We all know about mythic Memphis. Our most famous export is mythic music that changed the world, and our most famous entrepreneurial breakthroughs have attained mythological status, changing the way the way the world works and plays and one even defined modern global commerce.
And yet, there are other myths that dominate thinking in the Memphis region, and here are just a few of them:
City of Memphis is too wasteful and corrupt.
City government delivers its services on a per capita basis cheaper than Shelby County, Collierville, Millington, and Germantown governments. And it’s done it despite increasing its land area and reducing its densities. Most of all, City of Memphis has done it while continuing to pay legacy costs incurred for the infrastructure for people who have moved outside Memphis.
Memphis is dangerous and crime-ridden.
Memphis has seen dramatic decreases in crime, but here’s the truth: all of us know which parts of Memphis are risky and if we don’t go there, our risks as a victim of violence are minimal. The high crime areas unsurprisingly coincide with maps of Memphis poverty, and if suburbanites want to attack crime, they should roll up their sleeves to improve neighborhoods where kids are taught the places to hide when gunfire breaks out and demand change from local elected officials.
Memphis teachers are no good.
The top schools in the former city school district are a match for the top schools in Shelby County Schools, but here’s the big difference: city school teachers are teaching moving targets. Each year, roughly 15 percent of city students moved, disrupting learning and creating toxic stress that has a negative impact on brain development. The majority of Memphis students are dealing with a web of issues that teachers are addressing every day while suburban schools prove conclusively that socio-economic status is the greatest single determinant on student achievement.
Memphians are poor and uneducated.
The number of people living in poverty in Memphis has been about the same since 1980 (a fact which does not diminish the need to address the city’s most malignant problem), but for every person living under the poverty line, there are three who are not. In terms of educational attainment, Memphis’s numbers are better than the MSA’s. As for the poverty rate, it’s the high rate outside Memphis that forces the Memphis MSA into the top five. Memphis on its own is not in the top 10 for highest poverty rate.
Memphis doesn’t really matter.
Memphis remains the economic and job center for the entire region, and with more than 75% of the people in the suburban towns commuting to jobs outside their borders, the health of Memphis should be uppermost in their minds, because so goes Memphis, so goes their paychecks.
Memphis is the next Detroit.
We have no patience with this oft-made derogatory(not to mention racially-charged) comment. Memphis’ percentage of people with college degrees is two times Detroit, Memphis has 40% more people in the labor force, the poverty rate in Memphis is 30% lower and household income is about 25% higher, the number of vacant housing in Memphis is about half of Detroit’s (although Memphis is almost three times larger in land area), Detroit’s city budget is three times bigger than Memphis, and its debt is 20 times bigger than Memphis.
Memphis is a backwater city.
We are home to FedEx, one of the top 10 most respected companies in the world and global commerce was invented by it. In Sir Peter Hall’s Cities in Civilization, he cites 16 cities that shaped the world. Memphis is on the list, along with Athens, Vienna, Tokyo, Paris, Florence, Berlin, Rome, New York, London, San Francisco, and Stockholm. It’s easier to say we have backwater suburbs than to say we are a backwater city.
Hall writes: “a remarkable event in human history took place: cultural creativity and technological innovation were massively fused…The special reputation of the place, free and wide open, helped it all to happen…the music of an underclass could literally become the music of the world…This was a revolution in attitudes and behavior, as profound as anything that has happened in the last 200 years.”
We hear myths about Memphis every day. There’s the myth that new suburban highways create new economic growth. There’s the myth that our African-American majority is an economic drag. There’s the myth that all Memphis neighborhoods are in chaos and in deep despair. There’s the myth that success in economic development is measured by the number of tax freezes we hand out. And, the most dangerous myth of all is that we can nothing do to change things.
All of us hear these myths, and it’s time to quit being polite and tell people they don’t know what they’re talking about. There is much that we need to get right in Memphis, both the city and the region, but we need to build that future on the facts rather than fictions about the city.
I know people constantly point out things as needing to be “required reading” but this truly is something everyone should read. It truly puts things into perspective and addresses some really tired arguments constantly bandied about in this community.
Excellent post. Thank you for help set the record straight.
You’ve written a well sounding story, yet provided no facts. Until you do, it’s nothing more than fiction. Oh, and if you’re stat is correct, 25% of the population under the poverty line is NOT a good stat, but any discernible measure.
“Socio-economic status is the greatest single determinant on student achievement.” I strongly disagree with this sentiment. Poverty may increase the number of struggles a student has, but poor students are just as capable of learning as students from wealthier homes. What’s often lost is the family support–sometimes because parents don’t understand that school is important, sometimes because parents may not understand the schoolwork themselves, sometimes because parents are too busy to help as much as they’d like, and maybe sometimes because parents don’t care, though I suspect that’s a small percentage.
Anna: We’re not conflating the challenges caused by socio-economic realities with an individual’s ability to learn. And the things that you list as being “lost” are often the result of those socio-economic realities. The Urban Child Institute has a great deal of research online about the impact of poverty, its connection to toxic stress, etc., and how these forces converge to make the hill higher to climb for children from poor families and as a result, why they often start school years behind their peers and how hard it is to catch up..
Thanks, Smart City. These are so often my conversational talking points when discussing the status of this town to people who live here, and it’s always a hit to the gut when these stats are laughed off.
The problem, of course, is that the actual facts and truth that you’ve presented here completely rebut the suburbanites’ cultural context. They have tried so hard to keep the walls up that were built 50 and 100 years ago that they cannot accept reality.
And I am getting sick and tired of subsidizing suburban lifestyles because they refuse to pay taxes that pay for the social costs to the city that those lifestyles created for all of us.
I loved this post, but considering the post is titled, “Smart City Memphis”, someone needs to be doing better editing. Too many grammatical & usage errors.
If you don’t have someone to do this, consider hiring me for a modest fee. (retired English teacher needs work:-)
Sent from my iPhone
For everything there is to fix in this city there are at least 2 or 3 things to brag about. Something I’m often mentioning to people who I meet in other parts of the US who ask me about Memphis, even when they already “know” how dangerous it is, is that we do have several major national and international headquarters in our city, as well as some regional ones. Autozone, Hilton, International Paper.
And then there’s our medical strides, that include St. Jude and Le Bonheur. And we have our top-rated zoo. I mean it goes on and on. People seem to get amnesia about those facts when speaking ill of Memphis.
“…and if suburbanites want to attack crime, they should roll up their sleeves to improve neighborhoods where kids are taught where to hide when gunfire breaks out and demand change from local elected officials.”
^^^And to that, I said, “YES!” out loud. It’s always amusing when I hear people in the suburbs, or even worse, from DeSoto County (where I grew up) talk about how dangerous and scary Memphis is, and how they avoid the city like the plague. It is most often a very bad case of unchecked privilege.
I almost always respond to that negativity by saying something to the effect of, “You do realize that at least half of your neighbors probably commute within Memphis Proper to work, right? You might call it dangerous but the rest of us call it “economy.””
Loved this article! I hope it reaches a lot of people.
The suburbs are growing. People are moving out to neighborhoods where they feel safe and can afford a “nice house.” You admit there are places we avoid if we wish to remain safe. Where are the safe neighborhoods in Memphis where a young family can buy a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with covered parking and a yard? Bartlett, Arlington, and Lakeland have affordable housing in safe neighborhoods. Compare what you can get in the $180k-220k range in these suburbs compared to Memphis. Housing in Collierville and Germantown is less affordable, but compare $300k-450k houses in these suburbs to what that would buy in East Memphis. We moved from the UM area to Bartlett in 1991because for $80k at that time we could get a 5 year old house, attached garage, decent yard and “good” schools. After having lived in the then MSU area for 20 years, I lamented my observation that there were no artists in Bartlett. That was a myth, but still I miss the character of many Memphis neighborhoods. Not all the minds of us suburbanites are dominated by the Memphis myths.
These observations are not a rebuttal of your article. They are merely observations, my perspective. I may be wrong. I have not done any hard research on housing prices, but we do drive through Memphis neighborhoods from time to time where we think we might like to live then scuttle back to Bartlett reeling from the sticker shock.
One interesting fact about suburban sprawl. If you get a map of the foreclosures in Shelby County over the past few years, contrary to conventional wisdom, they are concentrated in the area outside Memphis. It seems that drive to your qualify is a misnomer and that urban neighborhoods with greater densities, more amenities, etc., are safer economic bets. There are homes in East Memphis in the same range as Bartlett but not if you are looking on Gwynn Road. We’re not arguing with you, because we believe that any choices that families make about their lives are valid.
The problem we currently have is largely perception. And when the lead story on the news every single night is who was killed, shot, robbed, or raped, it’s hard for a lot of the positives to filter through.
There’s no doubt we have problems. I grew up in the Hickory Hill area, two blocks behind the Showboat (originally Topps) Bar-B-Q at Winchester & Knight Arnold. And when I see how run down that area looks now compared to what it was only 15-20 years ago or so, it breaks my heart.
We have inept politicians (Willie Herenton set this city back 50 years); we have high crime (saying it’s a far lower rate than Detroit isn’t exactly the low bar I want to be clearing); and we have racism that still exists in high quantities (though it is more latent now than it was in years gone by)….problems that many, if not most, major cities have, though we do seem to have far more than our fair share by comparison.
And yet, everything you cite above is encouraging. As much work as there is to do to get things where they SHOULD be, the perception always seems worse than reality. There is so much good going on here. Sometimes, we just can’t get out of our own way enough to see it. For example, this new unified school system could be (have been) a fantastic opportunity for everyone to truly work together, build something wonderful from the ground up for our kids…but all those in the suburbs are too busy running away, too busy living in fear of their perceptions to give it a fair chance (IMHO). So we’ll never know. And it’s a shame, because a poorly educated generation is at the root of many of our other problems.
* Sorry…the Showboat BBQ is at Knight Arnold & Hickory Hill, not Winchester. 🙂
Good point. The lack of a clear vision creates a vacuum filled with competing perceptions defined too much by crime stories on TV every night. We need a narrative for Memphis that we all can see ourselves as part of. and that aspires us to be the place that we can be.
OneKeeper can you REALLY blame the suburbs for wanting their own schools? Did you see what happened with the merger? The worst district took over the better district. Shelby policies are being merged (lowered) to meet MCS policies. Have you listened to the dummies on the merged board? Even my friend who are Major defenders of the city have admitted the merger was a mess and the system will resemble MCS results. Luckily many students will still have the home support not seen in many MCS homes and that makes a Huge difference. Good teachers and lots of money only do so much when a student has huge challenges the other 15 hours of the day.
Memphis has many GREAT things but do not excuse the bad
G Edward you are spot on about the housing prices. They are insane. I can get so much more house and amenities and a safer neighborhood driving out east or to a suburb.
We loved living in Memphis for many years, but when it came time to expand our family we had to move to the burbs. 500+ more square feet for less money in a comparable neighborhood, no neighborhood security needed, lower city taxes, and good public schools (no private or public school mumbo-jumbo). Kudos for those that have the means in the city to afford it! Having lived in Memphis I will say that I sometimes did not feel safe walking alone or with the kids (mostly bc of homeless people hassling me), so I have not missed that. This suburbanite family loves Memphis, though, and loves supporting them with our sales taxes! I would argue that most of my neighbors feel the same. We apologize for being so offensive.
Anonymous 3:09 – From where we sit, the merger was a mess because the suburbs made fear-based decisions devoid of reason. As we have often written, the county schools underperformed when compared to other districts with similar socio-economic profiles. If the suburban mayors weren’t so busy fear-mongering, they would have found out that if these schools remained part of the district, little would change in them. In fact, there was even the opportunity for them to become charter schools.
As we have noted several times, it is interesting to us that while saying that the suburban districts are being created for better education, there is no serious study of how that is to be done. Rather, the suburban districts were always about race and about money, and unfortunately, the suburbs chose to continue to delude themselves that Memphis is the enemy rather than the lifeline that employs most of its people.
Worst of all, it feeds the myth that we are not all in this together and that if we work together, we can find solutions that benefit all of us.
Also, I was just looking at some prices for homes in East Memphis, and all I can say is that you need to get a different realtor if you can’t find similarly prices (and likely better constructed) residences there.
CSW: Thanks for continuing to love and support Memphis.
Good points but have someone proofread your post next time. It sounds like you failed out of middle school.
Actually, I attended a county school. And I barely have time to write them, much less proof them. 🙂
That’s hilarious. One of my pet peeves is people who get on blogs and instead of discussing the point instead nag about grammar and spelling. It makes them feel superior. Get real, folks.
Can we get some citations for your data? It’s hard to say you are debunking myths without anything to back it up.
Thanks for writing this. After having spent all day doing community service in Frayser with the Blight Patrol, I can attest to the fact that there are wonderful things happening in this city with amazing people behind them.
I just wish you had discussed the topic of education more because I hear the most ignorant things about schools in Memphis. Many people don’t even know what’s happening with the Achievement School District and how much hard work is being put into creating top-performing neighborhood schools.
Thank you for dispelling so many awful myths and pushing community members to seek the change that they so often complain about.
B_Automata: We’re not sure which data point you’re referring too, but these conclusions draw on crime data from FBI/Operation Safe Community, jobs data from Bureau of Labor Statistics, poverty rates and educational attainment from Census Bureau, children’s data from The Urban Child Institute,the movement of Memphis students and quality of schools from Memphis City Schools and Teach for America, and finally, by reading the budget documents for each of the local governments.
Forge: Thanks for your comments. They are so, so true. There is the notion, particularly in suburban communities, that city schools are some monolithic, cookie cutter facilities rather than the a center for urban educational reform being watched by people and organizations across the U.S.
You could provide links to any of the data points you used in the article.
Your headline has the word facts in it, you could have provided a single link to any of your sources.
Unless real change is made with the leadership & resources, this is just navelgazing. I don’t think these types of articles are coming from a place of ignorance, but moreso a place of denial.
I, too, have been living in Memphis for almost a decade now, and I would like to think I have a good idea of the place. I’m not a naturally negative person but I just no longer have the rose-colored glasses I did as a student. Being realistic about Memphis does not make one a negative person.
While I think Memphis is not *the worst* place in the nation, it’s nowhere close to the Mecca of Awesomeness some people want to believe it is. Yes, it’s relatively livable and cheap, and that’s about it.
I see it as a below-average urban area (due to poverty) that is in slow decline (corporations like Delta leaving; families moving to suburbs; young professionals going to richer cities with more opportunities.)
I think of moving away often (most of my career-minded friends already have) and know I will too at some point. I’ve traveled quite a bit in the past couple of years and have found that there are much better places for young people to have opportunities and experience quick growth. Over here, I have dealt with so much bullsh*t red tape and not very many opportunities despite having good qualifications & talent. This is simply not the case in Austin, Atlanta, Nashville, SF etc, there is so much happening for young people that they’re never bored. So, I have zero loyalty and owe this place nothing. Anyone who wants to stay in their bubble, feel free to.
Maybe Memphis changes in the future, who knows — I hope that it does. Good luck to anyone who wants to make it their forever, permanent home. And to anyone who is curious about better cities, I urge you to travel and then make up your own mind.
Currently, Memphis lacks the progressive leadership, both civic and business, to move the city forward.
The responsibility for civic engagement lands right back in our own laps. We own that and after many years of poor management we have heaped praise on our current mediocre management. But if we want better we have to recruit forward thinking candidates and help them get into office.
However, another big piece to grow a city is a vibrant culture of philanthropy. The CEOs of FedEx, International Paper and Auto Zone have not used their wealth to build educational or arts organizations In Memphis.
Every great city in the nation has had a class of citizens who loved their hometowns so much they have made personal commitments to help make their hometowns world class.
Civic and private partnerships are needed to build a culture of pride in Memphis.
You do realize that the Memphis in Civilization refers to the ancient city of Memphis in Egypt?
B_Automata: We write policy and issues reports for clients all the time, so we know what’s a fact and what’s not. We have cited most of these facts and sources in previous posts, so we didn’t see the need to repeat them here. But the sources are easily found.
Shunana: It’s not navel-gazing. It’s called keeping a realistic balance to our attitude about Memphis and its pluses and minuses. We write about the challenges and our concerns often, but it’s always valuable to take a step back and remember why we love this place so much and why its future is worth fighting for. As Richard Florida said once, a young person can move to Atlanta and spend her whole life working there really hard and she can move the needle from 9.3 to 9.35. In Memphis, she has a profound opportunity to make a mark and change things dramatically. For people who want meaning and make a difference, we vote Memphis.
Peppersmith: No argument from us. It’s a good time to start identifying, cultivating, and training young leaders who will take charge of things here. We need to make important changes and need bold leadership for the future to make it happen. We think that if city-county governments are going to waive taxes to big corporations, they should at least get a commitment to a meaningful level of philanthropic activity.
ml: Wha’?
Without sources this information is to be treating as misleading (at best) or as outright false.
People who can support their arguments, do.
People who have nothing to add to a discussion, don’t, and instead, play games.
If you want to read the back story on these statistics, as we have already said, feel free to read earlier posts about them. This post is a summary of many of the points we have made over recent months and years.
Finally, we make a living analyzing data for their public policy implications and for trend lines, we write a regular column for Memphis magazine and we are interviewed regularly by media, both local and national, to explain the implications of trends and data, so frankly, we’re not really interesting in engaging in your specious debate.
Sincere apologies. I had a brain relapse and thought I read Sid Meier. The creator of the heavily lauded video game Civilization series. In the game, one of the major cities is Memphis, but in the Egyptian sense. It has been long day and I thought incorrectly. This is a well done article. Carry on with your day.
Thanks, ml. Interesting.
I agree with the above poster. You cannot claim to be “myth busting” without including citations. You also should not tell would-be readers to comb through your back catalog to get relevant information. What is the incentive to the audience, after reading a post full of half-formed drivel, to read further of your inane blatherings? Further, if you’re going to post rebuttals in the comments, at least provide linkbacks. As an author of this blog, the onus is on YOU to provide information, not to assign your audience homework. This is bad writing and lazy, shitty journalism. You’re insulting your readers and yourselves at this point.
If they had posted citations and links to previous posts, it would still fall under your complaint that people are expected to read more information. Go and write your own blog if you are a subject expert.
I came to Memphis on a serious limb from Atlanta for a job opportunity. Yes. You read that correctly. There were few opportunities that afforded me to live where I wanted doing what I wanted to do for the salary that I was in the market for in Atlanta. A previous place I worked at had people doing hour and a half one way commutes. I will not necessarily say I will stay here forever because it is not in my nature to stay forever in one spot, but the job I have will open some doors to me. This post has done a bit of reassuring to me that I will be alright here.
You want some documented comparsion for some of the above facts? Move to Atlanta where you have some of the highest water bills. http://www.politifact.com/georgia/statements/2011/sep/23/carla-smith/atlanta-drowning-nations-highest-water-bills/
You think that the grass is greener on the other side of the state line until you get shafted.
I don’t trust anything without actual citations, of which I see none here. This could all just be made up (and I don’t doubt that some of it is.)
This post while interesting does nothing but exacerbate the suburb/city divide. As so many posts here do. I am so sick of hearing people that live in the burbs trash Memphis and vice versa. It gets us nowhere and just makes things worse. I have lived here 9 years and find it a reasonably pleasant place to live but it is so stuck in the past, so focused on old racial arguments, and too busy arguing with itself to progress in any meaningful way. All suburb dwellers are racist fox news watching tea partiers all city dwellers are black gang members liberal hippies blah blah. Lecturing each other about how flawed the other is is hardly a path to success.
I have lived in Memphis my entire life and until the last 10 years never thought about wanting to move. There are a lot of things I hear about Memphis that infuriates me. Just because you live in Memphis does not make you an uneducated person. I believe this city has a lot of potential to be a great city , the problem…our city leaders (mayor and council) have no leadership, no vision for how to take this city beyond what it is today.
However, crime is a huge problem. I live in an area of smaller homes. Was a great place to live for 30 years. Now, there is gang graffiti everywhere. The sounds of gunshots can be heard most nights. Yes, I am scared to walk outside at night. I am hard pressed to find a neighborhood in Memphis that is not having crime issues. Crime is the number one issue in my book that effects all the other issues. Crime will stop business from relocating here…crime will cause people to flee to safer areas. I believe we stop the crime and give young people a sense they can do better and you will see a change. Until then you will keep seeing an increase in suburb population.
Another thought…more people would help if there was more talk about volunteer programs to get involved. I know I would love to volunteer more in the city I still love if I knew where to go.
Now I am done.
Anonymous 7:02: We understand that people often default to their own preconceived notion when they read articles, blog posts, etc., but this was about the myths we all hear about Memphis and you hear them often inside the city limits themselves. We can’t understand how positive facts about Memphis exacerbate the suburban/city divide.
Good points, ml. After being offered a job in Atlanta, I had to drive slightly more than an hour each way to interviews on two consecutive days. I returned to Memphis and took a similar job here, and I’ve never regretted it.
Nuxa: We’re not into silly games today. The day is too pretty.
AS a 4th generation Memphian I am always bashing this city but in a former job I was a tour guide and as an ambassador for this city I learned than what we hate about it is usuall y not as bad as the citys that other people come from.Yes Detroit is bad but then so are other cities like New Orleans. If you dont like the situation get up off your butt and get involved and make a differance! Stop letting your help be directed only toward the ones you think need it instead just help all and make differance.Look at what Leann Touy did! If every person did that then what would we have here. Stop complaining and make a differance!
Hello, I would like to add what may be a third, different perspective. I am not white. I am not black. I am not from the city of Memphis, nor am I from the county. I am just a foreigner who happens to be here for educational purposes. What is interesting to me is that the same people who decry divisiveness are quick to distinguish themselves and disparage those from the other side. Not everyone from the county is the same just like not everyone in the city is the same. To group them into a generalization is to commit the same injustice that they are purported to have. Doesn’t anyone see that hurting your neighbor is, in a way, also hurting yourself? Now, in order to improve the conditions in a given community (whether it be a neighborhood, city, county, etc.), one has to simply look to and implement best practices that have produced the desired conditions. It is pretty clear that certain policies within the city of Memphis have driven people out of the city. Why not change those policies instead of trying to change people? By making the city of Memphis more competitive, won’t that convince more people to move here and like it here, thus justifying the greatness of the city? Thank you for reading.
Jeff and Outsider: Great comments. We agree.
Smart City Memphis, you agree?! I was being critical of this article. It will incite more divisiveness with “suburbanites.”
Forgive us. Since we weren’t taking shots at the suburbs, we couldn’t see how what you wrote applied to us. We are hard-pressed to see how these facts about Memphis should incite anything in the suburbs, and because of that, we agreed with you. There is nothing in this post about suburbanites but some of the comments from people in the suburbs seem to indicate a defensiveness that colors their interpretation of what we wrote. We never said that suburbanites are the only people responsible for perpetuating these myths, because we hear them in Memphis too.
Also, we have written often about the need for Memphis to be more competitive. We’ve been writing this blog for eight years and at one time or another, we’ve said everything you just did.
It’s the ideological perspective from which this post was made (and from which this entire blog was created) that has generated the defensiveness seen by some of the respondents and probably elicited from many others who did not bother to reply. My message, from an outsider’s point-of-view, is this: to all those within the county limits, it is imperative that you are able to cast opinions, make decisions, and act with the greater good of those within the same county limits in mind, regardless of your differences. To those with an audience or influence over others, it is even more important to operate from a stance that is ideologically neutral as possible, if you want to really bring this diverse population together. By rallying behind a common theme important to all, like economic health, this city will become greater evidenced by the fact that people will want to move and stay here. Justification with hollow words while people are leaving or wanting to leave serves as a thinly veiled attempt to place blame or perpetuate denial. Only by first recognizing the problem can the problem be addressed. To address the problem, you have to set aside, as hard as it is, your own personal biases (as we all have) and attempt to think objectively about what works! Look at what those communities that are thriving are doing! What policies and conditions are in place that are attracting people? Copy them now! It doesn’t do any good to talk about what these myths are and how they may have been perpetrated; instead, create an environment free of this us-versus-them mentality, where people will want to come together rather than get defensive and fortify self-interests. It all starts with your overarching perspective, the hardest thing to change.
Man, get a grip.
Outsider: Gosh, we don’t even remember your being here when this blog was created, but as is the case with a lot of your commentary, it’s assuming an awful lot and bending the post until it is unrecognizable. We appreciate your comments, but we just don’t have the energy and the patience for this kind of supercilious conversations. Thanks, however, for eading.
Hers one example why the post might read as a bit hostile toward suburbanites. In the second “fact” you include this gratuitous non-factual comment: “and if the suburbanites want to attack crime.” What is the point of that crack? Suburbanites certainly aren’t the only ones who complain about or “want to attack” crime. You later gratuitously refer to the suburbs as backwater. Yes,no hostility toward the burbs there. So in this completely factual posts there are a few non factual comments that have in common a bit of hostility. Your writing is often just as colored by certain attitudes and assumptions as are the readers’ perceptions of your writing. And in this case those perceptions are pretty justified.
Strange, we wrote it and we weren’t thinking hostilely but you know what we were thinking. There’s a lot of clairvoyance going on these days. The post says what it says: if the suburbs want to fight crime, their elected officials should vote to help Memphis neighborhoods. That’s pretty straightforward. The best long-term solution. Also, in using the backwater term, we were referring to the now famous Time magazine description of Memphis, and we’re making the obvious case that it’s Memphis that drives the region’s economy and competitiveness. We didn’t say the suburbs were backwater but we said it’s easier to call them backwater than Memphis if you are looking to what matters to our future. Perhaps, it’s a nuance you don’t get. It seems that some people want to inject hostility and divisiveness where there isn’t any and play the victim. We have in the past criticized policies and politicians of all stripes and we’re likely to do so again, and there are numerous reasons to criticize the politics of the suburbs, the policies that drove county government to the brink of bankruptcy, etc., but as we said earlier, we don’t consider any decisions made by families in their own best interest not to be valid. But we do consider many programs and positions of suburban politicians to be self-defeating and narrow-minded, but that’s a subject for another day. It was not the point of this post.
By the way, we are writing a blog. Of course, it reflects our assumptions, our research, and our opinions, but we’re proud of the recognition that the blog has received for taking new looks at old issues.