>
>>I do not know about your planet, but here in Baltimore the "light rail"
>>is
>>called by suburbanites the "dark rail" - a stupid racist joke on the
>>fact
>>that public transit in this area is used almost exclusively by Black
>>folk
>>(and a few white crackpots like myself). (Wojtek Sokolowski)
>
>That would be rather unusual among U.S. cities. Public transit in
>Philly is used by people of all skin colors (some of which might be
>hard to classify by the standard categories :-) ). As it is, by my
>experience, in New York, Boston, and Chicago. (Jon Johanning)
When I lived in St. Louis the light rail proposal to St. Charles was also label "dark rail" and people said the exact same thing. "Negros from the city would ride up there, steal their TV's, and ride back home". I thought they were kidding at first but these people were quite serious. At least I derive some small satisfaction in hearing this same tale from someone else as I could hardly believe I was hearing it at the time. It's just too ridiculous to believe but it does happen. When asked where they got this idea several stated they had "been in cities where they saw people riding on transit with stolen TV's". When asked how they knew they were stolen the answer was usually "you can just tell". Hard to argue with logic like that. If this had been a comment from a lone individual I would have given it no thought but I heard this dozens of times in just a few weeks from a variety of white people.
>>That partly explains the homogenous, pulp-like character of American
>>culture. The US is perhaps the only country on earth where you can get
>>on a
>>plane, fly for six hours, get off and face the same fodder of pulped
>>culture, fashion, life styles, habits and tastes. (Wojtek Sokolowski)
>
>As I argued above, American culture only appears that way to outsiders.
>Foreigners also say that a lot about the Japanese, for example. "Ha!
>What mindless conformists!" But if you get to know the culture
>reasonably well, you can see that there is plenty of diversity
>there. (Jon Johanning)
It appears that way to me but maybe I'm an outsider? I don't think I am though. The differences in "culture" from place to place are superficial. The similarities are deeper. If you were dropped from the suburbs of Portland Oregon to the suburbs of Columbus Ohio and couldn't ask people where you were you would be hard pressed to know you were thousands of miles from your original location. Not just from the similarity of architecture but in peoples mannerisms and speech.
>>What does it have to do with suburbanization and public transit? The
>>suburbs and cars seemed to be the ideal solution for "big city
>>alienation" -
>>offering an illusion of a small town togetherness, the car offering the
>>illusion of freedom, connectedness (mobility), and safety.
>
>I doubt this theory rather strongly. The reason suburbanites drive so
>much is simply that public transit is completely impractical where they
>live -- and they just prefer to live there, for (as I said above) a
>number of complex reasons.
>
>Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org
I think the illusion of automobile granted freedom and the illusion of small town connectedness are pretty powerful motivators for people to move to the suburbs. The fact that it isn't what it seems is something different altogether. Once people believe that perception of the suburbs you are hard pressed to drive the idea out even with the facts of its nonexistence staring people in the face. None of this is to me an argument that Americans are stupid. People all over the world believe things that are not true every day.
John Thornton