When you read up on U.S. political basics, you can’t help but come across the detail that many of the people in cities in the U.S. seem to lean left, yet what isn’t as clear is why and what influences their concentration in cities/urban areas.
Cities don’t exactly appear to be affordable, and left-leaning folks in the U.S. don’t seem to necessarily be much wealthier than right-leaning folks, so what’s contributed to this situation?
It’s more that cities tend to make people liberal. Some folks in small towns have never met a Muslim person or a Korean person. They have only a family tradition of racism in their small white racist town. People in cities have to live alongside many different types of people, and get to eat different foods and have different experiences. That cures racism.
Yep. There’s nothing like face-to-face interactions to dispell myths, bias, and assumptions.
Oh, like the myth that cities are a utopia where there is no racism? Because guess what, bud, there are plenty of fucking racist pieces of shit in the city. Or how about the myth that only white people are racist? Because there is racism between Asians and Black people. Or Black people and Hispanics. Or between the various religions. It ain’t just white people.
Yes, there tend to be more liberal viewpoints in large cities, but this broad-stroke painting a picture of a lack of racism in cities needs to stop. People need to re-learn nuance.
Maybe ask them if they’re generalizing before a tirade? Yes, hate and stupidity exists everywhere, but I’ve lived in rural and metro areas and their generalization is accurate. And for that matter, there’s a lot of warm people that live in back country who aren’t stupid or racist, but, depending on a few factors, you can easily run into rural stereotypes. All the same I imagine a lot of us are talking in general views.
Being liberal is more than just an issue of race and culture though. It’s a whole philosophy. And there are things in every established philosophy I can’t see myself getting behind.
It’s a whole philosophy
… I kinda feel I might regret this, but what do you mean? Are you sure you’re not too deeply invested in your own biases about what “a liberal” is?
There are a lot of people that identify as liberals, and a lot of people that identify as conservatives. They’re still all very different people. It’s a better grouping than say, someone’s preference of coke vs pepsi, but it’s not all encompassing.
The comment I was replying to was implying two things, one, that exposure to cultural diversity magically changes someone, and two, that rural areas lack that diversity (one could argue a third implication, that cultural diversity is the only diversity).
Both of these are wrong. If you live close to people of all backgrounds, sure, you’re going to be less likely to double down on people who are culturally different than you, and I welcome this. But exposure to people all around the world isn’t going to equate to, say, making you believe in raising the minimum wage or that reparations would be great as an idea. I’m not saying there aren’t things that would make someone conclude such things, but there’s nothing in “exposure” alone that will do that.
In their traditional senses of the words, “conservative” and “liberal” are political philosophies, two of several political philosophies, which include the likes of such things as “libertarianism”, “marxism”, “communitarianism”, “futurism”, “fascism”, “socialism”, and sometimes “stoicism”. Imagine asking a presidential candidate a single question like “do you support civilian gun ownership”, and if they give an answer you agree with, thinking “the candidate gave a liberal answer, and I’m a liberal, so I must vote for them”. That’s not how it works. These are fleshed out things. If I didn’t know better, I’d wonder if the original commenter just hated rural people (and yet I’m downvoted into oblivion for mentioning “liberal” means something more fleshed out and I end up being asked if I’m the biased one, like you’re better than this, Lemmy). I’m a rural societal member (side note, rural society has its own types of diversities that are not common in urban areas, such as more tolerance to the handicapped) and I seem to get along great with the liberal cause even though I’m not a liberal (I don’t know what I would be considered).
Aspects of liberal political philosophy:
- The belief that human ingenuity is better than tradition at solving problems
- The belief that heavy government interference is more likely to help than to cause trouble
- Belief that everyone deserves to be taken care of, and that it is everyone’s responsibility to do this
- Belief that violence begets violence and that the most stable and predictable path to peace is disarmament
- Belief that progress is best accomplished through consensus-based central planning
- Belief that the primary cause of human suffering is lack of resources
- Belief that evil is a disease state that can be eradicated through provision of adequate care and attention
