Words'nTone

Duplicitous, Self-Righteous Double Standards in the Burbs
Since much of the economic resources and those tending toward a conservative view of Government and Christianity live outside of the concentrated centers of poverty, the following focuses on the social-location of non-poor Christians who live within suburbia.  My concern here is three-fold: 1) First, non-poor Christians are often not fully aware of their own socially constructed reality in the suburbs, its origin, that is, how suburban life came about; 2) second, the socially constructed reality sets up the non-poor Christian to be duplicitous and live by a self-righteous double standard; 3) third, the non-poor Christian’s participation in the suburban way of life, capitalism in general, and the free market system causes a need for continuous reaffirmation for a biblical plausibility of their social location.  Non-poor Christians respond as those living in a socially constructed reality that is alienated from those living with the affects of poverty.  “Without a sociological imagination” linking social location to history, the exurban non-poor, including the Christian, cannot properly understand who they are and why they act and think as they do.  In order to see the impact of idolatry on how non-poor Christians respond toward obvious biblical texts concerning the poor, a review of the so-called objective reality known as the suburbs is needed.

Often the argument rests, not on biblical grounds, but on the ability of the non-poor who have taken the opportunities presented in our capitalistic, free market socio-economic system to develop wealth and prosperity.  The poor in the cities only need to do the same.  Equal opportunity, not equal distribution of wealth is justice. But this is not a fair picture, for the so-called “opportunity” has had a history and an opportunity that has been largely absent from urban-dwellers (i.e., the locale of most of the concentrated poverty), a present consequence that is more akin to the injustice described by the prophets than simply the results of a good, solid Christian work ethic and the free market.  The task here is to briefly expose the misinformed road to prosperity for the non-poor and the non-poor Christians who co-benefit from the same socio-economic system and enjoy the current institutions that sustain such prosperity.

The exurban non-poor benefit from the structures, institutions, and economies that developed in favor of the suburbs and, for the most part, at the expense of the central-cities—for decades.  The shift from urban to suburban came with a committed redistribution of efforts and transactions ranging from Federal subsidies to government policies, including perceptions of urban and central-city life and the goal of prosperity being the American suburban way of life.  The ability to enjoy prosperity today, especially in the upwardly mobile circles of exurbia, is built on a number of socio-economic transactions that have contributed to the current socially constructed reality of many non-poor.  Since the end of WWII, Suburban development has been “celebrated while urban decline was explained away as inevitable.” The “industrial cities’ obsolescence” and the flourishing of the suburban way of life, for many, has been “a sign of progress rather than as a national defect,” even necessary for continued economic growth.  As the last World War concluded, America began experiencing one of its most prosperous eras of its history, rising to be one of the most affluent nations in the world.  Throughout the post-WWII era, “Jobs were plentiful and wages were on the rise.  Young married couples were confident enough of the future to flee apartments in the cities for homes with mortgages in the suburbs.” At the same time, “the industrial cities were undergoing precipitous decline.” American urban-centers, along with its infrastructures and economies, were failing and residents who could afford leave for the suburbs in great numbers.  The industry clusters, particularly manufacturing firms that supported much of the urban population, closed up and left for “more favorable locations.” Jobs left the central cities en mass and there was negligible workforce development supportive of those who could not afford to leave.  Urban-municipalities became overly burdened with a dwindling tax-base and an ever-increasing demand and need for services.  The Post-War era was not “a temporary deviation from unrelenting expansion” of outlying areas, suburbs, and the periphery of city-centers; it was more than an ‘optical illusion’.” This began a long-term, epic change, “a sharp and possibly permanent shift in the country’s pattern of urbanization” that would create two, almost alien segments of society, with two distinctively estranged realities.

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