Bring Something To Think About

In the interests of the world, for all the children, for the environment and humanity in general, I carpooled with a co-worker to the Elk Grove bulk substation yesterday morning. It's relatively close to both our homes housal units, so he agreed to pick me up and off we were to the substation.

We drove down Franklin Blvd. southbound at roughly 7:40AM. Not too bad, as Elk Grove has no jobs of its own and no one is headed southbound that time of morning. Nonetheless, I offered a warning -- don't turn east on Whitelock Parkway. Find another way to the Elk Grove 230kV substation.

He screwed up. He turned east on Whitelock instead of heading south towards Bilby, which resulted in a full half hour delay trying to navigate through the morass of vehicular units dropping kids off at both Franklin High School and Pinkerton Middle School.

I sat in the passenger's seat but had a lively conversation with my co-worker. I wondered what all those other single occupant drivers do as they are trying to motor through south Elk Grove, what they think about while they waste a half hour each day just trying to get from their housal unit driveway to the on-ramp to I-5, then to face a daily 185-mile commute to Milpitas to work in a software lab or some shit like that. Do these people bring something to think about while spending two to three hours a day in a vehicular unit?

This is the life they want so that their kids can attend the nearly-all-white Franklin High/Liz Pinkerton schools. I mean that exactly as I've stated it. Neighbors around me have clearly indicated to me how they'd prefer their children to attend schools whose kids look like them. It's absolutely clear. My co-worker, in the confines of his own truck, has no difficulty telling me how he hates that nigger in the white house. Racism is alive and well in Elk Grove -- it never went away. It takes on various forms -- economic segregation, educational segregation, different political ideologies...

Tell me -- how many minorities attend Christian Brothers High School, deep in the heart of Black/Hispanic/Asian South Sacramento? Virtually none. Economic/educational segregation is not limited to the non-pious, it's everywhere. White Christian mothers refuse to have their children attend a school comprised of 30% "other," with children of people who look like "the help."

I'm not going to blog how I'm above any of this. I'm a white guy who's just as interested in living in an environment with others who look like me -- actually, those who act/behave like me. However, I don't think Obama's a goddamn nigger simply because I maintain a different political viewpoint. I like to think that I'm open about my own feelings, my own racism, and I admit it. I admit I maintain some degree of hesitancy, if that's the correct word, towards four shirtless black guys in a Dodge Neon while bicycling on Franklin Blvd.

I remember -- very vividly -- a black co-worker at WAPA who said he was petrified while working in San Francisco of entering an elevator with a single white woman. If this doesn't turn the stereotypical race issue on it's head, I don't know what would. I doubt very many any of the white females I know would tell me that they'd feel comfortable in an elevator ride with a single black man. They wouldn't feel comfortable, OK, I can perhaps understand that...but they would probably never assume that the black guy wouldn't either.

Against my monologue on race I return to the suburban madness of the "new" Whitelock area of Elk Grove. This is a total fucking wasteland in my opinion -- auto dominant, geometries that only support the car, foreign-energy and foreign-consumable intensive, jobless (save for roadbuilding and teaching), culture-less, community-less -- yet tens of thousands of affluent, energy-ignorant people scramble for all this "newness."