Also grew up in suburban Texas, saw similar freak outs, and can tell you it's thinly veiled racism and distaste towards being forced to be around people who are part of perceived lower socioeconomic classes.
replyThe threat model is "been indoctrinated by years of propaganda to be fearful of a vague nebulous threat of being around people who don't look and act like me"
The town near where my parents lived just had a subdivision kill a multi family apartment complex because it was too close to their subdivision. There was no thinly veiled racism. It was just racism. Poor and black people apparently bring your property values down. The protests were, quite literally, we don't want those people here, without defining what 'those' meant.
replyIt was not great to watch, but it was great to let my parents know who exactly they should stop associating with.
>Poor and black people apparently bring your property values down.
replyThey do. But it's not a law of nature; it's a conscious decision, by people who should know better, to start lowballing real estate and salaries when they notice "too many" lower-income or black (of any income level, including high) people around.
You don't want to call it a concerted effort, but then you look up, say, the distribution of Whole Foods stores in the National Capital Region, and start to wonder.
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replyFalling home prices, increased crime, decreased social status, long term political shift resulting in suboptimal and even counter-interest local policy.
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