Wednesday, March 12, 2008
 
Murphy Knows Kirkwood
Kevin Murphy reflects upon the Kirkwood shootings and sees beyond the handy racial template:
    Kirkwood is suffering from a clash of aesthetics and has for a long time. All the big fights for the last 30 years (or more, I can only speak personally to 30 years) have all been over aesthetics. Usually its couched in terms of the effect on neighborhoods and property values but the majority of Kirkwood wants to keep the city a place of high end residential properties (nothing wrong with that) and if that limits what you do with your property, so be it. And that's when the fighting begins - when you do something with your property that goes against the Kirkwood aesthetic. Tear down an old house to put up a new house - fine if the old house is one of the many old small ones and the new one fits in with the look and feel of Kirkwood. Tear down a charmer to put up a McMansion - Kirkwood explodes in red yard signs "Protect Historic Kirkwood". Tear down a house to put in a parking lot - don't even think about it Baptists.

    Meachem Park has been thoroughly reconstructed since it's annexation from Kirkwood. Law and order, and all that that entails, has been provided. And if the order that is imposed doesn't conform to the locals desires, it does to the wider Kirkwood aesthetic. And no amount of jawboning about race, no amount of representation on the city council will change that.
Yes, but the handy racial template will keep the power-accumulating and power-abusing government officials from having to reflect on what they do that might make someone lash out violently. So they can go on, after the bread and circuses of racial harmony, stepping on the individual citizens.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:22 PM
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