Andrew Gaertner
2 min readMay 20, 2022

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When you talk about relocating to a city that felt safer because everybody was different, I think back to when I lived in California and would visit San Francisco. I would see people of all races and ethnic backgrounds walking around, as well as people who were very expressive with their clothing choices. It was such a relief coming from Wisconsin, where everybody was white and looked conservative. I imagined San Francisco had reached some sort of tipping point where "typical" white Americans were in a statistical minority (maybe in the 1970s?) and then it just sort of became a model of an open society where all people's lifestyle choices were accepted. I know this is an outsider's view of SF, and especially with the tech money and ridiculous rents it may have already changed back to some sort of white-moneyed utopia, but it lives in my imagination as a place of radical acceptance of outward differences (perhaps not differences in wealth?). Anyway, perhaps this is what they are afraid of. That "white spaces" will become more accepting and less judgmental. It is an existential threat to conservative white people. I know because the conservative white people in my family are quite religious and they are concerned about people's moral choices. In a completely white space in the midwest, there is an element of shame that keeps white people in line. What happens when people have no shame? In SF they have the Bay to Breakers (which is seven miles of celebration of no shame) and Pride and other festivals. I loved it. What a relief to not have shame be an operating force in my life.

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Andrew Gaertner
Andrew Gaertner

Written by Andrew Gaertner

To live in a world of peace and justice we must imagine it first. For this, we need artists and writers. I write to reach for the edges of what is possible.

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