new york supremacy

I don't think anyone could dispute that New York is a far more exciting and captivating place than DC. Some might even argue that DC isn't a real city because it has not become the beautifully rigid cultural hub that New York City is and has been since the days of kisses blown on Ellis Island. But what makes a city and why doesn't DC fit the bill?

Y'all know how I am about definitions so once we consult Webster on this, he states that a city is most directly these:

• a large or important town
• an incorporated municipality usually governed by a mayor and a board of aldermen or councilmen
• any town with a large population
• the financial district of a region

Webster does some talking about cities being a metropolis and for my purposes THIS is most helpful...a city is the central or principal place for activity.

I was having a discussion not too long ago with 2 of the loves of my life about what is 'American' and why a lot foreigners seem to detest the concept of 'American' so much. One of them was from NYC and the other was raised in Nigeria and attended boarding school in England, she loves NYC and plans to move there upon receipt of her degree.

Apparently, DC epitomizes the typical 'American' way in that its a fake city. DC seems to hold a demographic of solely government workers, politicians, rich white people and black people. The city is self-segregated with most of the poorer populations taking root in Northeast or Southeast. If you have the money the only place you'd be found is in Northwest. Click here to see an Ethnicity (distribution) map of the District on a fellow blogger's site. 


What I think irked my friends the most is that there is no diversity in DC, there is relatively no culture, and the choices available for career paths are limited. 'American' is choosing an identity but having trouble sustaining the other parts of your culture or being. There are no gray areas. Lack of culture seemed to be the main gripe. America is a melting pot but everyone is forced to assimilate or provide reasons for their chosen identity. Apparently, in NYC, individual culture transcends the traditional American identity, individual culture thrives and survives in NYC. 

Some of the positive things identified in this discussion about the empire state of perfection were as follows:   

• NYC is a cultural hub-immigrants and especially self-made NYers can maintain their culture without having to change/assimilate 
• No matter what their income or social status, the people who live in NY are exposed to the privilege that comes from living in one of the most highly respected cities in the world
• Living in NYC grants you unlimited access to most things night or day including at subway system that never closes and night life ambiance fed by clubs and bars that close much later than your average 2-3am DC pub
• NYU, Parsons, FIT, and a slew of expensive private schools
• Retail Heaven: Flagships for several popular fashion brands and Canal St.
• Inspiration for both the stylistically sound and stylistically challenged

DC has no real discernible characteristics relative to a diverse populus, style, unlimited access, or fashion. I've never been bored once in NYC whereas during my time in DC I've struggled to find a diverse array of things to get into. In DC, there are 6 places to be seen at: Shadow Room, the Park, Station 9, the Diner in AdMo, District, and the Georgetown Cafe.


Although I, like most of the general population, love NYC, I'd argue that its difficult to chastise cities or a lesser caliber, such as Washington, DC. I say this because the foundation of America is in fact nothing purely 'American'...America is one large conglomerate of all the nations and cultures that fought to attain a piece of her. In essence anything 'American' is fake because it's jocks the swag of at least one other culture's normative practices. I'd also push this point because NYC 'got lucky'...the cultural hub was bound to be what it is today based on what immigration made it. NY is the greatness it is because of history and the great surge of immigrants to this particular section of the East Coast during the late 1800s and early 1900s. It's not as though all the major cities in the world entered a competition and NYC won just because everyone loved it more. This was not a pissing contest. Of course, the reason everyone loves NYC aside, most cities are magical places with wishes of opportunity written into the sidewalks...or so everyone thinks. To date, NYC is still one of most difficult cities to make it in.


Before I allow you to ponder about this as a testament in the cultural bible, I'd like to make a daring point about privilege. When I hear my friends who are from more privileged backgrounds, $20k/year private high school education or access to thousands of dollars per weekly shopping spree, my first response is to be defensive but yet I must catch myself. Not everyone can be from NYC and it's OK that I'm not. Not everyone can have access to the types of things that seem to render a vast population of NYers successful. However still, nothing can disavow the greatness of NYC except for perhaps, the inherent arrogance of its predominately over-privileged inhabitants. 


What do you think?

*Special Thanks to Aaron Hurd...Aaron's blog can be viewed here.

i vant ta be a celebritayy

"Before you graduate please define success for yourself. If you don't you will get caught up with what success means for the rest of the world."

I keep her words near and dear to my heart…but I’ve never fully listened to them. When touching upon the impending sorrow most college grads feel upon being hung from a helicopter and dropped into an ice cold bucket of real life, I think my soror said it best.

I have recently become rather infatuated with celebrities, one in particular whom I will not name (Kim Kardashian), but only insofar as they are deemed superhuman. Now my most loyal readers already know that I consider myself irresistibly philosophical and given this there would be absolutely no reason why the eminence of seemingly normal people wouldn't be intriguing to me. I find it incredible that all it takes for un-famous people to second guess themselves is to see a celebrity who enjoys attention, accolades, neverending access to the world, and money. I realize that by implying that celebs aren’t the only ones that can be looked up to I am echoing the archaic ideal of teachers and doctors being recognized more (which really means being paid more).

Many may have realized this before but my epiphany is something which I really do pray helps me get over my obsession. We are the reason celebrities are the way they are. If there was no paparazzi, no cameras, no multi-million dollar salaries, no gossip sites/magazines/tabloids, and no envy...celebrities would cease to exist as the fuel to young aspiration that they are now. They are normal human beings in all ways. They get tired, they have bad hair days, they get pimples, they think about how they are getting old and must do something worthwhile. They overwork and underdeliver and sometimes the opposite. Although they seem to float carelessly thru life, they are forced to hide their humanness because somehow we've tagged 'impenetrable' onto the definition of 'celebrity'. If we weren’t in their faces all the time they wouldn’t feel it necessary to be on their A-game all the time. The only reason they are special and we compare ourselves to them is because they make drastically more money than a substantial part of the globe.

Celebrities look/are perfect because of money. If impoverished and middle-class people had enough money, they would look airbrushed all the time too. They would endorse products and lose weight at lightning speed and donate $1 million to Haiti Earthquake Relief. I never really thought of money as an enabler in this way and I know it sounds trite but money is really the only way to substantiate the label of celebrity. Well, duh. The substantiation of the celebrity label also shows in what types of work we think are deserving of mass sums of money. I do thought experiments on the regular (to determine level of possibility) and my current relish comes in the form of picturing how the world would be if we started ignoring celebs...also known as treating them and their human faults as human. Would Hollywood writher up and sink beneath the ocean?

When my soror elaborated her point she went on to say the once out of school you come into contact with a variety of people. She said she met people in their 40s who made less money/year than she did and they were struggling. She met people who hadn't even hit their 20s yet and they made millions a year, they were set for life. But what do we mean when we say "set for life"...you can buy whatever you want? or you can buy whatever you need? Both? Aren’t all people deserving of enough money to buy what they want/need? No, I am not communist.

So, given what my soror so brilliantly relayed to me it's quite unnatural for people to view their success outside of their financial standing and by what age they attain such financial standing. Money buys any and everything if you have enough of it. I don't know that I have a personalized answer for the question of whether money buys happiness. Is success seen as the attainment of a large sum of money in whatever one’s field/passion is? Some might say it’s the amount of change you can inflict with your passion but others might say money is needed in order to fully and freely pursue one’s passion. I have not figured out my definition of success yet.

I find myself wishing I had enough money to just be able to dabble in whatever I wished. I don’t really know what I’m good at or where my passions could lead me. It only makes sense that I would aspire to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible so that I could then use the money to try a whole bunch of shit and see what makes me happy!

whiteness does not denote a 'lack of culture'

After reading an article today during my commute about racial violence suffered by a white family in Akron, Ohio at the hands of a group of black teens, I was reminded of a lecture given in one of my sociology classes at UVa. The lecturer was a young white male who couldn't possibly have had his Ph.D but you know...whatever. He mainly taught a class on White culture and how White people are perceived as 'colorless' and 'culture less' because the pool of knowledge usually prescribed for narrow mindedness is flooded with the teary eyed story of some other minority. What is most provocative about this is that this view fully endorses, perhaps even hegemonically, 'reverse racism' (or possible racism towards all groups of people) and the ideology that it couldn't possibly exist. Only Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, & purple people eaters can be discriminated against right? Ugh, where is Barney when you need him?

At any rate it is not easy to draw from memory many top news stories about the following: White people protesting, being arrested, sitting in the back of the bus (or the metro for christ sakes they could do that every once in awhile), evading taxes, or fighting about the baby mama status of a woman. One must ask themself, "Now why might that be?" Because no one is tuned in about White people. White people are the bottom line, the standard and so long as hip-hop "moves" people and the hispanic population lets dirty diapers roll out of their driveways, white people will ALWAYS be the anti-bad, the opposite of all those 'crazy', underrepresented cultures.

I am not making a statement about stereotypes more so than I am more effectively saying that different languages, skin colors, religions, socioeconomic statuses, etc. will always be more interesting than the melodrama of the people who look like or are deemed to be the ones that can be here freely and without scrutiny for their lifestyle, aka football and Coors light, ugh. I believe in culture wholeheartedly, everything that makes a person is their culture. Culture colors the very lense that we see things through.

We should start holding those who consider themselves White accountable for the things that are deemed a part of their culture or more importantly the things that they deem a part of their culture, even if those things are born from stereotypes. This means that black people can be perpetrators, hispanic people can be perpetrators, asians, purple...

Every culture has stereotypes, most of which are true, so there's no reason for any party to be offended. Whites can be the victims of hate crimes as proven by the particular story I read and many other everyday occurences.

As I am currently working on a project where I'll end up collecting and organizing a bunch of data about underrepresented groups in the government as well as some more specific organizations, I have come into contact with some great information. Right now, the most underrepresented group in the government is white women. WTF?! Who would have thought? Now I have my own ideas about government hires and undoubtedly why a lot of them are not white but I won't get into that solely because I like money and I like having a job.