Being from the south, I couldn't relate to anything in this article but I really enjoyed reading it. The author has a good writing style.
Is this really the trichotomy of the Bay area? I thought it was interesting that none of these groups are turned out to be Trump supporters. I think it would be fun to contrast this mode of thought with the thought of people in flyover territory, as was done with these groups.
The author is painting with a broad brush but some of it does resonate with me. Realistically most people I know are a combination of two or more of those "bay areas". Although I was not from the bay area "proper" as many "true bay area people" would remind me being from the most southern town in Santa Clara county :)
Gilroy is the same distance from SF as Sacramento--and Stockton is closer. Also, Gilroy is not even in the SF Bay watershed. However, unlike many places in the Bay Area, it does boast a direct rail link to downtown SF.
Not trying to exclude you, I've lived in San Jose and on the peninsula, neither of which was worthy of being stereotyped in the original article. It's better to avoid those games anyway.
Just want to say, growing up, SF was not the center of the universe in the bay area. If anything the south bay seemed more of a draw and I spent plenty of time in San Jose, Maintain View etc.
The Bay area is way more complex than this simplistic trichotomy. The north bay alone (north of Golden Gate) is completely different to the peninsula and east bay. (Marin is also very different to Sonoma county, the top of the bay area).
As work/jobs have changed the blue collar San Franciscans have been squeezed out to the 'burbs and a similar situation has occurred in the south bay with people squeezed out of the suburbs to the eastern x-urbs, until recently a very long commute to work.
Alameda (East Bay) went 78.7% to Clinton plus another 6.6% to third parties
Santa Clara (South Bay) went 72.2% to Clinton plus another 7.2% to third parties
San Francisco went 85.0% to Clinton, with another 5.7% to third parties
So yeah, painting a picture of three people of different economic backgrounds, it would not be illustrative to make even one of them a supporter of the current regime.
From 10,000 ft, pretty much, although with any topic as complex as this, much nuance lost in the caricature. There are significant shades of gray between these three broad groups. I know households with blue collar workers married to doctors for example, and teachers married to property developers.
Where you really find the caricatures in this story are in households where all the workers are either highly compensated or very low compensated, or somewhere in between.
> Is this really the trichotomy of the Bay area? I thought it was interesting that none of these groups are turned out to be Trump supporters.
It's not terribly surprising though. The only population of the Bay Area who has a strong shared interest with the current POTUS is the wealthy established professional and capitalist class. Many of them still wouldn't openly support POTUS because of their disagreements on social and cultural issues - they are the "racism/homophobia is horrible but don't raise my taxes" crowd, which around here slots you a conservative Democrat.
And sure, there are xenophobes and ethno-nationalists in the Bay Area just like everywhere, but statistically there are fewer of them here than you'll find in other parts of the country more friendly to the current POTUS, so there's no point in calling them out as a major group around here.
Also lot of people in the elite group described in the article have close family "back home" that do fit the description of POTUS supporters, which is sort of a flaw of this article in that it only attributes such relationships to the blue collar class, when in fact they're quite ubiquitous. So much so that it has caused rifts between such people and their families. I am myself just such a person.
Percentage of population that are immigrants, number of local elected officials and leaders who are immigrants or people of color, basically all the stats that index for this sort of thing.
For an example drawn from another part of the country, look at the district in Iowa that repeatedly reelected Steve King (R) to Congress, renowned and avowed xenophobe and ethno-nationalist, until he became an embarrassment.
What makes you think that any given Bay Area Congressional district would have the same number or more xenophobes than his district?
I didn't say the Bay Area was by any means perfect. The diversity here is still tainted by huge inequality, some of which falls along ethnic lines, which is what the article in part caricatures. But xenophobia isn't a major vector of the problems at this point.
Being an immigrant makes you much less likely to be a xenophobe, and being a POC in the US makes you much less likely to be an ethno-nationalist. The Bay Area has a high representation of both immigrants and POCs, so statistically lower representation of xenophobes and ethno-nationalists.
However, nothing precludes an individual of either or both of those groups from being xenophobes or ethno-nationalists. This isn't inconsistent. These aren't absolute categories, but rather categories of statistical likelihood. When you are talking about the entire population of a region - there are no absolutes, just likelihoods over large numbers.
Living on the Peninsula, I think I've seen 3 Trump stickers (say, within 50 miles of home) in 3.5 years. 0 flags. And you'll note, in the article, an Uncle was a Trump supporter.
Is this really the trichotomy of the Bay area? I thought it was interesting that none of these groups are turned out to be Trump supporters. I think it would be fun to contrast this mode of thought with the thought of people in flyover territory, as was done with these groups.