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Offensively Liberal

All things being equal, I’m a liberal. I believe in the idea of taxes and I believe that the point of paying them is to protect and enrich the citizenry of a society. I believe that monopolies are bad for a state’s economy and that the government should intervene when they develop. I believe that the rich should pay a significantly higher percentage of their earnings towards taxes than the poor. Civil Rights, (including of course gay rights) abortion, environmentalism, you can mark me down in the strongly ‘pro’ category for each of them.

With all this said, there are plenty of things about ‘liberals’ that piss off or embarrass me. These are usually things that a young and well meaning and ostensibly socially conscious person says in a well meaning and ostensibly socially conscious way. For weeks now, I can’t get a recent ‘slant’ (guest column) in the City Paper out of my head. Maybe sharing it with the anonymous masses will help me move on.

The article recounted an experience a young white person had when the subway broke down in North Philly and then their reaction to it. They questioned the cities preparedness for a disaster on the scale of Katrina or a terrorist attack. The well-meaning author (Temple student, John Paul Titlow) argued:

Most of the almost entirely black (except for me) sea of faces represent some of the most disadvantaged sectors of our society — working single mothers, students on their way to the most underfunded public schools in the region, and others. For most, SEPTA is the only conceivable way to get where they need to go — where, in most cases, they barely earn enough to survive…

…the hardest hit will be the primarily black low-income and homeless population, the people the report refers to as those with “special needs.” Among the lessons from Katrina were that neighborhoods without access to basic resources are the areas where attention is most needed. The committee’s report is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough.

I’m sorry, but that ^^^ is straight up fucking offensive. A good point - the cities lack of preparedness for a large scale disaster - was argued with the same condescending pity for the cities A.A. poor, which is usually held in reserve for a sick animal. Whatever the author’s intention, this came off as deeply condescending and impossible to read without feeling like John Mark Karr’s spindly fingers are crawling up your spine. Good god. I have a feeling that Titlow will look back on this in 5 years and feel a sense of deep and terrifying embarrassment. At least I hope so. Let me close with a letter written in response to the column.

I agree with John Paul Titlow that Philadelphia needs to take serious action based on the findings of the Emergency Preparedness Review Committee, but his analysis of the problem isunbelievably simplistic and sophomoric [Slant, “At a Disadvantage,” Aug. 3, 2006]. His argumentthat Philadelphia’s emergency preparedness planslights the poor and the blackis based on ridiculous evidence — his experience of a breakdown on Septa’s orange line:”Funny how the orange line is the first thing to break down in the city. The Market-Frankford, or as I sometimes call it, ‘the White Line,’ was running smoothly all day.” Funny how there are breakdowns and delays in public transportation all over the city, and in the suburbs! Has Titlow ever ridden the Market-Frankford line? As a person whose stop was 40th and Market for years, I must inform him that there is a wide range of people riding the blue line on any given train.His observations ofthe stranded passengers as poor black folk “barely earn[ing] enough to survive,” and the “few of them lucky enough to have cell phones” calling friends for rides, reminds me of early anthropological accounts of communities by outside observers. We don’t need uninformed paternalism, Mr. Titlow. We need to continue facilitating discussions among the city’s neighborhood spokespeople to determine how tobest go about preparing for the worst, and to begin enacting the agreed-upon solutions.

Lindsey Mears

Germantown

Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 general, pretentious, Philly Trackback URL for this entry

13 Comments

  • 1. Phillybits replies at 30th August 2006, 8:45 pm :

    Good post.

  • 2. Matt replies at 31st August 2006, 12:12 am :

    I AGREE

  • 3. GS replies at 31st August 2006, 6:34 am :

    I disagree. While he may not be qualified to critique a committee report, which almost assuredly takes into account people who rely on city services the most - I missed the actual condescention. How is this society making good on MLKs dream? Is the level of people still living in poverty any less criminal than it was 40 years ago?

  • 4. steve replies at 31st August 2006, 10:34 am :

    I don’t disagree with the basic facts of the article, Philadelphia is hardly prepared for normal daily activities. If anything serious happened here, it would undoubtedly be hardest on those with the fewest resources.

    But the tone of the article displayed a glaring ignorance of the city (the el = “the white line” I don’t know what he’s smoking if he sees nothing but white folks on 2/3 of that that route.) The condescension comes in the parental tone he takes – as if poor black people are need someone to take care of them due to some inability for the entire population to function without some white person holding its hand… which is how I and at least 1 other person (response letter) read it.

    It reads like “The White Man’s Burden.” But anyway, the letter in response voices my reaction nearly perfectly. I believe that an equitable society includes building a solid infrastructure, roads, schools, transportation, healthcare and creating an environment conducive to creating and maintaining good jobs, but to argue for these things by claiming a population’s inability to care for itself is offensive and condescending.

  • 5. GS replies at 31st August 2006, 5:41 pm :

    To continue it just a bit, I guess I wonder what you mean by poor blacks ability/inability to function for themselves. It seems to me to be able to function in this country is to be able to thrive - most would agree anything short of this unfair and against the founding principles of freedom and equal opportunity in this country. You say yourself there are a list of things you feel this society owes its poor - at what point with crime and drugs and health care issues are poor blacks able to function? What level of quality of life would you consider “functional”? Certainly not on crack, being overly reliant on welfare, or being involved in criminal activity. The burden is the aftereffects of 400 years of slavery. Its not condescension, and it’s not an attempt to ignore or remake their culture, its just the duty of those born into privilege to find a way to solve society’s generalized indifference to the needs of those in poverty.

    Again, as I noted before, the black community is imposingly vast, and yet only 12% of the population - we have the poorest, but we also have a middle class that may or may not have been there for generations, and by the same token an upper class that dates back for two hundred fifty years or more. There are blacks constantly cycling upward from more humble beginnings to the middle class, but by the same token there are plenty who have been there for some time, so it is important to choose your words carefully and not be presumptuous with whom you are referring. That being said, those in poorer neighborhoods must deal with a litany of local problems and the obstacle of a substandard public school system that must do more to reach them.

    The legacy of slavery is a depressing one - Brown vs. Board of Education was only 52 years ago, when you want to talk about functionality in the black community I think it varies depending on who you are talking about. Poor blacks do not want to be made white, but much more than that they do not want to be left out. Their silence on the subject just reflects the lack of opportunities to change the situation. Foreigners who accuse this country of still being racist may not have all the firsthand knowledge, but they are not imagining things either. Their objectivity is a good thing.

    I still have no problem with John Paul Titlow’s comment, I don’t think you can go wrong with empathy 24/7.

  • 6. John replies at 7th September 2006, 3:48 pm :

    I have a great deal of sympathy and respect for the black working poor and homeless populations, and don’t mean to give the impression of having “condescending pity.”

    The truth is — these people are ignored by our society, including the city government, and it’s fucked up. It occurred to me that morning on the subway that when the shit hits the fan in Philadelphia, its the residents of areas like North Philly who are going to get hit the hardest — a la Katrina — and I think it’s an outrage of the highest order.

    As for the points raised by Ms. Mears, I clarified in an e-mail written directly to her:

    To clarify, I am a very heavy commuter (I’m a student and have no car). I’ve ridden both the Broad Street Line and the Market-Franford Line extensively over the last few years. I also worked in Elkins Park for three years (until just recently) and have taken the R8 to and from Ryers (just before Fox Chase) literally hundreds of times. Likewise, I’ve taken the R5 to and from the suburbs since I was about 15 (so, almost a decade). I used to live out there. Now I live here.

    Never before in my experience has an entire rail line completely shut down for any reason. The rain we experienced in June caused a lot of problems, but it was interesting to note that the Orange Line was left entirely debilitated for most of an entire day by it, while the rest of the SEPTA’s infrastructure essentially kept up and running.

    The bit about the El being the “White Line” was just a joke on my part. It’s clearly a very ethnically diverse subway line. But it also services the main artery of financial and commercial activity in Philadelphia, and it is very obviously more well-funded and/or better kept than the Orange Line, which is dramatically dirtier, less fancy and high-tech, and more prone to break-downs in general than the Blue Line.

    Finally, I’d just like to note something that I perhaps should have noted in my piece, which is that I’m not an “outside observer” simply basing this assessment on one day’s experience. You write:

    His observations ofthe stranded passengers as poor black folk “barely earn[ing] enough to survive,” and the “few of them lucky enough to have cell phones” calling friends for rides, reminds me of early anthropological accounts of communities by outside observers.

    I lived just off of Temple’s campus for over a year, have heard people getting shot, and have talked to a variety of people of a variety of ages for reporting and other purposes. As a journalism student, I’ve researched the area, which I find to be largely neglected by the city government, not to mention any other level of government. If you’ve ever been in North Philadelphia, you’d find it hard to argue to the contrary.

    As for my claim that most of the black people in North Philadelphia are earning very little money, I made the mistake of assuming this fact was obvious. I should’ve gone into more detail here. To cite data from just one Zip code in North Philly, in the 19121 area code (my former area code), 14,794, or 43% of its residents are below the federal poverty level. As for the racial make-up of the area, as of 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau says it is 96% black. I knew this from having reviewed this data for an assignment in the past, but it’s fairly evident if you’ve ever been there that these areas are highly segregated from the rest of the city. Indeed, that morning, 100% of the passengers (and there literally were hundreds of them expelled from the subway at Broad and Erie), were black, with the exception of myself.

    The reason I assumed that nobody had a cell phone was, well, because nobody had a cell phones. There was an exception of maybe two or three people, the aforementioned “lucky” bunch. Given that the mean income of the above Zip code is only $9,438, it’s hard to imagine how many of them could afford a cell phone. I know I barely can.

    My basic argument is that the poor (who happened to be primarily black, for readily verifiable historical, economic and sociological reasons) will bear the brunt of whatever disaster hits Philadelphia, something I personally consider to be inevitable. The shut-down of the Orange Line, which recieved no media attention at all, was, in my view, a microcosm of that.

    The city’s latest report on emergency preparedness, cited in my article, does very little to address the needs of those citizens living in poverty. One hopes, especially after Katrina, that the efforts of local, state and federal governments will go a little bit more toward helping those who are most isolated and resource-strapped. So far, this is not happening. In this respect, Philadelphia resembles New Orleans, which resembles virtually every American city.

    My hope, of course, is that I’m wrong.

  • 7. steve weinik replies at 7th September 2006, 6:26 pm :

    First off, thank you so much for responding. Debate is good and I’m glad that I started one here by being abrasive. No offense to you personally. As I wrote, your facts are straight. That’s why the CP published your commentary. I even agree with most of what you wrote. What I don’t agree with is the tone, which only some people seem to read and which apparently only some take offense to. I’m one of those people. The reasons for this are pretty well outlined in what I wrote and in the letter written in response to your piece by Ms. Mears.

    Now let me fan the flames and get the debate going.

    Intentional or not, I read in the piece the same attitude that motivated the British during their colonial rule in India and the Middle East. To be even more abrasive, I see in it the contrived moral ideology that inspires neoconservative arguments for war in Iraq, Iran, Syria or wherever. Not to say that you’re morally equivalent to either of these mindsets, you’re absolutely not. I don’t believe our leaders’ desires to dominate are based in altruism but I do believe that your motivations are sincerely empathic. However, we can sell an Iraqi occupation on the promise of ‘bringing democracy to the Middle East’ because we are of a society in which that idea can be easily sold. We are raised to believe in a superior/inferior relationship with an imagined ‘other.’

    Where’s the connection? In the relation of an experience that you had with a set of individuals (broken subway) you framed those individuals as an ‘other.’ In doing so this poor dark skinned other was deindividualized for the purposes of seeking the pity of the dominant light skinned population. Framing your argument by setting one population above the other while at the same time homogenizing the ‘lower’ population into a set of poor statistics and ugly numbers offended me. It also reminded me of that old Imperialist mindset. Ms. Mears’ comparison to ‘early anthropological accounts’ was in my opinion spot on.

    Again I agree with you on most points, I just hate how you set up your argument. It treads a dangerous intellectual path.

  • 8. GS replies at 12th September 2006, 5:25 pm :

    Fanning the flames of debate or not, it seems to me to be unfair to beat up on Mr. Titlow any more. Your left-wing paranoia for defending the little guy, or ethnic group, fails on two levels.

    First and foremost, economics by themselves tag these people as inferior. If you choose to argue that a little success and an open mind is better than money from joining a society percieved as callous or greedy that is your business - nonetheless people need money to eat on and have a right to finance larger dreams for themselves. If you’re paranoid about people not understanding different cultures (in America is not everyone a part of American culture, ie subject to the cost of living in a modern urban area) then that is the fault of someone not educating people, because we know most people are too lazy to know for themselves.

    Secondly, you seem so reactionary you yourself are treading on tricky terrafirma - setting other ethnic groups/foreigners up as saints inspires people to understand them how? Does it not imply they are pathetic, to need such defense? Not such a good picture to sell people, and it makes one question how open your mind really is and what kinds of things you’ve already closed the book on, like trusting Americans. Like the forthright Mr. Titlow.

    Helplessness or being a foreigner is not sainthood, that ideological battle goes nowhere after selling minorities as weak, something they are most certainly not. Yet everyone needs to feel empowered, needs to be empowered economically, and if this country fails to make good on that promise we should be called on it.

    I’ll pass on calling you a wimpy, passive aggressive liberal with anger issues about your role in this society, looking to be someone’s hero yet most likely afraid to find out how strongwilled those people truly are (real life, not fight the power, yikes) - but you aren’t being very fair to Mr. Titlow to compliment him and then accuse him once again. Sorry.

  • 9. steve weinik replies at 12th September 2006, 6:49 pm :

    John Titlow and I have had a good discussion over private email and we are fine with each other’s positions. I’d even go so far as to say the exchanges have been extremely friendly. I don’t want to speak for John, but I don’t believe that there’s a need to step to his defense.

    This - here - is a debate about ideas and people can argue with civility. That’s a great thing. It’s understood that I’m not attacking anyone here personally. I may attack your ideas, but I’ve got no problem with you.

    But anyway, on to the debate. I’m just going to take 1 line from the above comment and use it to illustrate my position… again. You wrote:

    “First and foremost, economics by themselves tag these people as inferior.”

    Aside from the bizarre notions of superiority/inferiority you seem to bring up here, the “these people” tag is exactly the sort of tone I’m talking about. Last time I checked, “you people” was a phrase used by ignorant bigots in order to reaffirm their ignorant bigotry.

    That’s all for now.

  • 10. GS replies at 17th October 2006, 7:47 pm :

    Ehem! Change the name of your blog from “Offensively Liberal” to “Insanely Liberal”!

    You say “Aside from the bizarre notions of superiority/inferiority” - this is pathetic and perhaps that’s just who you are, but money puts food on the table, you bleeding heart retard! Poverty DESTROYS people’s self worth. LAST TIME I CHECKED!

    Re: “those people” - nice try! My previous post outlined the wide variety and disparity of income in the black community. It is perfectly FAIR then to talk about those SUFFERING in poverty as “those people”, because they IN FACT deserve BETTER! Are you too big a wimp to care or do something about their struggle? I guess it’s easy for cowards like you to have some false sense of racial empathy because their plight makes your little life seem comfortable in comparison??? That’s racism, you are obviously dodging a knowledge of what poverty does!

    If you don’t think poverty is REAL, UNFAIR, and PAINFUL and that it doesn’t render people LESS ABLE to succeed in our society then you are a feel good coward, all talk but no mercy, happy to be white. What is the punchline with liberals like you? Haa haa, they really ARE niggers? Poverty is poverty, grow up. The are inferior in the most painfully objective sense, enough with your false empathy that does nothing. Join the real world.

  • 11. GS replies at 17th October 2006, 8:07 pm :

    To clarify, poverty and racism combined, especially, destroys people’s self worth.

    Something to “ponder” as you and your obviously very WHITE friends sip coffee and talk casually about whatever you care to.

    Poverty and racism are real, it’s sad to hear liberals like you PRETEND to defend your “nice” black friends against bigotry when your little collegiate mind has never seen life from anything BUT a liberal perspective. It pleases your LIBERAL INTELLECTUAL AESTETIC when YOU stand by their side, yet still in your own white world - no matter how much you tell yourself you care (in reality WANT to care, for your OWN reasons), you obviously DON’T.

    Empathy to please YOUR notion of what goes on in society, not the cold reality. To enhance your sense of your own intelligence only.

    The passive racism of Northerners like you should be black America’s TRUE fear.

    That’s all for now.

  • 12. GS replies at 17th October 2006, 8:17 pm :

    If you read the Bible you would realize half the people you SO EASILY write off as

    “ignorant bigots”…

    …know more about life than the passive aggressive homosexual urban victim model you seem to represent. But feel free to stay in your own little box. We’re not a dumb country just because we didn’t all go to UPENN.

    Don’t imply other people are bigots when it’s so obvious your racial empathy is a liberal aestetic and nothing more. Educated and yet dangerously naive, that’s so many people in the North.

  • 13. John Titlow replies at 18th October 2006, 9:48 am :

    Holy shit, guys.

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