# Why do liberals hate suburbs? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 31, 2013, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965 "2013-07-31T02:31:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 24
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/461 "2013-08-12T21:49:42Z")
> [@](#): > > For most of us our kids, even if they are smart enough to test 98%ile and higher, can go to a school with advanced/Honors/AP classes Yessss…[same here](http://www.heartlandconnection.com/news/story.aspx?id=749170#.UglLusu9KSM). > [@](#): > > So by that research I and you should want our kids to be, relatively, the slightly disadvantaged kids gaining the benefit of being around kids who are to some large degree smarter than them…ergo they get the benefit of being pulled up with no harm to those smarter than them. But if everyone were to seek this benefit, then no one could get it. If there is no harm, you should “sacrifice” the seeking of this benefit. Do you really want your children to spend their lives “drafting” off others? > [@](#): > > Of course I am sure you will also insist that your children go to the local Community college instead of the more prestigious college or university that they surely could be accepted by (and maybe even offered money from). I will strongly urge them to go [here](http://collegeapps.about.com/od/collegeprofiles/p/Truman-State.htm), a public university that is both [prestigious](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/regional-universities-midwest) and affordable, especially once automatic and other [scholarships](http://admissions.truman.edu/costs/scholarships.asp) are deducted from the already low in-state [tuition](http://admissions.truman.edu/costs/cost.asp). In today’s dollars, if my kids’ grades and test scores stay where they have been, their net tuition would be either $4,000 or $4,500 depending on where their final GPA lands; and that’s even before considering the possibility of competitive scholarships. If they go to some other public university, especially in state, I can live with that. I would staunchly oppose their going to a private college or university. > [@](#): > > I believe that an educational environment with diversity (in SES, race, ethnicity, political POV, sexual orientation etc.) is of benefit both to the institution and to the all who go there. Ding ding ding! ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/462 "2013-08-12T22:24:11Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > I doubt your claims. Bet me 500 bucks and I’ll prove them to you. Money, mouth. But ask yourself: do I really strike you as the sort of person who does not have gifted kids? I would say for at least 60% of the people who post on here, you should be utterly unsurprised if they make such a claim. (In my case, my kids have slightly regressed toward the mean: I have never scored lower than the 99th percentile on any standardised test in my life.) > [@Debaser](#): > > Are you seriously going to argue that poor areas do better at educating kids than rich areas? > > It’s not even close and all the data says so. I think you may want to consider the possibility that you are conflating correlation and causation. I strongly suspect that if a wealthy district’s school swapped student bodies with a poor school, that the performance of each would surprise you. Or an even better illustration would be if the student bodies were 50% randomly swapped. But this is in any case beside the point. We were not arguing between public schools in wealthy districts versus in poor districts. We were talking about private versus public school. And I know for a fact that the Catholic school in my town spends less per student than the public schools do. Yet many parents pay out of pocket to send their kids there even though they are not Catholic or even religious. They are obviously not paying for a more robust level of education for their children, but rather for their children to be segregated from the poor kids. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/463 "2013-08-12T22:43:32Z")
How about we roll high school varsity sports teams into the general PhyEd curriculum, and mandate that the teams have to have every student on the roster. That’ll give the jocks and the dweebs a chance to learn from each other. ---
**Author:** ![Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e47c2d/32.png) [@Hershele\_Ostropoler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hershele_Ostropoler)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/464 "2013-08-12T22:49:17Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > East St. Louis (originally “Illinoistown”) was founded in 1797 on the opposite side of the Mississippi from St. Louis, and used to be a major manufacturing and meatpacking center. A bit of a stretch to call it a suburb. I’m not sure why it was founded is relevant but I’ll agree not to consider it a suburb pending further research, and I’m unlikely to do the research anyway. Other points stand. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/465 "2013-08-12T23:41:12Z")
I think we settled the fact that some types of liberals do, in fact, hate suburbs a few hundred posts ago but I just happened to stumble across this [hate speech directed at suburban residents by chance a few minutes ago.](http://gawker.com/ban-lawns-1107358428?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow) It has a couple of good points but it is really just a vehicle to direct blanket insults to anyone that doesn’t subscribe to the authorized credo. It is supposed to be about suburban lawns in particular but that is just a vehicle to launch a random stream of arrows against everything from white people to garages of all things. The author also makes the common mistake of assuming that every suburb in the country is the same and introduces equal threats to The Cause. I think it is a stupid use of water to try to acheive a picture perfect lawn in Las Vegas too but that doesn’t apply in states from to Florida to Maine. There is more water there than people know what to do with sometimes and conserving it certainly isn’t going to help anyone in Phoenix. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2013, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/466 "2013-08-12T23:58:32Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > So by that research I and you should want our kids to be, relatively, the slightly disadvantaged kids gaining the benefit of being around kids who are to some large degree smarter than them. For most of us our kids, even if they are smart enough to test 98%ile and higher, can go to a school with advanced/Honors/AP classes such that they will be surrounded by kids many of who are smarter than they are, in whose company they are the “disadvantaged” … ergo they get the benefit of being pulled up with no harm to those smarter than them. > > As an individual and a parent I take that position more than tongue in cheek: my kid benefits by not being the smartest in the room (especially at the High School level and above). Are your kids currently gaining that benefit? > > Of course I am sure you will also insist that your children go to the local Community college instead of the more prestigious college or university that they surely could be accepted by (and maybe even offered money from). > > I believe that an educational environment with diversity (in SES, race, ethnicity, political POV, sexual orientation etc.) is of benefit both to the institution and to the all who go there. I do not believe that that benefit trumps all other factors in the real world and would not sacrifice my children’s best interests to any fantasies I may hold about what ideally should be. (Fortunately our schools actually are pretty diverse, especially at the High School level so I have not had to make that choice but that is not a norm, and if the choice was between living where the schools were much better and the other students more high achieving but the population a bit less diverse, and my kids being the smart kids in a sea of underachievers and with teachers bogged down by dealing with issues related to poverty instead of focusing on how to teach more effectively, well, my kids’ best interests come first. Period.) My parents faced a dilemma that you may appreciate. They originally intended that their four children attend neighborhood schools. Our neighborhood was mixed socioeconomically, but skewed towards working class. So naturally the neighborhood schools skewed this way too. (Especially with St. Anthony’s up the street). The kids were rough. They bullied my sister and brother (mostly my sister) and made their lives a living hell. And I am sure the curriculum wasn’t that great either. After about four years of waiting for things to improve, my mother found out about the bussing program. That’s how all of us got to go crosstown to the “good” schools (still urban, though). It was a dilemma for them because they wanted to be that much needed “middle class presence” in the community. And here they were, getting the benefits of living in the hood while saying “fuck you” to the local schools…where a “middle class presence” was needed the most. My parents would have been awesome in the PTA or volunteering in the classrooms. They and others like them could have pressured the school administration to make positive changes. But how long would that have taken? And who has time and energy to do that kind of fighting? When it’s your kids’ educations on the line, I guess ideals fall by the wayside and you just go with what works _now_. I used to think they were “sell-outs” for abandoning the schools. But now I understand why they made that choice. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/467 "2013-08-13T00:01:21Z")
I thought that rant was pretty good. I myself hate when the garage faces the street, but having one around back facing an alley is fine. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/468 "2013-08-13T00:19:44Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > The kids were rough. They bullied my sister and brother (mostly my sister) and made their lives a living hell. And I am sure the curriculum wasn’t that great either. After about four years of waiting for things to improve, my mother found out about the bussing program. That’s how all of us got to go crosstown to the “good” schools (still urban, though). > > It was a dilemma for them because they wanted to be that much needed “middle class presence” in the community. And here they were, getting the benefits of living in the hood while saying “fuck you” to the local schools…where a “middle class presence” was needed the most. My parents would have been awesome in the PTA or volunteering in the classrooms. They and others like them could have pressured the school administration to make positive changes. But how long would that have taken? And who has time and energy to do that kind of fighting? When it’s your kids’ educations on the line, I guess ideals fall by the wayside and you just go with what works _now_. > > I used to think they were “sell-outs” for abandoning the schools. But now I understand why they made that choice. I understand why they did it too and I think I would as a parent as well. I am not sure what side of the argument that supports and God bless for them for doing that. However, I would interpret that story to mean that good parents will always do what is best for their children individually. If that means living in a cheaper neighborhood and volunteering to have their own kids bused to a better school because they really believe in it, I am all for it. That is completely different though from passing wide-scale laws that force the same thing on everyone just because it worked out well for you and your family. We already know busing as a widespread policy can lead to disaster for all involved. See the failed Boston area busing experiment in the late 70’s - early 80’s for proof of that. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/469 "2013-08-13T00:41:53Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > That is completely different though from passing wide-scale laws that force the same thing on everyone just because it worked out well for you and your family. It’s a good thing I haven’t advocated any “wide-scale laws”, then. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/470 "2013-08-13T00:55:23Z")
I should add that I am white but grew up in a very poor area. My parents were educated but that is all we had and the whole situation was dysfunctional due to family issues starting at an early age to put it mildly. It was never a question that my job was to leave home at 18 and never come back and that is what happened. My mother told that to me bluntly and I always took it as fact because I knew she only wanted the best for me that I couldn’t have if I stuck around longer than necessary I was financially independent by the age of 16 by working near full-time in high school for minimum wage and got a full scholarship to a great private college to send me on my way. It still took three jobs to support my living expenses in college to even afford the basics like food that weren’t fully provided but I did it and also good a full scholarship to an Ivy League graduate school. It would be a fairy-tale story except I didn’t like my adviser school so I dropped out on was on my own again. I started a new career and had modest success for a while and then crashed and burned not once but three times and started over each time. It eventually worked out again and I am happy where I am today but it certainly hasn’t been easy or traditional. I may look like a typical white suburbanite but I have seen and done it all and been a part of all socioeconomic classes along the way. I don’t like some of the views expressed in this thread because they sound like something I have noticed among liberals in general. They treat poor people like museum pieces that can be used as another educational tool and yet they don’t have any real, personal interest in them. I still have all the same poor friends I always had )black and white) even though I am fairly wealthy today. My views are based on individual, not group traits however. The vast majority of chronically poor people really do have something terribly wrong with them and I don’t really value my experiences with most of them. I have done my time already and would happily trade it for a more insulated lifestyle. That is what I want for my kids as well. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/471 "2013-08-13T01:05:27Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > It’s a good thing I haven’t advocated any “wide-scale laws”, then. I know you didn’t. I was responding to a more general theme in the thread and not you in particular. You are always reasonable **Monstro** and I understood your point quite well and agree with it even if the subtleties are lost on some. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/472 "2013-08-13T03:14:40Z")
**SlackerInc** , drafting off of? That is an odd way to think of the advantage of not being the smartest in a group. No, challenged by. I want each of my kids to be the best whatever they are they can be. That desire trumps much else. My kids, btw, are not gifted and neither am I.\* We got enough smarts to get by so long as we couple it with habits of mind, curiosity, and some willingness to apply ourselves with some discipline. Getting my kids to learn those things are what I care and have cared most about. I don’t want them to think of themselves as “smart” and therfore able to do well; I want them to appreciate that they are smart enough … IF and only if the rest is also true. I do appreciate that story **monstro**. **Shagnasty** well sure we’ve established that some liberals hate suburbs … and that many do not … and some hate particular aspects that some, maybe even many suburbs have. Yes it is stupid to generalize too much about suburbs or city neighborhoods; too much individual variation. Your generalization about the attitudes of liberals is equally unjustified. \*One of my proudest parenting stories: our oldest was going to move on the the Middle school and our overly full of themselves school parents were getting a presentation about the Middle school. Question after question about whether or not the school would give enough challenge for their gifted kids. My turn came up: “As the parent of a kid who is NOT gifted, who has some major organizational skills to master, and who might get confused going class to class, what do you have for us?” The looks I got were priceless. Thing was of course I knew most of those kids: not gifted, not gifted, not gifted … okay you, gifted … not gifted, not gifted … Smart, sure. In “gifted ed” some of them. (Heck even my kid was, didn’t mean much.) Lots of parent support, yes. Gifted, no. And my kid now 27 is doing alright. The one I said okay you gifted went to Harvard and has already become a pretty accomplished journalist. ---
**Author:** ![Truman\_Burbank](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@Truman\_Burbank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Truman_Burbank)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/473 "2013-08-13T03:49:15Z")
If he was so smart, why did he pick journalism? ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/474 "2013-08-13T12:51:48Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I think you may want to consider the possibility that you are conflating correlation and causation. I strongly suspect that if a wealthy district’s school swapped student bodies with a poor school, that the performance of each would surprise you. Or an even better illustration would be if the student bodies were 50% randomly swapped. Of course this is true. I’m surprised that you bring this up, since it basically proves my point. It’s not the school itself, physically, that matters. It’s size, location, quality of teachers, budget, etc all aren’t nearly as important as the kids who go there. That’s why people invest so much in where their kids go to school. That’s why even secular parents often go with Catholic schools. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/475 "2013-08-13T12:55:29Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I myself hate when the garage faces the street, but having one around back facing an alley is fine. Really? Can I ask why? I’ve never heard of this one. I knew lots of far left and green party people hated lawns, but why the hate for garages? I can’t keep up with all the everyday things that inspire hatred I guess. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/476 "2013-08-13T12:59:43Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Bet me 500 bucks and I’ll prove them to you. Money, mouth. > > But ask yourself: do I really strike you as the sort of person who does not have gifted kids? I would say for at least 60% of the people who post on here, you should be utterly unsurprised if they make such a claim. (In my case, my kids have slightly regressed toward the mean: I have never scored lower than the 99th percentile on any standardised test in my life.) Apologies for this. On re-reading that it seems clear that you you were talking about just your kids. I first read the statement below to mean that the kids in the school with “poorest census tract in the state” average those scores, not just your kids. > [@](#): > > Yet on the standardised tests mandated by the state and the federal government via NCLB, they get very few percentile scores below 99, and none below 98. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/477 "2013-08-13T13:41:14Z")
Some newspaper articles I read the other day about the 30th anniversary of DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) kind of pointed out the point I was trying to make upthread… There are 13 cities in the Metroplex who are part of DART, and who pay 1% of their sales-tax to DART for public transit. Mind you, this is out of a possible 2.25% total that the cities can control (the other 6% is state sales tax). A lot of the further-out suburbs don’t participate in DART because they don’t want to give half their sales tax revenue to something that primarily serves low-income Dallas residents. This is a perfect example of suburban priorities being different than city priorities- why should people in Frisco pay 1% of their sales tax to _possibly_ see a light rail line in 20 years, and maybe get some cruddy bus lines that just go to and from Dallas in the meantime? It doesn’t benefit them, so why should they be compelled to pay in, if they have better things to do with that 1%? Hell, I think DART sucks, and I live in Dallas. Their routes are really slow, and are either aimed at the south half of the city, or for getting people to and from downtown. The number of cross-town routes is pretty low, and the distance between lines can be very large in the northern half of the city (and yet, stops are like 60 yards apart on busy streets?) ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2013, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/478 "2013-08-13T20:13:09Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > Really? Can I ask why? > > I’ve never heard of this one. I knew lots of far left and green party people hated lawns, but why the hate for garages? > > I can’t keep up with all the everyday things that inspire hatred I guess. > > 😃 The hate for garages generally I can’t speak to as much, because as I said I don’t mind them in back. I suppose it’s just that it makes a neighborhood car oriented rather than bike or pedestrian oriented. But as I say, even though I do not have a car personally, I don’t put forth a blanket condemnation of garages. Having the garage in front, though, is an abomination just in aesthetic and architectural terms. It also leads in many cases to the equivalent of displaying a grungy basement or utility room for the world to see as they drive by, or greeting them as they drive into your driveway. Or if you walked by a restaurant and the most visible portion you saw through the window was the prep area of the kitchen or even the walk in cooler. But even if the door is always kept closed, which is not that commonly the case, it is still an ugly “face” to put forth to the world. It’s so utterly lazy and slovenly to have the garage facing front like that, we might as well all just walk around in public wearing Snuggies with food stains all over them. (Mea culpa BTW if I was ambiguous in my wording about the test score thing.) ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/479 "2013-08-14T01:33:17Z")
I think **SlackerInc** must be talking about [snout houses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Snouthouses.jpg). ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 14, 2013, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965/480 "2013-08-14T01:38:55Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > I think **SlackerInc** must be talking about [snout houses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Snouthouses.jpg). My, those **are** ugly things! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965.md?page=23) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-liberals-hate-suburbs/664965.md?page=25)