Lethal suburbia

My woman of color partner had an allergic response to Wilco live the other night and claims chronic ankle pain from standing around all night to add injury to her insulted ear drums. She more or less agreed with the Village Voice’s recent savaging of the band as insipid white suburban angst, with no edge or danger — “nice” and safe. Admittedly, her presence accounted for about a third of the people of color we saw at the concert, but I think the Voice mistakes suburban and white for actual rather than discursive safety. While the two-kids-two-cars-and-a-dog-go-to-college-get-married-get-a-job types do more or less prevail, there are a whole range of folks who fall through this seive-like stereotype that few hear or talk about.

Let me demonstrate with some examples from the suburb I cleared the hell out of the moment I turned 16. In the family a few doors away, one went to jail, one is a quadrapalegic from a car accident, one committed suicide. Down the street, “Joe” flipped his souped up Charger, killing himself and injuring as well as traumatizing his girlfriend who was sitting next to him. “Mike” used to like to park his car on the railroad tracks and party. One night he went by himself and got hit. I could go on, and myself, I’m lucky to have survived my teens. I could also recount the quiet desperation many of those outsiders live in as adults.

Not much in the way of guns and gang-banging and urban “dangerous” rap fodder like I guess the Voice author respects, but still pretty lethal. A few of us get out somehow, becoming rock stars or college professors, in spite of long odds. And white privilege certainly offsets the loss of more marketable urban survivor stories (no one wants to admit that there is an underside to suburbs any worse than a little anomie and boredom, part and parcel of the denial and empowered ignorance that makes whiteness so weird and powerful). So when Tweedy sings about ghosts being born and other more or less veiled references to lethal suburbia it only seems safe if you pretend it is all symbolic and mere angst. In other words it seems safe if you never lived there.

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