Author’s Note: I was reluctant to write this article
because it is more personal than many of the ones I tend to write for this column.
Nevertheless, it is so on point with the divide that exists between the left
and the rest of America that I feel compelled to include it. I have changed the
names and even the genders of the people who are involved the incident in
question as well as the location it took place in. Everything else is true.
As my long-time readers
know I’ve lived in New York State all of my adult life and all of it in Queens.
Because much of my social circle and my employment is tied to Manhattan, I
believe I’ve spent somewhere between a quarter and a third of my life in New York
State in New York City proper. And during that time my opinion of the city that
never sleeps has pretty much been a constant: it’s a nice place to visit, but
even if I could afford to live there, I wouldn’t.
Having spent so much of
my life either in Manhattan or Manhattan adjacent I can say with all sincerity New
York City might be called ‘the number one city in America” if not on the entire
planet but the only thing it is number one is its opinion of itself. I acknowledge
and appreciate all of the great cultural landmarks of this city, all of its
architecture, all of its history but New York hasn’t been the center of anything
for a very long time.
We’ve long since dropped
in population behind California, Texas and Florida. We’ve never been the center
of entertainment since television took up residence in Hollywood in the 1960s
as well as film. We may be the center of finance in America but that pales
compared to other nations in Europe and Asia. And it’s telling that so many of
the institution that are quintessentially New York – the ballet, the opera, Broadway
– have long since passed the point that the average New Yorker – had they any
interest – would be able to afford them. New York’s apartments are among the
most expensive in the country and most people who live here can’t afford to
rent them, much less own them. And needless to say our teams in almost every
major league sport haven’t won championships in a very long time.
The only think that New
York City is number one at is it’s disproportionate
sense of its place in not only America, but the world. Such is our attitude
that while anyone who has lived in New York for even a year knows just how
obvious its flaws are, the only people allowed to talk about are themselves New
Yorkers. Nothing more sums up our sense of entitlement when Middle America
calls us the representation of all that is entitled and elite. “F--- you!” we react.
“Only we’re allowed to say what a shithole we are.”
Perhaps that’s why I’ve
never judged the people at Fox News for raging against New York in all its
forms. I don’t think they’re qualified to talk about anything else but
as native New Yorkers they know of what they speak there. Frankly the fact that
Democrats tend to call this hypocrisy shows that they don’t understand New
York: that particular double standard is part of being a New Yorker.
Indeed the only greater
insincerity I find in my native state is that so many progressives choose to
call this state their home and from that perch, judge the rest of the country for
being backwards, bigoted and elitist. This is a joke that is something that I’d
be shocked that has never come up on SNL or any of the late night comics
who broadcast from Manhattan. In this way when conservatives rail against comics like them
for not understanding ‘Real America’ they’re not entirely wrong.
New York is, by almost
any standard, a city of elitism and culture. The fact that is become the
groundswell for so many ‘progressive movements’ over the last decade strikes me
as laughable when it comes to the divide. Occupy Wall Street was, for all
intents and purposes, a lot of privileged children playing poor and no doubt
they actually stepped over homeless people to do so and never saw the
dissonance. So many of the major so-called ‘Justice Democrats’ have tried to
run campaigns that by any reasonable nature would be considered out of touch:
nothing strikes me as more absurd that Cynthia Nixon campaigning for governor and trying to get the representation of the ‘Working
Families Party’ – a party that is no doubt there only to make Democrats feel good
about themselves when they choose to vote for the Democratic candidate who’s
invariably listed there. And very little could speaks of entitlement than a
bunch of students at Columbia – Columbia! – were not only completely qualified
to understand the situation in Middle East but could bring about a peaceful
resolution with a student protest. The only thing that was more entitled was
their request for amnesty as part of demands: I could hear the chants: “What do
we want?” “Change – and for this march
not to appear on our permanent record!”
There’s always been a
certain level of elitism in so much of New York, but I never really thought
this was reflected in bigotry - until
today.
The last several months
I have been engaged in a part-time paid internship at an office job in New York.
While I was busy working this afternoon an individual came into the office who
I knew vaguely and started having a conversation with the new department head.
One of these people was white, one was African-American. Both of them live in
New York.
The two were having a
jovial conversation and I wasn’t paying any real attention to it. Then one of
them said: “You know if it wasn’t for New York City…” The next sentence caught
by attention. “Honestly places like Westchester, they’re basically the South.”
I started sweating hearing
this as well as the laughing in agreement. The other person said: “If I had the
choice I wouldn’t live” well, you don’t need to know but it was a suburb on
Long Island. Then the other person chuckled and said about when that individual
was in college in Buffalo he experienced something bigoted. (The person
transferred to Howard, so I assume they felt safer then.) They then said
essentially Long Island might as well be Jim Crow South. Well those weren’t the
exact words: they said Mayberry but that’s the implication.
One of them said: “New York City was the only thing holding this state together.” And at that point I left the room.
Reader it took me nearly
five minutes to calm down from that exchange. I had to wait another three for
that conversation to end and another three to find the inner strength to
restrain myself from not knocking on the door and engaging in an angry exchange.
I had little to lose by doing so: my internship will be over in a month and I
find it unlikely I will be working in that particular office setting again. But
I am civil in public as I usually am in my own writing for this column. (The
comments section is a different story but I’ve come to accept that’s the id for
this site.)
Now I’ve heard more bigoted
things said in my life, not merely on television but in my presence. But few
things have ever made me more infuriated – not the stuff I hear on the right
wing or the left and very little even on this site. And the reason it did, I
now realize, is because it encapsulate in a very real sense the divide that our
country faces is not solely on the far right.
Just as a reminder this
was said in New York City, a state that has been Democratic so long no Republican
presidential candidate in their right mind would campaign here with the hope of
carrying the state. (I know what happened Sunday night; few would argue the
inaccuracy of my statement.) This is a state that is among the most deep blue
in America. The two people speaking no doubt hate Trump with justifiable
contempt, voted for Hilary in 2016, Biden in 2020 and will no doubt vote for
Harris in 2024. But there are few conversations that could best encapsulate the
progressive mindset towards so much of the country that in their opinion if
you lived even twenty minutes away from Manhattan you might as well live in Tuscaloosa.
Now I have no doubt
that both these people, in their heart of hearts, don’t believe they’re bigots.
One of them, as I stated, was African-American and one I should mention was
female. Both of them are, no doubt, donors to liberal causes, will contribute
to Democratic campaigns and are no doubt convinced that the entire Republican
party is an existential threat to the country comparable to climate change. I’m
relatively sure that in their heart of hearts they didn’t think they were
really being offensive. I know if I’d gone up to them and told them that what
they were saying made me uncomfortable, they would apologize. However I’m also
aware that they would be sorry for making me feel uncomfortable and not
anything that actually said.
It's the laughter that
bothers me, the knowing self-aware tone of it that fundamentally troubles me
and that I have little doubt will keep me up at night no matter how much I try
not to think about it. It will linger past election day, will be there no
matter who ends up winning. And why I find at the end of the day, perhaps as big a symbol of the divide that
our nation faces that is far greater than just Republican versus Democrat.
I know these people.
Not well, but I’ve had multiple conversations with them. They’re nice, they’re
charming, they’re intelligent, they’re clearly educated. They live in a state
that has gone Democratic for the last two elections and will definitely keep
doing so for the foreseeable future. And they talk about the people who they
live with – in a place they call home
not thirty miles from where I was speaking – with the same visceral contempt
that I hear from Republicans about immigrants - or progressives about Trump voters. They’re
in the bastion of liberalism, not far from where Hakeem Jeffries and AOC
represent Congress, where other Democrats like Mondaire Jones may soon
represent. And they think the towns they live in, their neighborhoods are,
compared to Manhattan, racist, backwards, conservative. And if they can’t find
commonalities with the people who live in the same state as them, if
they find them morally lacking, if they find them untrustworthy…well, what hope
is there for anyone who lives in any of the other forty-nine states?
I know my state; I know
we look down on anyone who doesn’t come from ‘around here’. That’s as true if
you’re from Pennsylvania or Michigan; hell it’s true if you’re from New
Jersey. Maybe all of this is just a New York thing. Maybe I’m overreacting.
Maybe.
Still I can’t help but
wonder. What if I’d gone up to them and said, not angrily but calmly that I
grew up in the suburbs and still live there? That many of my friends live in the
neighborhoods that they just mocked? That I found their remarks not only deeply
insulting but offensive to so many people?
Would they have
apologized to me and forgotten it the moment I left? Would they have realized
the error their ways? Or would they have told me to get a thicker skin?
I want to believe that
they’d honor the better angels of their nature. After all, they’re from a blue
state. They’re on the right side of history. They’re the good guys.
Right?
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