Next Word

Well, yes, it appears that I have abandoned you, but I have not. I was busy Being Social the past few days, and working hard last week, so I have been slow getting to your other words. Events included a hockey game, a play, and, of course, much good food. (The play was "Desire Under the Elms," which, good lord, what a depressing piece. Also, of the two theater productions I've seen in the past two weeks, there were a total of ten characters, exactly one of whom was female. Also also, "Desire" is very very shouty; there's barely a word spoken that isn't in the form of yelling or some other kind of thrashing around. Entirely too much Drama for me, thanks so much. But I feel all Cultured and shit, so there you go.) So anyway; on to the words. I'll get through the ones I can tonight, but I'd rather take my time and ponder a few of these, so you may only get a few at a time.

Chicago Ah yes. I have lived here, let's see, 23 years, which is longer than I have lived anywhere else. Even though I know the city reasonably well--and I know quite a few bits of it, and I know some of it better than many residents, for reasons I'll elaborate in a minute--it still does not feel like home to me, and I doubt that it ever will. I'm not a midwesterner, for one thing, even though I don't know that I could tell you exactly what characterizes a midwesterner or a non-midwesterner.

The city comprises 77 neighborhood areas; the areas were originally delineated by sociologists in the 1920s, pretty much along ethnic lines. What's truly interesting is how much of that character has survived for nearly a century. There's still a south-side Irish parade; there's still a Polish neighborhood (where many people actually speak Polish, mind you, and the businesses advertise in Polish); the city still celebrates Pulaski Day. The city is also, still, profoundly Catholic, and specifically Irish- and Polish-Catholic, which have a different flavor than Italian or French or German Catholics. (People my age who grew up Catholic in this city will still ask people they've just met which parish they're from; someone I knew in grad school said it wasn't until she moved away from the city that she realized most people do not identify the place where they live by the parish they're from.)

Part of what this means is that people often grow up in and remain living in the same neighborhood, or near enough to it, for their whole lives. Chuck could tell those stories better than I, but many people regard "downtown" as a foreign country, and a suspiciously foreign one at that, despite the fact that the public transportation to and from downtown is actually pretty good for most parts of the city. (Except for the poor black sections, but that's a different story.)

The city also has a profoundly racist past: past mayors built housing projects in ways that were designed to segregate black people into overcrowded neighborhoods, and woe betide any black person who attempted to move to a white neighborhood. In the 1970s, whites basically fled to the suburbs, abandoning the city and the school system. This has not worked out well. One of the side effects is that many of the white suburbanites live in their outposts and possibly work there as well, sucking benefits from the fact that the city exists but not paying their fair share (see Myron Orfield's work on this). It is not uncommon for kids to grow up in the 'burbs and then live in Lincoln Park or Lakeview or downtown or Wrigleyville after graduation for a couple of years. (Some go to school in the city, thus expanding their years there.) Eventually they meet someone, marry, and then move back to the suburbs once they start procreating. They will have visited few other parts of the city and will have utilized public transportation for few of their ventures, and they will only rarely have interacted much with someone who is Not Like They Are, but they typically think they have lived in the city and Experienced it.

It is also still possible for people to arrange their lives so they rarely or never see someone of a different race--which, in a city that is slightly less than 40% black and slightly more than 40% white, is pretty amazing. I go out to dinner quite a bit, and I can tell you that most of the time, most places I'm eating, there are few or no black customers, which is only partly a comment about where I'm eating dinner. I can also tell you that vocal racism is alive and well: many is the time that someone has made a remark to me, assuming that I share their views because I share their skin color. The old ethnic white neighborhoods that haven't seen much development are particularly notable for this. (To Chuck's everlasting credit (and to the credit of his mom), although he has many of the markers to fit right into that mold, he profoundly does not.)

I'm unusual in a number of ways: I've lived in three very very different parts of the city, and have spent time in three or four others, including the neighborhoods in which I have worked. I take public transportation everywhere, pretty much (not having a car will do that to a person). At least two of the neighborhoods in which I've lived, including the one in which I now live, are racially much more mixed than the downtown neighborhood. I don't root for the Cubs OR the Sox.

So anyway.

There are things about the city I appreciate. There are things I enjoy. As anywhere else, there are many nice people. I live here, even though it's not Home, not least because I'm not even sure what would count as home for me these days.
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One last thing tonight: yes, I am peeved that Hosea won Top Chef. I'll elaborate at a later date, but let me say it had nothing to do with his supposed romance with Leah.