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ミシガン州に住んで丸8年。5年前にデトロイト市内に引っ越しました。デトロイトのことや、自分のこと、大好きなマライアのことなどについてのブログです。(photo by nasa)


by dice_michigan
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デトロイトに関するコラム

デトロイト地域のゲイのフリーペーパー「Between the Lines」に面白い記事があったので紹介しよう。これは僕らの知り合いのJohnさんが担当するコラムで、今回は彼の快諾を受けて再掲載している。Thank you John for allowing me to reprint this article.

ちなみに彼も僕らと同じように以前オースティンに住んでいたことがあり、Dと彼はオースティン時代からの顔なじみである。今回の記事は、オースティンとデトロイトの違いについて。

Loving Detroit
by John Corvino


It happened again last night. While away from home I met someone who asked me where I lived. When I replied “Detroit,” he sneered, “Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I retorted. I thought about following that with “At least people there aren’t rude like you.” But my own sense of politeness got the better of me, and I simply gave him a disapproving glare and excused myself.

I’m in Austin as I write this, a city where I lived for seven years and which I still deeply love. Though surrounded by Texas, Austin is progressive (and seemed even more so when I lived here in the early 1990’s). It has beautiful, hilly terrain and lots of green-space—a fact that tends to surprise visitors, who expect Texas to be nothing but desert and tumbleweeds.

But what seems most distinctive about Austin is the unbridled optimism of its inhabitants. Some outsiders find this annoying (much in the way that, say, Rachael Ray’s enthusiasm about food can be annoying), but I admire it. Austinites have a Texas-size pride in their city, and it shows.

When I lived here, I feared that anywhere I moved would be a huge letdown. After finishing my Ph.D. at the University of Texas, I was offered a teaching position at Wayne State in Detroit, a city I knew virtually nothing about. I gratefully accepted the job.

Some friends seemed concerned. “Detroit?” they asked nervously. “You mean rust-belt, race-rioting, crime-capital-of-the-country, Detroit?” Fortunately, one of my Austin friends was from southeastern Michigan, and she assured me that it wasn’t as bad as the hype would suggest.

Of course, moving from “Austin! We LOVE Austin!” to “Detroit—not as bad as the hype would suggest” doesn’t sound very promising. Without a doubt, Detroit has its challenges. But it also has its perks, including some that Austin can’t touch. For example: a world-class art museum, orchestra, and opera house. Significant twentieth-century architecture. A decent collection of real ethnic restaurants (note to Austinites: the Olive Garden is not a real ethnic restaurant). Major sports arenas. And so on.

But there’s one area in which Detroit can’t match Austin—or for that matter, Chicago or Toronto, two nearby cities with which it’s often compared: attitude. Detroit’s bad public image is largely a function of its bad self-image—and like Austin’s optimism, Detroit’s negativity is palpable.

When I say “Detroit” here, I mean metro-Detroit. Outside of Southeastern Michigan, most people have never heard of Royal Oak or Bloomfield Hills. If you’re from metro-Detroit, you’re from Detroit. Get over it.

Metro-Detroiters’ embarrassment about their eponymous city—whose problems are indeed breathtaking—infects the mindset of the whole region. I live and work in the city proper. You know what annoys me even more than an outsider’s saying “Oh, I’m sorry” when learning that I’m from Detroit? A metro-Detroiter’s saying the same thing. Or worse yet, their saying, “But where do you really live? Ferndale? Grosse Pointe?”

“No,” I respond patiently. “THE CITY OF DETROIT. South of 8 Mile. You should visit sometime.”

While we’re at it, am I the only person who finds the “It’s Just Lunch” ads offensive? You know, the ones for the dating service that advertises services in “Ann Arbor,” “Grand Rapids,” and “Detroit Suburbs”? As if living south of 8 Mile disqualifies you from blind-dates with lonely single professionals? Ugh. According to their website, “The population of the suburbs is three times the population of the metro area. What does that mean? More great dating options.”

(Actually, what it means is that their ad-copy writer doesn’t understand the definition of “metro area.” How could the suburbs contain three times the population of themselves plus the city? If you want explicitly to include both, just say “metro-Detroit.”)

I wish I could chalk up Detroit’s self-loathing to mere linguistic ignorance, but it’s much deeper than that. If only we realized that our pessimism is self-fulfilling: widespread negativity is just one more thing to be negative about. Griping about the environment hardly makes it better.

I once commented to a fellow Detroiter that the region has many assets, if only one is willing to look. He responded, “Yeah, but it’s like shopping at Value City: occasionally you find something cool, but you have to slog through a bunch of crap first.”

He meant this analogy as a criticism, but I thought it actually captured some of Detroit’s charm: Detroit is gritty, unpretentious, and unedited, but it can offer great value if you’re willing to put in the effort. I’m proud to call it home.

John Corvino’s “Gay Moralist” column appears bi-weekly in Between the Lines.

ジョンさんが言うように、「デトロイトに住んでいる」と言うと否定的な反応が返ってくることが多い。大抵は「デトロイトみたいな危なくて貧しくてつまらないところに住んでいるなんて、かわいそうに」なんていう風に聞こえて、聞いているほうとしては「またか」と思うと同時に、「デトロイトはそんなにひどいところじゃないよ」とデトロイトを弁護しなければいけない気分になる。

でも、実際のところ僕は今デトロイトの生活を楽しんでいるし、他の都市にはない魅力がデトロイトにはあると思う。そんなうれしさや喜びを共有できる人が少ないというのは少し寂しいことだ(逆にデトロイト市内に住んでいる人たち同士だと気が合って仲良くなれるのだけど)。

この気持ちは何となくゲイであることにも似ているものがある。僕がゲイだとカミングアウトすると、はっきりとは言わなくても「そんな風になっちゃってかわいそうに」というような反応を受けることがある。「ゲイであることはそんなにひどいもんじゃないよ」と言っても、なかなか分かってもらえないことも多い。

要は人が持つ無知やステレオタイプとの戦いなんだと思う。僕だって数年前に初めてデトロイトに住む人に会ったとき、「え、こんなに裕福そうな人が、なんであんなところに住んでいるんだろう?」なんて思っていたことがあった。そのときの僕のデトロイトのイメージは、まさに「貧しくて危なくて汚い街」だったのだ。だから、そういう反応をする人の気持ちも分からないでもない。

そのような気持ちは、同じような経験をした人じゃないとなかなか分かりにくいのかもしれない。状況は違えど、多分、国際結婚をしてアメリカに来た人なんかも日本に一時帰国すると同じような気分を味わっているのかもしれない。もしくはアメリカに住んでいて、アメリカ人から「日本人ってこうなんでしょー?」みたいに当てはめられて、「いやいやそうじゃなくて」と訂正しなければいけない気分にも似ているかもしれない。一度や二度ならまだしも、いろんな人からいつも同じ質問をされると(そしてそれが嫌味な質問だったりすると)、結構うんざりするものだ。

だからこそ、似たような境遇の人をブログなどで発見すると、親近感を感じるのだろう。落ち込んだときなど、他の人のブログを読んで勇気付けられることも多い。というわけで、ブロガーのみなさん、お互いこれからもがんばりましょう。
by dice_michigan | 2005-08-23 21:12 | デトロイト・ミシガン