I’m not sure how you “refute” a term of art used by a group of people for political reasons.
Nativists didn’t care about Native Americans in the sense of American Indians. They cared about current immigration from Europe and that tendency has had effects on American politics.
You’re arguing about oranges when others are discussing apples.
I give up. Have fun. You go do your thing and the rest of our society will do its thing since there seems to be little intersection. Luckily, you aren’t a US citizen.
I often wonder if there is another dictionary that the rest of us don’t have… so many of these conversations devolve into what a word means and often that meaning is so… personal? Obscure? It becomes almost impossible to converse is any meaningful way because we’re always back tracking trying to find a common language. You are a better person than I with far more patience. I tip my hat sir.
Reality of who’s renting anything in this town may not reflect the marketing materials stated targets. Only two of the recent new high rises (we’re up to 7 or 8 in the last 3-ish years) have been explicitly marketed to undergrads.
@Missy_Pants: It is for block cheese, butter, cat litter, onions, garlic, coffee and oddball loss-leaders like the storage bins we got for our son’s Legos ($50 at Amazon, $20 at Costco). And large chunks of cow and pig tend to be noticeably cheaper there (my SO likes to smoke that kind of thing). You can’t shop in just one store and get the best deals.
I recognize that Costco is probably worth it for families with kids, and that I’m coming at this from a position of great priviledge, but as a DINK household with two small dogs, its so not worth it. (Also, I’m a fancypants weirdo and only buy local organic meats, which they don’t have at Costco, nor my fancypants local organic dog food.)
Our COSTCO has a gas station which is consistently 10 cents less than any other station nearby. That 10 cents per gallon for two vehicles easily meets the membership fee for the year for us. And then we buy other crap there too and save money. Overall, the membership is worth it. DINK-world, probably not. DI3K, yes. We’re almost at DICK. I’ll admit it. I’m a dick. A fancypants jerkface. I like me this way.
We are gentrifying, just very very slowly. We’re getting an artisinal perogie place (not even joking) … at least I hope we are. Construction seems to go in fits and starts.
and @EricE…
In D.C.‘s case I had figured that permit parking was possibly the last defense of the people who had lived for years in (for example) Shaw, e.g. preserving residents’ parking spaces because of more people visiting U Street. It would still be because of gentrification or, at least, a changing neighborhood. Although in Shaw/U Street a lot of that change has been in the form of Ethiopian businesses, and I can’t really see them as “gentrifiers.” At the same time, I think the Ethiopian population in that neighborhood is shrinking, or certainly smaller, compared to Skyline near Alexandria or Silver Spring, which leads me to think that those businesses cater less and less to Ethiopians.
Count me as guilty for driving in to pick up some food, as Habesha’s food is a very good value – that’s how I noticed that I can’t legally park any closer than 2 blocks away from the place. I live in P.G. and there are no longer any is only one Ethiopian restaurants in the county† (Rebecca’s is now a food truck) and maybe 2 places left that sell packaged injera.
EDIT:
† I forgot one because we never eat there. I could have qualified that with “that my wife is willing to eat at.” For some reason she has this bias against the one that remains. THey don’t do anything wrong but, according to her, they also don’t do anything right.
I think Oriental also is more offensive when used to mean East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc…) as that’s for whom the term was used racially in the past. AFAIK it wasn’t really ever used for Middle Eastern or South Asian people in a casual, racist way (the are plenty of other broad-brush offensive terms for them!). My wife (Chinese) bristles a little at “Oriental” flavored ramen, because it’s supposed to be a vaguely East Asian flavor *. Oriental rugs aren’t associated with East Asia, or East Asian stereotypes, so it doesn’t carry the same sting.
* not to the degree that we both did after an elderly neighbor described out daughter as “She looks like you [me, white] with a little bit of the oriental mixed in from her, that’s good,” but a small bristle nonetheless…
Between ALL the savings and the cash back (from both Costco and their branded credit card), I save a lot money by being a member there. You just have to be smart about what you use it for and only go with a well thought out list.
As you say, the gas alone can be worth it. Or getting a new set of tires. Or buying snacks for the various sport teams and other extracurricular groups over the course of a year. And the 40 pound bags of dog food!
One of the best things about DC is the Ethiopian food!
Here in Chicago, permit parking is demanded when a neighborhood gentrifies to the point that the ratio of people living there to their cars starts to approximate 1:1 instead of 4:1.
Really? It’s not too difficult when the term itself is self-contradictory, and the political reasoning easily audited. It might be a term of art, but all terms of art need not be equally artful. I refute the concept which the term represents as being inaccurate.
Why does this keep getting repeated? Again, I understand this.
No, I am pointing out the difference as a discredit to the term, in this usage, based upon it’s lack of referential consistency.
As much as I enjoy our exchanges, Al, you might want to consider that your strategy tends to be a predictable tendency to hide behind unprovable claims of consensus rather than standing up for your own views. You make smug remarks about my comments without answering any of my many questions. You insist upon a unilateral burden of proof from me, whilst offering none for other people’s views that you offer. It is frustrating trying to communicate with people who seem so averse to being critical of others politics.
and your strategy is “make up my own terms for everything and then argue about the cultural basis of anything that anyone else brings up, even if it doesn’t matter or isn’t relevant to the thread or people in question.” It’s tiresome. You’re too busy trying to teach everyone how relative all cultural things are that you can’t have a basic discussion without it devolving into terminology every time. Not everyone wants to have the same conversation with you over and over again.
How many terms have I made up? I do often discuss the significance of terms we mutually use.
I am sorry if you feel that way. It seems like an obvious assumption to make that people introduce topics about culture because they want to discuss them here. Perhaps I am mistaken, or simply don’t go about it well.
I would prefer not to, but this comes up in practically every conversation I have. That people discuss their culture with a huge baggage of assumptions that they take for granted. I think it has the unfortunate effect of echo-chamber, where it is simply easier to discuss with people who already share those assumptions. But to me, it feels intellectually dishonest. If people do know how relative (and participatory) all cultural things are, they seem to forget this every few seconds.
If you don’t see “gentrification” as a cultural matter, than how do you frame it?
I agree that conversations which end with disputes about terminology are failures. But I think that productive conversations begin with people defining their terms, because they are happy to use them, and so that they can be understood. I grew up with semantics, and it still seems to be a more effective method than “let’s all assume that we magically mean the same thing, somehow”.
As for disputing the significance of political terms (such as “Nativism”), I would hope that people on BoingBoing can consider that most political terms do not withstand much logical scrutiny. Why not quarantine and disassemble their memetics for the common good, so that people can live in reason? It seems naive to take them at face value. YPSODMMV - your preferred standard of distance measurement may vary.
If only it was all about me! Then we could simply kill me and move on!
But consider how easy the occasional meta-discussion is compared to the burden of the other side of the equation:
Might one suppose that they get tired of making the same assumptions over and over? And using them as the basis of conversation with others? Saying that they want this, prefer it, implies making a conscious choice. Being content to leave such reflexive assumptions unexamined nullifies the person’s autonomy, and denies their agency, largely omitting them from real participation in the very culture they are trying to discuss.
ETA: To get even more “meta”, perhaps this spreading network of cultural assumptions is, itself, the true nature of gentrification!
I recall Cometbus speculating that punks may be at the root of gentrification (at least, in 1990 when I read it). Punks go for the cheap rents. Artistic types move in with, or follow, the punks. People with $$$ who buy art follow the artists…
