Every image in the city, every successive field of view, is part of the total collage. There are things that were put there intentionally, like advertisements, or speeches, or mission statements; the ones they want you to see. Then there are the things that just are, that nobody decided to show you.
Things they want you to see: an image behind the train track of a woman of color, happy and in command, in a police uniform. Or in a station, a series of posters of transgender couples and individuals, celebrating self-realization and inclusivity. Or a company mission statement preaching some happy version of openness and connection. Or finally, political speeches at a fundraising breakfast before a big parade in June. All effusively representing the crown jewels of this city: pride that this place is more accepting of variety, more celebrating of diversity, more kind, and also more just, than any other place. But pride can become bitter, even if what you’re proud of is inclusion and tolerance. Especially when the inclusion and tolerance have deflated, and the pride is what’s left.
One realization they maybe don’t want you to see enough to have: that there is deeper racial segregation than I’ve seen anywhere else, not as much of neighborhoods, but of restaurants, stores, bars, nightclubs, parks, or any other space of leisure.
And another: that the companies preaching openness and connection, seek these things only as the occasional side effect of a hard, cold campaign to bring more people onto a platform, measure more data, break apart the economy and stitch it back together. That people within them must be demanded to justify their existence for fear of not having made enough money appear. That these same people will unironically discuss salaries over $100,000, as though it’s not relevant, not even true, that that is a lot of money, so long as we take truth to be informed by what is real for most human beings living around us. Money, money, money, made not religious, but fundamental.
It’s the richest place the world has ever seen, and it doesn’t care, charmed as it is by its own ways of eating, talking, renting, driving, living, whether it’s shared, whether society learns anything from it. Doesn’t care that it is becoming its own separate algae bubble, because so long as it puts up enough “coming soon” posters for the hot new IP franchise “Inclusion and Equality,” it does not see that anything beyond the bubble exists.