Letters to the Editor
-
@kitchengirl
>LW, if your "not-white" (by the way - WTF is that about?) neighbor isn't concerned about the oleanders, why are you?<
What it's about is white folks moving into a African-American/lower-middle-class neighborhood and automatically assuming they have the right to "clean things up" because "those people" don't know any better and are naturally dirty, anyway. I can't find the article right now, but the NYT had a piece a while back about white yuppies and black residents going head-to-head in Harlem over "cultural differences." In that case, the newly-arrived yuppies were using the "picked to death by legal ducks" method of filing endless legal complaints against their black neighbors for doing traditional neighborhood things--hanging out on the block or playing music. The LW's horrible neighbor is a more benevolent (but no-less-poisonous) variety of that kind of arriviste.