“Leave Manhattan and the Loop, head east from Seattle or north from the Bos-wash Corridor, hit the interstates through the Midwest and the South, plunge into the empty and echoing hearts of Detroit or Cleveland or the arid reaches of the Great Plains, and another America emerges. … This is the land of double-wides and dollar stores, of closed mills and mines, of bankrupt towns, of casinos paying minimum wage to laid-off auto workers, of once-vibrant cities — from Newton in Iowa to Rockford in Illinois, to Terre Haute and Muncie in Indiana to Mansfield and Lima in Ohio, and onto Syracuse and Buffalo in New York — all created to serve industries or corporations that have gone away… This includes inner-city blacks stranded in their ghettoes, a million Hispanic immigrants scrambling for a toehold, and many of the city’s whites, high school grads or even college grads tending bars or stocking shelves at Target. Not that they’re unemployed: many of these people have jobs, sometimes two or three jobs. They used to be middle class. If they owned a home, it’s foreclosed now. Their kids won’t go to college.”
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 02:22:05 +0000