blacks did not like LSD, white kids pretending to be poor, or the fact that Haight-Ashbury was, in the words of a leftover beatnik, "the first segregated Bohemia I've ever seen." Longtime residents began staying home after dark. Finally, the beguiling images of Haight-Ashbury marketed by the media attracted not only an invasion of gawking tourists, but a floating population of the unstable, the psychotic, and the criminal. By the end of the year, reported crime in Haight-Ashbury included 17 murders, 100 rapes, and nearly 3,000 burglaries. In October 1967 community leaders staged a pageant called "Death of Hippie."
The most notorious criminal to prey on hippie chicks in the San Francisco Bay area in 1967 was white: Charles Manson.
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Also in Oct 1967 the appearance of the first free clinic.
As one of your commenters on the previous thread implied, we ought not understate the degeneracy of the hippies themselves. Freed from all normal constraints, 'turning on, tuning in, dropping out... Etc', the hippies themselves rapidly became Lord Of The Flies characters.
Gilbert Pinfold.
Here is a mental image: Forrest Gump's rival for the affections of his hippie chick.
I was there in 1968 and it wasn't that bad. They still hawked drugs on the street. There were blacks hanging out but they didn't hassle me except in a lighthearted way. I recall a big black woman leading an albino named Sebastian around on a leash, and a white drug dealer who wore a nice suit like a banker.
I really liked the old Victorian flats with the bare hardwood floors and bay windows. Total contrast with Socal housing tract architecture. The gays soon got ahold of all those assets.
SF was just so different from LA. I needed that change. It was fun to just walk around from one end of town to the other. But I didn't know how to make a living there.
I got bored doing Nothing, and wasn't interested in dealing or prostitution, so I went back to LA.
read karma cola by Gita Meta how they f-uped india too. (and fell for a load of BS too -the same people who sneered at televanglists fell for gurusfrauds
Haight Asbury got so overrun with opportunists in 1967 that the Grateful Dead left town. Jerry Garcia said that street life could support a small number of people living hand to mouth, but not the hordes that descended.
Also, another testament to the genius of the Grateful Dead -- while they had their share of silly lefty ideas, they kept them to themselves. They made essentially no political songs.
Charles Manson preyed on hippie chicks? Please, more like the reverse. They used him as an excuse to act out their ids. How could a seriously mentally ill juvenile delinquent have succeeded where the CIA and the KGB failed - effective mind control to the point of murder? People believe what the girls said about that menage because no one wants to believe that young pretty middle class girls could do what those girls did, but they can, and these days, they'd probably get away with it.
Donald Katz's Home Fires mentions another problem that plagued "hippie" communities: class differences. He describes an instance of how one urban commune unravelled when the mixed group of working- and middle-class students began to graduate from their various school and training programs. The former ended up doing all the dirty-work in the house, from weeding to fixing cars to cooking and minding the children, in effect becoming the servants of the middle-class graduates. Such households were not sustainable and soon collapsed, undone by resentment.
Alias Clio
"The first segregated Bohemia...."
???
Anyone who's been to the real Bohemia knows it's not exactly full of "spades". And where exactly was there ever a bi-racial American "Bohemia"?
Also, another testament to the genius of the Grateful Dead -- while they had their share of silly lefty ideas, they kept them to themselves. They made essentially no political songs.
"Throwing Stones" was a bit political, but really Weir was a Log Cabin Republican in the '80's. And I suppose Barlow wrote the lyrics anyway.
"Jack Straw" was supposedly a response to their feminist critics. "We can share the women" -- I guess that was a big F U!
But I can't think of another one.
Guys, there's no excuse for getting your ideas about hippies from books and movies. They're still around; go talk to them. This whole "I read in a book that communes fell apart because of class differences" and "I think this Grateful Dead song means this" thing is really fucking embarrassing. If you can't talk to humans USE THE INTERNET. But get your info straight from the source.
"Guys, there's no excuse for getting your ideas about hippies from books and movies. They're still around; go talk to them. This whole "I read in a book that communes fell apart because of class differences" and "I think this Grateful Dead song means this" thing is really fucking embarrassing. If you can't talk to humans USE THE INTERNET. But get your info straight from the source."
I don't understand the peevishness behind this comment. Why should the writer care where any of us gets our information? If it's because that information is inaccurate, then why not say so?
In any case, I'm old enough to have talked to real hippies (a few, anyway) back in their heyday, and have talked to rather more of them since. They're nice enough, but not exactly inclined to self-criticism, even when the results of their follies are littered around them. Not that there's anything unusual about this, of course; it's not only hippies who are guilty of it. The thing is, though, that they thought and still think, many of them, that they lived much better lives than either their elders or their juniors.
Clio
Johnnie Rotten's least favorite song
you mean Johnny Rotten
The Haight was a racially mixed area before the hippies. My landlady was black. There was a certain amount of mixing in the drug culture and the gay subculture, but not at the Fillmore or the Avalon. The Fillmore was in a black neighborhood and Bill Graham actually got the black panthers to put up posters urging their fellows not to harass the hippies. (It probably cost him.) The overall level of black on white crime was about what you would expect, fairly high. But meth was what killed the Haight. The methheads became the movers and shakers, but they were the ones who did most of the drug burns and robberies. Meth addicts turned from sweet panhandlers to aggressive, nagging panhandlers, and got physically uglier. There was a black topless karaoke bar on the street, with hot ladies doing good Aretha Franklin imitations. It was a very uncool place to go into, but sometimes people with the price of a drink would go in there anyway. Creative people with a little money and not totally consumed with drugs moved out. There were better places to be.
Arthur Lee of the L.A band Love said much the same thing about SF
"Brown Eyed Women and Red Grenadine"
is a political song by the Grateful Dead
Brown-Eyed Women has never struck me as particularly political.
Ben Tillman: Can you present any evidence that Bob Weir was/is gay?
The most political song ever in the GD repertoire is the execrable environmentalist whine "We Can Run", lyrics by John Barlow and music and vocals by Brent Mydland.
I spent a few days (maybe 10) in the Haight in summer of 1969 - I was just a kid, my family was crashing with a friend who was a musician, into drugs, etc. (we had just arrived from the East Coast)
the “hippies” (or whatever you want to call them, the young people who are grooving on the scene) were fantastic, were instant friends for life, made us feel welcome, helped us find a place to live, stored our stuff, etc. etc.
one thing I loved about the “hippies” was that they treated kids like people.
in general, the atmosphere in San Francisco in 1969 was a kind of magical, relaxed, conviviality.
But we were preyed upon ceaselessly in the Haight by feral, ferocious blacks: my little brother (circa seven), was beaten by a gang, I had all my cash grabbed in the store by another gang, the apartment where we were staying was ripped off by blacks (I saw them leaving, they were probably disappointed with the take, all of our photos of our tour of the national park system).
But we did make friends with an absolutely lovely young black girl whose mother was living with a white guy (hippie). For the crime of befriending Whitey, she was harassed and vilified to the point of violent confrontations.
My mother's comment:
“if we stay here any longer, my kids will all be racists for life.”
"Charles Manson - The Man Who Killed the Sixties".
That was the title of a TV documentary, I believe, and a great one at that.
If by the 'sixties' we mean that peculiar zeitgeist of that time, the whole Beatles, let it be, love and peace ethic - that the more naive and idealistic actually believed would change the world for the better, well the shock and disgust of Manson's deeds did singlehandedly kill it.
There are obviously a lot of great first hand accounts here. I was out in the far flung colonies devouring beat literature, Kesey and the gonzo journalists' digging of said time and place. Later, I developed a jaundiced view of the period. But I mean no disrespect to the born hippies: The kind of guys who still teach Tai Chi and restore Gibson guitars. And all those who dabbled, because why wouldn't you? Peace to all of you.
Gilbert Pinfold.
Sure 1967 was important in the US, but 1968 was more important globally.
That was the year of the Paris riots, and the consequent radicalisation of student activists around the globe.
(And for Catholics, Paul VI's encyclical on birth control was followed by a near universal rejection of church authority.)
“if we stay here any longer, my kids will all be racists for life.”
That describes pretty much any place with a sizeable black population. I was far less "racist" after 15 years in a lily-white "redneck" town than after 3 years in a half-white, half-black town where many of the whites were northern transplants who had the "right" ideas about race.
I think blacks became a bigger threat to Berkeley.
Part of the reason for no autumn of love was everything goes out of fashion in our consumer culture. Psychedelia just got old fast, with or without crime.
Also, the LSD experience begins with bloom but then starts to wilt and the drug's effect turns on the user. So, more people were having 'bad trips'.
And then came really bad drugs like STP.
The most fascinating book on psychedelic history is STORMING HEAVEN by Jay Stevens. A classic and beautifully written.
Speaking of drugs, the story of Freud and Cocaine is pretty wild.
"How could a seriously mentally ill juvenile delinquent have succeeded where the CIA and the KGB failed - effective mind control to the point of murder?"
Manson was an alpha male and they were probably impressionable young women. Love makes people behave stupidly. (Listen to Toby Keith's 'Bullets in the Gun' for the other side.) As I recall, the KGB did use hot women to entrap Americans and Brits, so this wasn't totally overlooked.
Manson was an alpha male and they were probably impressionable young women. Love makes people behave stupidly. (Listen to Toby Keith's 'Bullets in the Gun' for the other side.) As I recall, the KGB did use hot women to entrap Americans and Brits, so this wasn't totally overlooked.
Yeah, that makes sense. I know when I have special feelings for my man, I like to express them by stabbing a pregnant movie star in the belly.
By coincidence I recently read a story about rock/mountain climbers--they use their hands to get up there,nothing else--and how they had developed a "hippie" commune in some national park. Guys--and chicks-- would drop out,roll in,live there,climb as much as they could. People would help each other,share information,food,shelter.It was far different form the hippies in that these were highly--fanatically--motivated affletes,who were totally into climbing,and learning about their passion. There was sex and drama and prob some drugs but focus was always on the climbing. The growing popularity of climbing changed the "commune" into a less intimate place,but its still there and people still be climbin'. The pointlessness of the hippie life was surely one reason why it was doomed.Also there are few black males that climb mountains with their hands.
Completely agree. In a lily-white suburb growing up, my view of blacks was based on the media presentations of Bill Cosby, Carl Lewis, and MLK Jr.
Then, after a few years of living in big cities with sizable black underclass populations and Maxine Waters/ Jeremiah Wright type political establishments, a few muggings of friends here and there, bikes getting stolen, I became ripe for the Steve Sailer message.
* * * *
“if we stay here any longer, my kids will all be racists for life.”
That describes pretty much any place with a sizeable black population. I was far less "racist" after 15 years in a lily-white "redneck" town than after 3 years in a half-white, half-black town where many of the whites were northern transplants who had the "right" ideas about race.
I moved into the Haight, on Rivoli Street, January 1, 1967, having just graduated from college. And, yes, I was their on the green in Golden Gate Park for what I recall was the first Earth Day the following summer.
I thought I was a hippy anthropologist, but then as a participant observer I dropped some acid and paid the price.
The Haight was hell -- a pure pandemonium of glassy-eyed human in-communication -- and it set me back personally, I'd say, a couple of decades. Or maybe even five!
I'd rather die than go back.
Off-topic but, you can get that in LA too, you just have to look in the right place: Carroll Avenue in Angelino Heights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Avenue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelino_Heights,_Los_Angeles
Of course, in LA the Latinos rather than the gays got ahold of the assets, with predictable results.
http://www.theeastsiderla.com/2010/12/police-searching-for-shooting-subject-in-angeleno-heights/
* * *
"I really liked the old Victorian flats with the bare hardwood floors and bay windows. Total contrast with Socal housing tract architecture. The gays soon got ahold of all those assets."
@anonymous - "Donald Katz's Home Fires mentions another problem that plagued "hippie" communities: class differences."
Funny you should mention. I was Susan Lydon's live-in boyfriend for 4 months round about that time. Thank God she didn't name me in that book, but I must say it was the most fun I ever had in my life. Contrary to published opinion she wasn't into drugs at that point -- this was right before she became the girl friend of the drummer for Big Brother, whom she went to high school with.
Susan was irresponsible, yes, and her 2 year old daughter Shuna no doubt paid the price. But she was also one of the funniest, wittiest, and most discerning witnesses of the times, with a wide circle of friends and professional acquaintances of types I would never otherwise have met.
I really loved Susan looking back -- it was an oasis of flesh in the desert of my youth -- yet we were so fundamentally unsuited for each other long-term that there was no way it could have worked. She told me she didn't hold me responsible for what happened next, this during her bag-lady journalist phase at the Voice.
So here's to you Susan, and to Shuna too.
The hippie tribes I've run/hung out with-Rainbow, STP, Morningstar, Deadheads-are pretty much white middle class. STP seemed more working class, though. They were/are proto-gutterpunks. The few blacks that move with the hippies are pretty middle-class/dread/United Colors of Bennington.
read karma cola by Gita Meta how they f-uped india too. (and fell for a load of BS too -the same people who sneered at televanglists fell for gurus frauds
It was really the same people who fell for televangelists and for gurus.
The Baby Boom generation was mostly one of passive followers searching the the perfect leader whether a "televangelist" or a "guru".
"The first segregated Bohemia...."
How about the Reich Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia?
The ethnic cleansing of whites from America's cities by black criminals needs to be better documented.
""Brown Eyed Women and Red Grenadine"
is a political song by the Grateful Dead."
I don't buy that.
It's a nostalgic remembrance of the writer's father who is getting old. In Dad's heydey, his life was full of brown-eyed women and red grenadine.
Of related and topical interest... When do you suppose the first major lifestyle scandal: somebody pimping kids, a batch of bad dope, etc., is going to hit one of these Occupy camps? We'll probably never hear of it in the mainstream media, of course.
Paul VI's encyclical on birth control was followed by a near universal rejection of church authority.
Yeah, by closed minded folks.
Anyway, the Holy Father Paul VI's encyclical on Human Life is vindicated more with each passing day.
I am not Catholic, but folks should actually read what the man wrote and not just rely on what liberals say about what he wrote.
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/paul_vi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_25071968_humanae-vitae_en.html
the “hippies” (or whatever you want to call them, the young people who are grooving on the scene) were fantastic, were instant friends for life, made us feel welcome, helped us find a place to live, stored our stuff, etc. etc.
Well, yeah. Hippies are nice. I was too young to have known any of the originals, but I've known quite a few neo-hippies off and on since the 70s, and they've all been extremely nice in the sense of being friendly, generous, and non-aggressive. If I lived in the country, I'd rather have a hippie commune on the next farm down the road than a gang of hostile, suspicious survivalists.
However, I don't live in the country, and hippies make lousy neighbors in more urban settings. They're noisy, often dirty, and, like immigrants, tend to crowd way too many people in way too little space.
I wish them all peace, love, happiness, an endless supply of weed, etc., but would prefer to keep them out of my neighborhood.
"I was far less 'racist' after 15 years in a lily-white 'redneck' town than after 3 years in a half-white, half-black town where many of the whites were northern transplants who had the 'right' ideas about race."
My experience was quite similar. I was far less "racist" after 34 years in a lily-white suburb than after 3 years in a half-white, half-black college town that was much farther left of center and whose residents had the "right" ideas about race.
"The ethnic cleansing of whites from America's cities by black criminals needs to be better documented."
From what city in America have whites been ethnically cleansed?
Reply to "Truth"...
Detroit.
"From what city in America have whites been ethnically cleansed?"
Detroit, Newark, Baltimore, Washington DC, Miami, Chicago, Oakland, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Saint Louis, Birmingham, Memphis and many more.
Whites were forced out of many neighborhoods in the 1960's and 70's by racist blacks who were constantly robing, raping and killing them. Steve has spoken many times about his wife's family's experiences in Chicago and almost every white family who lived in a large city during that period has similar stories.
Are you really that clueless?
Truth, you might get the stupidest comment of the night award. What city has been cleansed of whites? Seriously? Well, my ancestral home of Miami went from 90% white to 90% nonwhite in less than 10 years, which is a larger demographic swing than occurred in Sarajevo. As I recall, the only US city in the top 50 that is still majority white is Seattle, though perhaps others can confirm that. Steve can tell you all about the cleansing of Southern Cali.
"The most notorious criminal to prey on hippie chicks in the San Francisco Bay area in 1967 was white: Charles Manson."
Wilipedia:
Childhood
Born to an unmarried 16-year-old named Kathleen Maddox, in Cincinnati General Hospital, Ohio, Manson was first named "no name Maddox."[2]:136–7[7][8] Within weeks, he was Charles Milles Maddox.[2]:136–7[9][10] For a period after his birth, his mother was married to a laborer named William Manson,[10] whose last name the boy was given. The boy's biological father appears to have been a "Colonel Scott," against whom Kathleen Maddox filed a bastardy suit that resulted in an agreed judgment in 1937.[2]:136–7 Possibly, the boy never really knew him.[2]:136–7[8]
Several statements in Manson's 1951 case file from the seven months he would later spend at the National Training School for Boys in Washington, D.C., allude to the possibility that "Colonel Scott" was African American.[2]:555 These include the first two sentences of his family background section, which read: "Father: unknown. He is alleged to have been a colored cook by the name of Scott, with whom the boy's mother had been promiscuous at the time of pregnancy."[2]:556 When asked about these official records by attorney Vincent Bugliosi in 1971, Manson emphatically denied that his biological father had African American ancestry.[2]:588
"The most notorious criminal to prey on hippie chicks in the San Francisco Bay area in 1967 was white: Charles Manson."
Wikipedia:
Childhood
Born to an unmarried 16-year-old named Kathleen Maddox, in Cincinnati General Hospital, Ohio, Manson was first named "no name Maddox."[2]:136–7[7][8] Within weeks, he was Charles Milles Maddox.[2]:136–7[9][10] For a period after his birth, his mother was married to a laborer named William Manson,[10] whose last name the boy was given. The boy's biological father appears to have been a "Colonel Scott," against whom Kathleen Maddox filed a bastardy suit that resulted in an agreed judgment in 1937.[2]:136–7 Possibly, the boy never really knew him.[2]:136–7[8]
Several statements in Manson's 1951 case file from the seven months he would later spend at the National Training School for Boys in Washington, D.C., allude to the possibility that "Colonel Scott" was African American.[2]:555 These include the first two sentences of his family background section, which read: "Father: unknown. He is alleged to have been a colored cook by the name of Scott, with whom the boy's mother had been promiscuous at the time of pregnancy."[2]:556 When asked about these official records by attorney Vincent Bugliosi in 1971, Manson emphatically denied that his biological father had African American ancestry.[2]:588
Race was not really an issue in the Haight during the two years I was there. The rock bands were integrated, for one thing, and I even lived in an apartment in the Fillmore for a while.
LSD is sloppy, as the local Zen master, Suzuki Roshi, said after taking some. It is also a cultural solvent and doubtlessly had a major influence on the end of the liberal idea in this country, along with a complete trashing of the liberal arts curriculum in education.
There was a commune up north of SF that advertised free land -- anyone could come and live there. I drove up one day to take a look. I walked up to the main house and the guy who had bought the ranch, from Yale I believe, got up from the coffee table where he was snorting coke with his girlfriend, and asked me what I wanted. Just to look around I said. What are the rules? Don't fuck with your neighbor was his reply.
And sure enough when I started walking around there were a series of armed camps -- or, rather, armed campgrounds -- with every little group jealously guarding its stuff.
As I was heading back to my car on a dirt road. The noonday sun was hot and up ahead was a hippy chick in an old-fashioned gingham dress and a roll of barbed wire on her shoulder. She was walking kind of slow and as I passed her I looked back and saw her dress was flapping wide open in front and she had not a stitch on under it.
She asked if I would like to share a joint, motioning to her little dwelling, a kind of homemade greenhouse/tent made out of clear plastic poly stretched between wires.
Somehow the hot sun, her greenhouse pad, and that roll of barbed wire on her shoulder were not a seductive combination, so I passed.
I could tell dozens of similar funny stories. Everything was "too much" and "far out" until finally you just couldn't stand it anymore. I barely got out alive.
I'm not exactly surprised at the news that that awful song is J. Rotten's least favorite, although I would have thought it would be the even more loathsome "Imagine."
By the way, there's a weird thing going on in the news coverage of the NY Occupy thing. Apparently there's a corner of the park where nobody wants to go after dark because it's so dangerous. I've seen this reported in two stories, but the reporter never elaborates at all.
What is one to make of this? What's going on that's so unspeakable? Seriously: does anyone know what's going on there?
Roma "Bohemians" were named that by Parisians due to semi-romantic assumptions of their national origin (last I read about it, linguistic research had traced them to modern-day Pakistan).
I visited a few cities in the Czech Republic, once the most industrialized region in central Europe, about half a decade ago. I found they become visibly irritated when a tourist refers to street peddlers as "Bohemian"
I remember watching OJ Simpson--back in the mid-80s--on David Letterman laughingly telling Dave about how back in the late-60s he and his homeboys feasted themselves on naive white girls newly arrived in the city with no place to stay and nothing to offer but free love.
I was born in 1968 and spent a few months in 68 and 69 living on Hunter's Point (military housing), which at that time, according to my mother, was a base surrounded by feral hordes that wanted to rape, rob and murder anyone who was white on the inside. Perhaps she exaggerates but based on subqequent readings, not by much. I think the experience turned my liberal father into something other than that on racial issues. I remember back in the early 70s him reprimanding me when I was a child whenever he heard me use the term "man" or "slap my five." That experience on Hunter's Point really affected him. My mother always felt that way.
"Reply to "Truth"...
Detroit."
Detroit is 10% white, and if "ethnically cleansed" by anyone it would be you when you started buying Japanese cars.
"Detroit, Newark, Baltimore, Washington DC, Miami, Chicago, Oakland, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Saint Louis, Birmingham, Memphis and many more."
Newark; 27% white.
Baltimore 33% white.
Washington DC 38% white.
Oakland 26% white.
New York 33% white.
Atlanta 38% white.
New Orleans 33% white.
Milwaukee 37% white.
St. Louis 44% white.
Birmingham 35% white.
Memphis 32% white.
Where is this "ethnic cleansing" you're talking about?
"Well, my ancestral home of Miami went from 90% white to 90% nonwhite in less than 10 years,"
Oh we're doing the "white Cubans, Argentinians, and Chileans are not white unless they get mugged by a black guy" thing again, are we? Because I was on Miami Beach a month ago, and that's about all I ran into.
"As I recall, the only US city in the top 50 that is still majority white is Seattle,"
No my friend, that's not "ethnic cleansing" that's called "me and my buddies would rather play videogames and go to car shows than have kirs."
You see, Sports, I give white people much more credit for intelligence than you do, I feel that you are smart enough to make decisions.
I agree with Truth, whites have not been ethnically cleansed from any cities in the U.S. Whites leave because blacks turn things to shit and lower property values. I can understand it as a rhetorical device but is sounds a little hysterical. I think there may be shennangigans playing w/ the whol property values and blockbusting. But seriously folks, ethnic cleansing is the forcable removal of people from their homes.
I expect such looseness with language from liberals.
To some extent it is the refusal of whites to practices ethnic cleansing in the first place that results in what we have seen in detroit etc.
Remember whites controlled all centers of police and quasi military authority when Detroit was being "cleansed."
If whites stayed in those urban areas they probably would not have bread at the level they did through the 50's and 60's. As a group evolutionary strategy it worked out okay at least in the short term. Whites now hold "more ground" at a greater density then they did in the pre war period. They could easily congeal and form 10 times more high density settlements than existed 50 years ago. In a sense they have defined the pale of settlement. In what sense is ghettoizing blacks not seen at least temporarily as a benefit to group evolutionary needs of whites.
I advocate feeding LSD to black people. It will go a long way toward kick starting them out of the circular rut they're in.
No my friend, that's not "ethnic cleansing" that's called "me and my buddies would rather play videogames and go to car shows than have kirs."
No, that's called "There goes the neighborhood."
You people don't know what was lost and you don't know how it happened and you have no soul. Ethnic cleansing is exactly what it was, but it was of the lower class whites by the other kind of whites, using black people as stormtroopers. The black people were never the agents. You can't see what really happened if you insist on seeing things in, well, black and white. White people are not an ethny; American black people are.
Detroit is 10% white, and if "ethnically cleansed" by anyone it would be you when you started buying Japanese cars.
Detroit’s car industry and Pittsburgh’s steel mills shut down for essentially the same reason, Asian competition.
And yet Pittsburgh, at ninety percent white a demographic mirror image of Detroit, has not only recovered from losing its primary industry, it now ranks as America’s most livable city , while the hapless black inhabitants of Motor City are fated to revert to subsistence farming as the welfare state withers away.
Read all about the instructive contrasts of Detroit and Pittsburgh here.
And yet Pittsburgh, at ninety percent white a demographic mirror image of Detroit, has not only recovered from losing its primary industry, it now ranks as America’s most livable city , while the hapless black inhabitants of Motor City are fated to revert to subsistence farming as the welfare state withers away."
Most livable city? I can't imagine why...
Detroit was actually destroyed by the 1967 race riot. Whites fled the city. That is the 'truth', a certain commentator's revisionism notwithstanding.
Pittsburgh is 26% black.
"Detroit, Newark, Baltimore, Washington DC, Miami, Chicago, Oakland, New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Saint Louis, Birmingham, Memphis and many more. "
I'm from Baltimore & experienced it. My working class neighborhood was pretty safe; kids walked to school and played outside afterdark. Then they put section 8 housing in a park where the neighbors used to play softball. Within 20 yrs it was a mess. Funny thing is, a lot of whites were positive about some of the first blacks moving next door--not the Section 8 crowd, but just normal homebuyers (or rents maybe.) As long as it was only a very few, it didn't change the general quality of life. But no matter how well intentioned the whites were, as the area got more black, it became impossible to remain, esp if you had young children to raise.
I know a Bolivian couple (their daughter-in-laws include a white and a black) who finally gave up and sold after their neighborhood changed to mostly black. Of course in other areas of DC, Hispanics are overtaking blacks simply by numbers.
Actually DC is changing back and I think it is partly because of hispanics. I notice that formerly black neighborhoods along major streets are now white & brown, and there is no doubt that the presence of a lot of fairly low-crime hispanics has made it easier for whites to move in. I didn't realize this till I saw it in action. "Gentrification" is occurring partly because of "hispanicization" of the city.
Susan Lydon and Johnny Rotten both namechecked in the comments.
Johnny Rotten's real name is of course Lydon.
It just might. But not as much as TAKING A TRIP TO PITTSBURGH TO GET SOME WHITE TANG SANS COMPETITION THIS SUMMER will.
Thanks for the info, Bob.
Twoof, I hope that your water-powered car is up to such a long drive.
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