The Washington Post has a fascinating story about the clash of cultures in the Bailey’s Crossroads area of Fairfax County. Anglo homeowners are upset by immigrants who purchase houses in their neighborhood, pack them with people, crowd the streets with parked cars, come and go at all hours of the day, play loud music and generally disrupt the peace and tranquility of suburban life.
Supervisor Penelope A. Gross, D-Mason, takes an academic, almost anthropological perspective: “It’s a different model. A transition from the nuclear Caucasian family to the ethnic extended family.” The Anglos are not quite as detached and broad minded. Chafing at the violation of county ordinances, perceiving threats to their quality of life and worrying about the impact on their property values, they warn that Gross may pay politically in the next election.
And who are these yahoos, these know-nothings, these nativist bigots who rail against the brown people from south of the border who are simply trying to make an honest living in the United States but can’t afford the sky-high real estate prices in Fairfax County without living two or three to a room, including basements and garages? Are they Bible-thumping Jerry Falwellites? Are they rednecks with gunracks in their pickup trucks? Well, not exactly.
Rick Gordon, of Falls Church, has complained to county officials and talked to the Washington Post about an illegal boarding house of between eight and 10 men in his Lakewood neighborhood for more than a year and a half. Two trucks and as many as nine cars park in front. Here’s what he told the Washington Post.
“We’re not some right-wing Nazi community,” Gordon said. “Everybody is a liberal Democrat. In my community, without a doubt, people will not vote for [Gross] unless this problem is solved soon.”
Verrry interesting. “Everybody is a liberal Democrat.” Presumably, everyone appreciates diversity and multi-culturalism — at least in the abstract. Presumably, everyone would steadfastly deny having a racist bone in their body. And, I’d be willing to bet, a goodly number consider themselves morally superior to the bigots, klansmen and right-wing Nazis who live downstate.
There are two morals to this story. First is the inherent flaw in Fairfax County’s human settlement pattern. There is a huge demand for low-wage, unskilled/semi-skilled labor in the county. The demand for this labor is met by immigrants, mostly central American. As low-wage workers, they cannot afford to live in the one-nuclear-family-per-dwelling lifestyle that native Fairfaxians consider the norm and have ensconced in their zoning codes. Long-range commuting from downstate trailer parks is expensive, too. But living in boarding-room conditions in Fairfax is no worse — perhaps even better — than the Third World conditions they came from. Trouble is, the immigrants haven’t been acculturated yet to middle-class American norms. Bottom line: Fairfax County wants their labor but doesn’t want them.
Multi-culturalism is wonderful — as long as it’s limited to school rooms and politics.
The second moral is this: Liberals who complain about the behavior of low-wage immigrants, a good percentage of whom could be illegal, are not necessarily racially prejudiced. Liberal Anglos have as much right to their tranquil, nuclear-family suburban lifestyle as Latin immigrants have to their lifestyle of packing large extended families (with uncles, cousins, fellow villagers from the old country) into a single dwelling. Likewise, conservatives who want to uphold the rule of law — reminding people that illegal immigration is, in fact illegal — are not necessarily racially prejudiced either, as their detractors often claim.
Fairfax Board Chairman Gerald E. Connolly puts the onus on the Anglos and Hispanics to work things out. “Every neighborhood has a clear balance of harmony to it, and I have some obligation to respect that harmony if I move there. But neighborhoods also have an obligation to expand that harmony to accommodate different cultures.” Hmmm. I don’t think Rick Gordon’s problem is that his neighbors are playing salsa music instead of rock and roll. His problem is that they are violating county ordinances and changing the nature of the neighborhood.
The solution, I would argue, is not asking the people to change — under different conditions, they would get along just fine. Rather, Fairfax County has an obligation to permit a wider range of human settlement patterns — more high-density neighborhoods and fewer restrictions on minimum living space — that would allow immigrants to find accommodations in settings that don’t disturb their more peace-seeking neighbors.
