To: Edwarda who wrote (1986) 11/29/1999 1:44:00 AM
From: Neocon of 3246
I am going to go off of the topic of music here, perhaps to come back to it later. Right now, I want to make some observations relevant to previous discussions.....
I grew up in a place called Marlow Heights, Maryland, not far outside of Southeast Washington, D.C. I spent my first four years, and last two before college, inside of Southeast. As it happens, both of my parents grew up in the District, and I had relatives all over the city or near suburbs, mostly on the Maryland side.
A few years after I left Marlow Heights, it reached what sociologists call "the tipping point", going from a highly integrated area to a predominantly black area rather rapidly. Not too long after I graduated college, much of what I might have said about the area was "inoperative".
Since my parents were divorced, and my father moved to North Bethesda/Potomac when I was a teenager, I spent a fair amount of time in that area of Montgomery County, as a weekend visitor. Since I moved back into the city when I was 16, and liked to explore, I spent a fair amount of time on the bus going to Georgetown, sometimes Dupont Circle, the Mall, and sometimes other parts of downtown. Almost none of my Maryland friends had spent any appreciable time in the Northwest suburbs or inside of the city.
One of my BROTHERS is confined to a wheelchair, with cerebral palsy, but he has a heavy duty electric wheelchair, and gets around quite a bit. He spends a lot of time on Capitol Hill, much of it after hours, sitting on the back portico of the Capitol playing chess with one of his buddies who is on the Capitol police force. He is there at various times, though, and knows a bunch of the policemen. He hears gossip that would never make it on the news about various politicians. He also gets a chance to form impressions from occasional interaction. Since he is in a wheelchair, and his limbs are spastic, he judges a lot by how people act around him. For example, Ted Kennedy ignores him, but Jesse Helms is always friendly.
I mention these few things because they constitute somewhat unique experiences. Hardly anyone I know has spent much time around the various sections of the city, or exploring diverse suburban enclaves, and, of course, even my own experience is of necessity limited. Apart from those that work on the Hill, and some journalists who cover it, hardly anyone has access to even the channels that my brother does, nor are they placed, as I am, to benefit from it. I want to keep this brief, so I will let these examples suffice.
The point is that "Washington" is, to a degree, an abstraction even to those who live there, as they are mostly confined to their different geographical, social, and occupational "cul de sacs". I have little idea of what it was like for those were sent to the National Cathedral School or St. Alban's, although I have known enough people from those places to have a better idea than most, however incomplete. They do not know what it is like to grow up in a modest area on the "wrong side" of the city, or to be impoverished after divorce.
Places with which I was familiar 20 years ago are so different to me, I am continually regaining my bearings. I had quite a few black friends as a child and teenager, and my sister-in-law is black, but I never knew anyone truly from the "ghetto" well, especially not someone in a gang, or running hard drugs. Much of what I know about Washington, in spite of going around the city to an unusual degree, comes from newspapers, television, radio, and books.
Those who live in other parts of the country tend to imagine that all white folk inside the Beltway work for the government, or are absorbed in politics. Although clearly the federal government is a major employer, especially if one counts the military, most people do not work for it, and not only that, most of them that I have met aren't much more interested than people in, say, Kansas City. The view of Washington as a blur of monuments or a place obsessed with politics is not even close to the experience of most inhabitants "inside the Beltway".
If one, then, were to ask someone randomly encountered about the city, it is likely that that person would be supplying very little from direct experience or informal social contacts, but would mostly be talking about what he or she had read or heard through the media, or mouthing a bunch of cliches. This is especially true if one were to ask about a serious analysis of the problems in the city, or the state of politics "inside the Beltway".
Thus, the limitations of experience make the search for an "ideal informant" daunting, and perhaps futile, and those who come closest are likely to have come to have something useful to say as much by study and reflection as by "experience".......
Message 12129038 |
