Let’s take a break from the news and go back in time to 2015.
In this insightful and remarkably funny TED talk, writer Rich Benjamin shares the insights he gained about the American character from his two and a half year investigation of “Whitopias” – rapidly growing white communities that are brimming with affability and an orderly low-key charm.
It’s an interesting spin on white flight. Benjamin defines a Whitopia as a place that has seen a six percent population gain since 2000, but only from primarily white migrants. “And third,” he says, “the Whitopia has an ineffable charm, a pleasant look and feel, a je ne sais quoi.”
He traveled around the country examining the attributes of these communities, but he lived for an extended period in three: St. George, Utah; Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; and Forsyth County, Georgia.
As a black man, he stood out while he tried to blend in and he approached his adventure as if he were a sweetly bemused anthropologist, intrigued by the behaviors around him. He asked local people to help him learn their passions for fishing, golfing, target shooting and poker, and he went all in as a mega-church member. He even crashed a weekend conference of Aryan Nations members! They were…surprised to have him but it went okay!
By the time you get used to his Whitopia-ish delivery, he brings the goods:
But what does it all mean? Whitopian dreaming, Whitopia migration, is a push-pull phenomenon, full of alarming pushes and alluring pulls, and Whitopia operates at the level of conscious and unconscious bias. It’s possible for people to be in Whitopia not for racist reasons, though it has racist outcomes. Many Whitopians feel pushed by illegals, social welfare abuse, minorities, density, crowded schools. Many Whitopians feel pulled by merit, freedom, the allure of privatism — privatized places, privatized people, privatized things. And I learned in Whitopia how a country can have racism without racists.
But what does it all mean? Whitopian dreaming, Whitopia migration, is a push-pull phenomenon, full of alarming pushes and alluring pulls, and Whitopia operates at the level of conscious and unconscious bias. It’s possible for people to be in Whitopia not for racist reasons, though it has racist outcomes. Many Whitopians feel pushed by illegals, social welfare abuse, minorities, density, crowded schools. Many Whitopians feel pulled by merit, freedom, the allure of privatism — privatized places, privatized people, privatized things. And I learned in Whitopia how a country can have racism without racists.
Listening to him from way back in 2015, it’s easy to see the foundations of the political divisions yet to come, and the underlying but unexamined reasons why immigration is one of the key triggers for people who have come to embrace the Whitopian promise.
“[M]ost white people in Whitopia are neither white supremacists or white separatists; in fact, they’re not there for explicitly racial reasons at all. Rather, they emigrate there for friendliness, comfort, security, safety –reasons that they implicitly associate to whiteness in itself.”
Enjoy. In other news, an unintentionally all-international round-up is below.