This morning my first dose of NPR was this réportage. It makes me recall how difficult it was for me and my mother to find housing in the late 60s and early 70s- as apartments for rent would disingenuously be "already taken" as we (a woman in her 30s and a 7 year old child) arrived to the door of the advertised space. It was painful and humiliating given its frequency and often not being allowed to see what we not allowed to rent. The rejection was sometimes offered with a smile or a stern face of annoyance.
Full Audio can be found at Audio Link at NPR here
October 6, 2009 - NEAL CONAN, host: Imagine, a small town with lovely houses, silent lakes, pristine parks, Saturday morning soccer practice and serene Sunday morning church, doors can be left unlocked and everybody knows each others' kids by name. Places like St. George, Utah, Couer d'Alene in Idaho, Forsythe County, Georgia. Places that show up on everybody's list of best places to live. Places that writer Rich Benjamin noticed, are overwhelmingly white. They are also booming as what he describes as refugees of diversity, flood into communities that seem like throwbacks to the 1950s.
Retirees, yes, but young couples and single 30 something's too. If this is your story, call and tell us what made you decide to move there and how it's working out?
Rich Benjamin, who traveled thousands of miles and spent time living in the three communities, I mentioned. His book is called, "Searching For Whitopia: An Improbable Journey to the Heart of White America." And he joins us now from our bureau in New York. And thanks very much for being with us today.
CONAN: And what's your definition of Whitopia?
Mr. BENJAMIN: Well, you know, Whitopia has three important traits. The first is that it has grown by at least six percent since 2000. The second is that a majority of that growth has to be from white migrants. And the third is that it has to have, you know, a je ne sais quoi, a special look, feel and social charm.
CONAN: And people may think that there are relatively few of these but by your definition in the back of the book, you have a list of Whitopian counties across the country, it's nine pages long.
Mr. BENJAMIN: Yes. I myself was surprised to find out how many communities in America fit that bill.
CONAN: And you went to visit and live in three of them. And it is curious, you describe uniformly places that are really, really nice.
Mr. BENJAMIN: Yes, they are nice in certain ways. They look beautiful. There is a neighborliness to them. The real estate is gorgeous, but that's one part of nice that I described. There is a lingering, a simmering social tension in many of them regarding the political issues of the day.
CONAN: Mm-hmm. In one community in Utah, St. George, Utah, you visit the anti-immigration society.
Mr. BENJAMIN: I sure do, the Citizens Council Against Illegal Immigration. And this was a debate that really raged there and that there are people there, who feel strongly against immigration. And so, I learned a lot about that.
CONAN: This is a place that describes itself through many, many years as Utah's Dixie. And I just wonder, as a black man, how comfortable you felt there?
Mr. BENJAMIN: Well, on a day-to-day basis, living my life, shopping for groceries, having a key cut, coming to and from the golf course, I felt quite comfortable. I mean, people were very personable and very friendly there. And that's part of the trait of a Whitopia.
CONAN: Very friendly, very personable. People bringing you over dinner and inviting you out to lunch and playing poker and all these other things.
Mr. BENJAMIN: Exactly. And I had them as guests in my home, too.
CONAN: And uniformly nice, yet there is that underlying tension. You describe these people, the new ones who've moved in as refugees of diversity.
Mr. BENJAMIN: Yes. And some of them described themselves that way. I remember going to a meeting there and a woman said, well, I have left California, I've left Arizona and now that quote, unquote, "illegal immigration," is coming to Utah, you guys will have a taste of why I left. And so, they're sort of anticipating a negative future. And that's why some of them are in Utah's Dixie is because, you know, they're worried about what diversity and immigration specifically have done to places like Southern California or Arizona.
CONAN: And the places they are largely leaving from - and you point out that at the same time, America is becoming less and less white, these communities are becoming more and more white.
Mr. BENJAMIN: In some cases, yes. In America, as we know, by 2042, white Americans will lose their majority status. And so, here we do have these growing Whitopias that are predominantly, even extremely white.
CONAN: And in part, it's that search for that mythical 1950s neighborhood, to live next door to the Cleavers.
Mr. BENJAMIN: Yes, it is. There's a lot of nostalgia. I think, one of the most poignant comments I remember, interviewing someone in one of these communities is - her telling me about our childhood in California during the 1950s. And she says quote, "you know, California was a little paradise."
CONAN: Was, is the operative word, I guess.
Mr. BENJAMIN: Yeah.
CONAN: Yeah. Go ahead, I'm sorry.
Mr. BENJAMIN: To her opinion, yes, was.
CONAN: To her opinion. And there are others, though, and you're writing about your time in Couer d'Alene saying, you know, single people or the guys you're playing poker with and saying, you know, wait a minute, if we could leave here, why - you're from New York. What are you doing here?
Mr. BENJAMIN: Yes, it would. People who don't have homes or can't entertain i.e., young people…
CONAN: Mm-hmm.
Mr. BENJAMIN: …people who can't take advantage of all these amenities. They would say, well, what are you doing in our community if you live in New York?
...CONAN: While you were on this tour of white America, you confess that you started a love affair, Rich Benjamin.
Mr. BENJAMIN: Yes, I did, with golf. I did not expect to realize how much I loved golf, and at first I was thinking, okay, golf is the seductive emblem of whitopia. I cannot understand these communities without playing golf because literally a lot of the communities are designed around golf in terms of golf homes and golf neighborhoods. So I took up golf, and it stuck.
CONAN: And you describe your many adventures on the golf course. You turned out to be, well, a fair to middling golfer.
Mr. BENJAMIN: Fair to middling golfer, although it's a tough nut in whitopia in the sense that there are a lot of great golfers. So in the context on New York City, I'm decent. In the context of whitopia, I'm horrible.
CONAN: It[ Golf ] is central, as you say, to whitopian culture, the golf community also, that there is recreation available: boats, ATVs, snowmobiles, all that sort of thing.
Mr. BENJAMIN: Right. People call North Idaho, for example, a sportsman's paradise for hunting and fishing and boating and golfing.
CONAN: Let's get another caller on the line, Mike with us from Denver.
MIKE (Caller): Yeah, hi. I'm currently living in Stapleton, which is where the old airport used to be, and it's kind of a new, all new community development, and it's definitely a whitopian community.
It's bordered by black and Hispanic neighborhoods, predominately, but the people that live in Stapleton kind of refer to it as the bubble. They don't like to go outside of the bubble.
CONAN: They really call it the bubble?
MIKE: Yeah. I've heard that quite a few people call it that.
CONAN: And is it definitively marked? Is it a gated community?
MIKE: No, it's not gated at all. In fact, it's wide open, and curiously, there really was no, like, facilities, no grocery stores or anything in these communities until Stapleton was built. Now there's a grocery store that's right on the edge of it, and it's used by all the surrounding communities, and it's kind of the melting pot of the area, the grocery store, I would say. But other than that, it's a pretty white community....
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