THE MELTING OF THE MELTING POT: David Brooks, as astute an observer as there is of modern sociology, has a piece in this month's Atlantic about how despite years of political correctness, Americans don't really care about diversity. It's a distinction that transends politics, really. Here's Brooks:
In the Washington, D.C., area Democratic lawyers tend to live in suburban Maryland, and Republican lawyers tend to live in suburban Virginia. If you asked a Democratic lawyer to move from her $750,000 house in Bethesda, Maryland, to a $750,000 house in Great Falls, Virginia, she'd look at you as if you had just asked her to buy a pickup truck with a gun rack and to shove chewing tobacco in her kid's mouth.
The other fascinating thing in the piece? Brooks tells of a firm called Claritas, which breaks down the entire U.S. population into 62 "psycho-demographic clusters," such as "rising Hispanic," "town and gown," and "suburban sprawl." Which one are you in?
Posted by Stephen Silver at August 17, 2003 08:59 PM