Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences - This topic has 17 replies, 18 voices, and was last updated 21 years, 12 months ago by
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As a black homeowner in a racially mixed subdivision, I’ve noticed that my Caucasian neighbors spend much more time on lawn care. Do Caucasians see lawn care as basic home maintenance, or is it more of a hobby?
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Name : Sara, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : Black/African American, Religion : Baptist, Age : 36, City : Indianapolis, State : IN, Country : United States, Occupation : Manager, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Historically, white Americans have obsessed on their lawns and home exteriors. This is also a generational thing, as the 1950s “Keeping up with the Joneses” mentality is now that of the retirement generation.
In our situation, we are thirty-something and live in a largely retirement-age community (we like our house and like the location). There are scads of homeowners association regulations, and we do just what we have to for compliance. We have other priorities. Left to our own devices, we’d probably just let weeds flourish and not force grass to grow where it doesn’t want to. We use a simple manual lawn mower.
To sum up, it’s not so much a racial thing as it is generational and also based on how much you care what other people think when they drive by. We’d prefer people judge us by the content of the character we aspire to, rather than what we have or what our house looks like.
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Name : Augustine23647, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Traditional (Pre-Vatican II) Catholic, Age : 38, City : Columbia, State : SC, Country : United States, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I am Caucasian, and I have noticed the inordinate amount of time, money, and chemical products that people use to maintain lawns. I live in an area that is 98 percent Caucasian. However, I rebelled against what I see as a ridiculous pursuit to have a perfect yard. We built a house in a rural area after leaving a suburban subdivision where a perfect lawn was expected by the neighbors. Because our lawn had weeds, and we hated the idea of chemicals, our white next-door neighbor yelled and screamed until we finally sold the house because of her. Ironically, the best-looking yard belonged to the only black family in the area. Their yard actually won an award from the town for “best-looking lawn.” They even had beautiful bonsais growing in their yard. Although I’ve given this subject plenty of thought, I never associated it as a racial phenomenon.
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Name : Helen S., Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 43, City : Corvallis, State : OR, Country : United States, Social class : Upper class,I too live in a racially mixed neighborhood. Actually, it’s mixed in other ways too, which is what makes it fun for me. And I don’t understand why different people become so obsessed with lawns. In my neighborhood, I think that the difference has more to do with whether people have a “suburban lawn” or an “urban, ivy, flowers and other ground covers” mentality. Yesterday, one of my colleagues, who’s black, told me that when house-hunting with her husband (also black), she was appalled when he said any house with a big yard would mean he’d have to buy a tractor and riding mower. And a big yard meant one as small as a quarter-acre. So maybe it’s a guy thing.
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Name : Tom-L24149, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Gay, Race : White/Caucasian, City : Washington, State : DC, Country : United States, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,As a white person, I believe lawn care is basic home maintenance. Gardening is a hobby. Lawn care is not.
If one does not have a nice looking yard, it does not look good. I was in a black neighborhood. I assume it was black because the person I visited was black, plus the look of some of the houses and yards. There was a car on the front lawn! Some houses looked run-down. Grass on some lawns was a foot high. As wrong as it is to think this, I was uneasy about leaving my brand new car out on the street in that neighborhood.
Now, I live walking distance from a black neighborhood. It’s a nice area. Most of the houses and yards look great and immaculate.
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Name : Beth G., Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Agnostic, Age : 25, City : Selden, State : NY, Country : United States, Occupation : Production assistant, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,In my case, it’s strickly household maintenance. Most of the Caucasian “lawn freaks” I know, including my husband to some extent, are men. If women have that tendency, they seem to become “garden freaks” – a variant. Those who have “desk jobs” seem to do it as a hobby at least as much as for maintenance. To a large extent, I think white people want their houses to “fit in” with the care level of their neighbors’ houses. For example, if living in a neighborhood where everyone uses a lawn service, many Caucasians want their lawns to be always green, always trimmed and always weedless to avoid looking like dirtballs by comparison.
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Name : Susan K., Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 51, City : Rochester, State : NY, Country : United States, Occupation : Writer/Consultant, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,In Spain, the walls of the houses go right up to the street, and whatever plant life there may be is in an interior courtyard. Its presence or absence is of interest only to the residents. But here, our lawns are exposed to public view, and make public statements about us. An ugly lawn says either that I am incompetent (which is why I make some minimal effort at least not to have the worst one on my block) or that I have rejected the aesthetic values of my neighbors.
I suspect that whether it is important to one that he is regarded by his neighbors as competent in areas they have defined as important is more a function of personality than race. Lawns are possibly a social indicator in the suburbs simply because they are a characteristic that marks the homes as suburban (and thus as the abode of “successful” occupants).
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Name : Gary W., Gender : M, Age : 51, City : Golden, State : CO, Country : United States, Occupation : Accountant, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,It depends on who you are talking about. I was raised in a family where one of the weekly tasks was maintaining the lawn and garden. This included everything from mowing the lawn to weeding the flower beds. I see it as a part of basic home maintenance, but I do not spend a great deal of time at it. On the other hand, a friend of mine was raised in apartments as a child and never had to maintain a lawn or garden until she bought her first home. She sees it more as a hobby. She can spends hours every weekend out in her yard doing something, and it has paid off for her with a beautiful lawn and beds.
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Name : M-Kemper22531, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 30, City : Tampa, State : FL, Country : United States, Occupation : Systems Engineer, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,Growing up in a mostly white, middle-class suburb, I recall lawn care being part of basic home maintenance. An unkempt lawn was considered to “lower the tone” of the neighborhood, and often the owner of the lawn would hear from the neighbors about it.
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Name : Crystal, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Pagan, Age : 30's, City : Oakland, State : CA, Country : United States, Occupation : Office manager, Education level : 2 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I believe it came straight from the movies. Have you seen the movies where the people who have perfect lawns are always well-to-do, if not rich? To those people, it’s about social status, and “See, my life is so perfect and happy.” I am in the process of buying a house. I’m white and couldn’t care less if my lawn was perfect or not. I think those people feel that the people who notice the work they do on their property will think of them better than they think of themselves.
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Name : Rebeca W., Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Baptist, Age : 27, City : Evansville, State : IN, Country : United States, Occupation : Housewife, Education level : High School Diploma,This Caucasian can’t stand it. I’d much rather sit in the shade when it’s all hot and sunny than get all hot, sweaty and sticky pushing noisy lawn equipment around. The neighbors don’t really appreciate that, though, so I do the minimum required to keep them off my back. Some people do enjoy it, and for them it is a hobby, but I haven’t noticed it as a black/white thing. Some people just like to putter.
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Name : Kay-S, Gender : F, Race : White/Caucasian, Age : 35, City : Lansing, State : MI, Country : United States, Education level : Over 4 Years of College,I had not really thought about this until you mentioned it, but I do think this is a cultural norm among Euro-Americans. I think white culture views a free-standing, single-family home as an important status symbol. A well-kempt lawn is a part of the package. Maybe this comes from ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s sitcoms like Leave It To Beaver, The Brady Bunch and even Eight is Enough,, which showed idealized white families with impossibly perfect lawns. Hmmm, interesting. Thanks for the insight!
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Name : Stacee27905, Gender : F, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Christian, Age : 30, City : Sugar Land, State : TX, Country : United States, Education level : Over 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I can only speak for myself, but I view lawn maintenance as an extention of housework. Whenever I see a yard that looks really rough, I assume the inside of the house is probably unkempt as well. Therefore, I would be embarrassed to have a really messy yard. Extensive gardening and flowerbeds, on the other hand, is more of a hobby. It very time-consuming. That it why the prettiest yards often belong to retired people.
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Name : Michell, Gender : F, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Atheist, Age : 32, City : Panama City, State : FL, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,We live in a mostly white area. Most of the lawns in our neighborhood are immaculately manicured. We recently had most of the grass removed from our front yard and replaced it with mulch and shade plants because my husband was obsessed with keeping the lawn thick and lush (despite the fact that our yard is mostly shade – almost forest-like). The mulch has put an end to that!
It had never occured to me that this was an ethnic issue. I would think of it as more of a “class” thing. If you’ve ever tried to keep a nice lawn, you know it’s not an inexpensive venture. It costs plenty, which is probably part of the reason people will continue to spend so much of their time on their lawns: Because they’ve got a bundle of money invested in it. And the reason we do it, to start with, is we want to see something pleasing to our eye when we look out in our yard.
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Name : Judy, Gender : F, Age : 40, City : Burlington, State : NJ, Country : United States, Occupation : Stay-at-home mom, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,I believe you may be stereotyping. I am white and live in a mixed black and white neighborhood. I take care of my yard, but many of my black neighbors’ lawns put mine to shame. They put a lot more time into lawn care than I do. And the worst yard on the street belongs to a white family. I think people who obsess about their lawns come in all colors.
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Name : Jack D., Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Gay, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Catholic, Age : 40, City : Hampton, State : VA, Country : United States, Occupation : Systems analyst, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Middle class,
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