Just saw this in my Post & Courier newsletter.
Just imagine if the article read this way instead:
>Mount Pleasant Police seized a total of 12 pickup trucks and SUVs from a parking lot on Coleman Boulevard after receiving reports of two people driving recklessly through the Old Village, roughly a block from the school that morning.
You know the type. Whenever a sizeable chunk of land is about to be developed, hordes of NIMBYs declare that the best possible use for that land would be a park. It's a very popular idea.
But from personal experience in my area, I almost never see generic middle-aged to old white people at parks. You know who I see? Mostly immigrants and black people. I checked Wikipedia to confirm the demographics of this town I'm in. It's 60% white. You would expect (all things being equal) to see 60% white people enjoying this very expensive and expansive downtown park, right?
Nothing could be further than the truth. It's my personal opinion that generations of suburban living have made your average (white) local very indisposed to ever go to a park. So you have this weird dynamic in which the politically powerful locals use park-ism to fight housing, then never actually go enjoy the parks themselves. It's weird.
My wife (a first-gen immigrant herself) and I were keeping track as we walked in the park tonight. I only saw one Anglo white family. The other whites were all Slavic immigrants.
Anybody else experience this? It's like immigrants and marginalized groups didn't get the hive-mind memo to hide at home watching TV; they haven't been Americanized yet to the point that they're unable to enjoy public spaces (thankfully).
And this is HUGELY contrasted to my time in China, where old people are probably the main demographic at parks. Something to research another time.
Anyway, I wasn't sure whether to post this in r/suburbanhell or here, but I figure it makes sense to post it here just due to the "give us more parks!" NIMBY rhetoric that's so common.
