Searching for Whitopia

For his book, Searching For Whitopia, Rich Benjamin lists each and every city and county in the U.S. that is “whiter than the nation, its respective region, and its state.” He calls these enclaves “Whitopias.” As soon as Benjamin identified the Whitopias, he immersed himself in them. He wanted to locate out why more and more whites are moving to small towns and exurban areas which are, for probably the most part, white. He even spent time living in three, in Forsythe County, Ga., Couer d’Alene, Idaho, and St. George, Utah. Benjamin describes why Whitopias are growing, and what it means for the U.S. Imagine moving to a place where you are able to leave your front door unlocked as you run your errands, exactly where the community enjoys a winning ratio of playgrounds to potholes, exactly where you can turn your kids loose at 3 p.m., not to worry, then see them in time for supper, exactly where the neighbors greet those children by name, exactly where your trouble-free camera stabilizer high school feels like a de facto private school, where if you determine to play hooky from work, you are able to drive just twenty minutes and put your sailboat on the water, where the outdoor gas tankless water heater serenity is shattered only by every seagull’s cry, where you can joyride your off-road vehicles (Snowmobiles! ATVs! Mountain bikes! Rock crawlers!) on Nature’s bold terrain, where your family and abundant friends really feel close to the best metal detector soil, and where suburban blight has but to spoil your vistas. Just imagine. If you could move to such a place, would you? If so, you would join a growing number of white Americans homesteading in a constellation of little at home microdermabrasion towns and so-called “exurbs” which are extremely white. They are creating communal pods that cannily preserve a white-bread world, a throwback to an imagined past with “authentic” 1950s values and also the nifty suburban amenities accessible today. A prediction that produced hard money lenders headlines across the United States ten years ago is quickly becoming a reality: By 2042, whites will no longer be the American majority. A related, less-reported trend is the fact that as immigrant populations – overwhelmingly people of color – increases in cities and suburbs, more and more whites are living in small cities and exurbs. “So many of the people that are here have come from areas where they have seen diversity done badly,” says Carol Sapp, a notable civic and business leader in St. George, Utah, a bona fide Whitopia. Christine Blum moved to St. George in 2004 following living for twenty-four years in Los Angeles. “When I lived in California, everybody was a liberal, fairly a lot,” recalls Christine, the president in the local women’s Republican group. “I wanted to become around people who shared my political views.” She groans remembering the conversations in California exactly where liberals bashed the GOP and the social settings in which she felt censored. “It’s like, I do not want to say what I truly think, ’cause they’re going to believe I’m an evil, right-wing fascist.” In California, she worked within the animation field, mostly for Disney, and as an assistant director on King of the Hill. She came to St. George to escape the big city and to start a new profession as a cartoonist and illustrator. Denise Larsen moved to the St. George area from Milwaukee with her husband and young daughters in 1997. “When we heard the gang shootings, we believed ‘It’s time to move,’” Denise tells me more than soda pop at Wendy’s. “This kid tried to leave a gang; they shot up his dad down the block from us. I guess you don’t attempt and leave a gang. We could no longer let our children ride their bikes about. Here, they could ride all of the way down to the Virgin River, and we do not need to be concerned about it.” For a mother disappointed with getting her daughters bused across town due to a desegregation order, fed up with shoveling snow, and terrified in the gunshots ringing out, her new, Whitopian community is the perfect elixir.