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Published: November 13th 2007
My mates
Squirrels call the trees around our house and indeed our front lawn home!Things to ponder and think about.
I did a days work at a place called Dataw Island Marina (punch that into Google and see what I mean!......hmmmmm…..google another global monopoly that may justify its own installment……anyway back to Dataw Island) yesterday and the place quite frankly is bullshit.
It’s a gated community where you need white or grey hair, own a golf buggy have a house that has a minimum of 33 bedrooms, have a selection of boats, like golf, be dripping with money and well....... be white! Its surprising too as just like Glen Alpine, Mount Annan or any other typical western suburb new development urban sprawl in Sydney while the houses seemed nice enough they kind of all looked the same, as if the owners had purchased a mansion off the shelf.
What was perhaps the most disturbing thing for me was that every person was white. There were a few Mexicans but they all had rakes in their hands and were sweeping up the leaves. And on the way in on a ‘public’ road before you turned off to get into this exclusive resort style suburb there was a run down street where young African
Baller
Theres a sweet little sports park with a basketball court, tennis courts, soccer pitch and lacross nets all in the one area. Theyre all free too, perhaps one of the only things in the US that are free! THe beach is a 2 min walk away too! American kids played on the street in front of their run down shacks.
I know I am in the south and have been told to expect such disparity but it got me thinking, how on earth in these days of equal opportunities where the only excuse for not succeeding is that you havnt tried hard enough or worked hard enough, how could two children growing up in the different neighborhoods geographically so close ever expect to have equal opportunities placed in front of them early in their lives ?
These parts, deep in the American south are steeped in history from the civil war to civil rights….you can see the discrimination of past eras in the settlements of different ‘types’ of people. Its interesting down here as one of the major attractions are some massive plantations and incredibly impressive Victorian style houses verging on mansions. I must admit that I find it hard to be impressed by these buildings as I simply cant get out of my conscience whose blood sweat and tears actually went into building such structures.
Race relations is a big issue here in the US. One I definitely under-estimated before coming. Beth and
What a day
Check out the weather. Heading into winter and this is the type of weather im after!!!! I went to a block party a month or two ago where the African American community basically took over a block funnily enough and there were markets, stalls, reggae music played by a band on a stage…..was really fun. I felt different walking around in the crowd frankly cos I was. I remember feeling similar walking down the main street of cabramatta as a boy……good to step outside your comfort zone and just get a little different perspective on things.........................
So whats the moral to the story…….burn down exclusive white gated communities……nah that would be stupid, theyd be insured so the poor bastards paying ridiculous premiums would be paying for it to be re-built……I guess just think about what equality really means…… will there ever be a level playing field …… hmmmmmmm think ive created more questions for myself than answered….idiot Simon the weekend is upon you and now your going to be thinking about ‘smart stuff’ rather than just drinking beer, watching the football or some other sports on one of the two hundred tv channels I have at home…..idiot!
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Lac
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touche
Im trying my harderst to imagine the scene, im having trouble though, especially after sitting in porto airport yesterday speaking to a russian girl and ubek man in swedish, then english then listening to them speak russian, him speak arabic on the phone , then me telling the portugese waiter (well he was brazilian it turned out) that hed have to speak english as none of us spoke portugese, many languages ,many skin colours and not a problem! quite the opposite in fact , it was really interesting. I wonder how well our little table wouldve gone down in your gated (boring?)community? from the pictures though it looks like the rest of the place is definitely not boring! talk to you sooooon CRACKERS