In his recent post Urban Dwellers and Terrorism BooMan made a number of good points. But at the very end, he wrote:
I just returned to NYC from three weeks in one boonie neighborhood (Maine subclass thereof, living mostly as a native, not as a tourist) and I beg to differ.
I wrote a comment on his post, and now it’s a stand-alone post of its own.
Read on if you are interested.
BooMan writes:
C’mon. BooMan.
You KNOW better.
A couple of points:
1-A massive percentage of the talented leave home if home is not exciting or challenging enough. Like in the boonies. Many suburbs, too. They go to the city. If they grow up IN the city but are stuck in an ethnic ghetto of some sort, they still leave home. Upwardly mobile. And they still generally stay in or very near the city. SOME city.
Gene sink. The good genetic material leaves, the not so good genetic material stays.
Duhsville, USA is the result. I just spent 3 weeks in the boonies of America. Duhsville. Bet on it. I’m back in the Bronx. Almost the only intelligent people I met in rural/tourist Maine…and I was in the “rural” section. Bet on it again. (Dealing with the natives on the level of basic medical services, construction and maintenance, etc)…were from “somewhere else.”
“Awayuhs”, in the local dialect. Russians (LOTS of Russians, working in fairly menial jobs…sharp as tacks in comparison to people who are the results of 200 years of gene sink), Mexicans (Yup…Mexicans), people from elsewhere who are there making money off the tourist trade, vacationers from (of course) the cities and the occasional Mainer who got an education and came back to rip off the locals…lawyers, doctors etc. (Saw a sign up there…”Holistic Lawyer”. Deep.) Lesbian and gay male refugees digging in for the long haul.
Dassit. That’s all she wrote.
MASSES of fat, brain damaged, plodding inheritors of the genetic leavings of generations of Maine losers who stayed. Going to WalMart was like reading a Stephen King novel. Casting by a Down East Fellini. So was walking the halls of a hospital. Patients, visitors AND staff.
Deep.
I have ALSO been privileged to be in a similar situation in the boonies outside of Atlanta. Same process, same result.
Except less tourist money.
Gene sink.
This is not to say that there are not decent, intelligent natives living there. There are, of course. But less of them every year. My family has been there for 40+ years, and I have spent a LOT of time there myself. I know the neighborhood. We are talking percentages here, not absolutes.
I have also lived in devolved white ethnic ghettos in New York and Boston. Irish and Italian. Tipping into white flight where even the genetic leavings leave in fear of…the other.
The black/brown/beige other.
And in that black/brown/beige world the gene sink idea does not apply with the same force.
It’s there, of course, but that old American black saying?
If you brown…stick aroun’
If you black…get back!!!
That saying has a corollary.
If you white…you CAN go “somewhere else.”
But the darker you are, the harder it gets to leave the ghetto. In fact, African-featured (and other dark-complected races as well) bring the ghetto WITH them in the sense that white Americans SEE their difference and ghettoize them from the get-go. In their own minds.
The ghetto-go.
One ghetto TO go, coming right up.
So blackness tends to CONCENTRATE the genetic material in a proscribed neighborhood to some degree. A well functioning society appears where more of the superior genetic material stays home and becomes the political/business/cultural elite. (Because after all…where the fuck are they gonna that will really be much better? Maine? I think not.) Witness the Harlem Renaissance. Which happened at the same time in EVERY urban black neighborhood in America to one degree or another. Only the lovely CIA-run crack epidemic (and its predecessor heroin thing) succeeded in breaking THAT system down.
No Boonies Renaissance, to my knowledge.
No Little Italy Renaissance either.
No Suburban Renaiassance.
But cities?
In major cities there is one or another “renaissance” every goddamned GENERATION.
Why?
Because that’s where the smart people go.
2-You GET smart when you live in a city. You must get smart. You are challenged to survive, and the challenge is largely mental.
I sit in subways here in NYC city and watch tourist yahoos with the imprint of generations of gene sink on their faces try to figure out a subway map. Duhsville. And I watch city-bred ten year olds navigate the same system with ease. Smartsville.
And…there are VERY intelligent predators here. On all levels. I would MUCH sooner deal with bears and wolves than muggers, shake and bake store owners, crooked cops and massively corrupt politicians. Hell…all it takes in a large rifle and some common sense to deal with most country predators. (Unless you are some death wish/Steve Irwin type, of course.) But in the city? Watch OUT!!!
They keep the herd sharp, these urban predators. Be smart or be gone.
Tolerance?
Sit cheek to jowl with 279 different races every day of your life. I got yer “tolerance”, right HERE!!!
Or…go sit in a rural diner with 15 complaining, gene-sinked, mentally and physically obese fools and listen to them complain about those ragheads an’ niggers. (As long as you kin blend in well enough to disappeah, a’course. Ayuh. Talent with regional dialects helps no end. Ayuh. WICKED good coffee.)
City dwellers are not “tolerant”. They just know that criminality is an equal opportunity employer.
Vive la cité!!! (I am SO glad to be back!!!)
AG