Asheville for All

This member commentary post does not necessarily reflect the views of Asheville For All or its members.

I listened to a good podcast episode recently. It was an interview with Matthew Desmond, a sociologist who has recently published a book about poverty and inequality in the United States. The book’s primary thesis is that it’s not just the “one percent” that are behind economic injustice, but rather that a broad swath of the upper and middle classes play a role in perpetuating poverty and segregation.

The episode touches on a lot of different issues, not the least of which is housing, and I recommend it. But one small moment in the interview got me thinking about something.

In this particular segment of the interview, Desmond is talking about how there’s a kind of small talk conversation that we have with neighbors or family members that can become opportunities to educate, advocate, and organize. He imagines a scenario where you are talking to a neighbor during tax season. Perhaps you’re just talking over the fence between your yards. And your neighbor inevitably gripes about having to do their taxes.

“I hate doing my taxes. You know what I’m talking about!”

These kinds of small talk conversations, Desmond notes, place important subjects “in the air.”

So, he suggests, the next time someone engages in this kind of chit-chat, you can do the usual thing, which is to respond with “I know, right? Taxes. What a pain.”

(At this point, I should note that I am totally going off of my memory of having listened to this podcast while out on a run, and quotes most definitely are not verbatim. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a transcript available on the show’s website.)

Or you can say something unexpected. In his example, you might say something like, “Yeah, isn’t it crazy that we get a mortgage interest deduction, which is essentially a subsidy for the rich? Have you ever thought about writing your congressperson to ask them to sunset this policy so we can help people that are struggling more than we are?”

This kind of conversational move is a variation on what labor organizers call a “one on one.” In this case, you take a social connection that you already have, and try to transform an instance of formless, abstract small talk, in order to move the discussion towards one with more coherence and purpose.

Well, it occurred to me, listening to this interview, that housing is in the air in Asheville. All the time. Online, offline, with neighbors, my wife’s friends, any informal hangout where my toddlers are running around on the floor while the adults are sipping drinks, someone will say something like, “Gee, aren’t housing prices around here crazy these days?”

These conversations are rudderless, lacking coherent ideology, and they often end up with just plain bad conclusions. (Tell me you’ve never heard someone say “I wish people would just stop moving here.”) This is to be expected. People are prone to make observations about what they see around them, and we are all prone to use those observations to make guesses about how the world works, and assumptions about how the world work.