Those who can afford Guangzhou’s luxurious five-star White Swan Hotel, and everybody else.At $150 night (Internet an extra $15)--twice the room rate of the Regal Hotel we just came from, plus $45 for a dinner entrée (a la carte) $5 for a 12 once can of diet coke and with $1,000 statues and artwork available in the numerous boutiques a hip young Chinese couple could easily spend in one weekend what a farmer in Guiyang makes in an entire year.
The White Swan’s window washers, bellhops, cooks and maids are like Amherst’s police, fire, and DPW: they built and keep the operation running, but could never afford to call it home.
The Community Park around the corner Monday morning:
Same Park Sunday morning:
What the Amherst Fire, Police & DPW have got to understand is that racism in the Jim Crow South was intended (and served to) oppress the working class WHITE population.
ReplyDeleteAs long as you are better off than someone else, you don't ask any real questions about your own circumstances...
And thus the bigotry and prejudice that is directed toward students in this community, identical to that directed toward blacks in the south a half century ago, serves to keep the cops and firefighters and sewer workers "in line" and not questioning why they can't live in the town they serve.
The Klan really didn't care about blacks as much as it did about keeping the unions out of the mills owned by the Klan leaders. And the leaders of the bigotry here in Amherst are far more worried about keeping their productive moneymaking plantation working than the actual impact of the UM students.
The places that ended racism (Atlanta GA for example) thrived in the latter half of the 20th Century and continue -- those who didn't are still stagnant backwaters.
In five years, Amherst will either have been forced to end this anti student bigotry or it truly will become a basket case like Ware. With even the current status of IT tech, there is no real need for kids to come out here to actually attend UMass....