Trainers have a saying: You get the behavior you reward. That’s as true for humans as it is for any other organism. So, unfortunately, is the fact that negative reinforcement works at least as well as the positive kind… and for humans in groups, negative reinforcement of Us-versus-Them tribalism can be very profitable indeed. In the NYTimes, Rich Benjamin discusses “The Gated Community Mentality“:
… From 2007 to 2009, I traveled 27,000 miles, living in predominantly white gated communities across this country to research a book. I threw myself into these communities with gusto — no Howard Johnson or Motel 6 for me. I borrowed or rented residents’ homes. From the red-rock canyons of southern Utah to the Waffle-House-pocked exurbs of north Georgia, I lived in gated communities as a black man, with a youthful style and face, to interview and observe residents.
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The perverse, pervasive real-estate speak I heard in these communities champions a bunker mentality. Residents often expressed a fear of crime that was exaggerated beyond the actual criminal threat, as documented by their police department’s statistics. Since you can say “gated community” only so many times, developers hatched an array of Orwellian euphemisms to appease residents’ anxieties: “master-planned community,” “landscaped resort community,” “secluded intimate neighborhood.”
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No matter the label, the product is the same: self-contained, conservative and overzealous in its demands for “safety.” Gated communities churn a vicious cycle by attracting like-minded residents who seek shelter from outsiders and whose physical seclusion then worsens paranoid groupthink against outsiders. These bunker communities remind me of those Matryoshka wooden dolls. A similar-object-within-a-similar-object serves as shelter; from community to subdivision to house, each unit relies on staggered forms of security and comfort, including town authorities, zoning practices, private security systems and personal firearms.
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Mr. Zimmerman’s gated community, a 260-unit housing complex, sits in a racially mixed suburb of Orlando, Fla. Mr. Martin’s “suspicious” profile amounted to more than his black skin. He was profiled as young, loitering, non-property-owning and poor. Based on their actions, police officers clearly assumed Mr. Zimmerman was the private property owner and Mr. Martin the dangerous interloper. After all, why did the police treat Mr. Martin like a criminal, instead of Mr. Zimmerman, his assailant? Why was the black corpse tested for drugs and alcohol, but the living perpetrator wasn’t? …
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Those reducing this tragedy to racism miss a more accurate and painful picture. Why is a child dead? The rise of “secure,” gated communities, private cops, private roads, private parks, private schools, private playgrounds — private, private, private —exacerbates biased treatment against the young, the colored and the presumably poor.
And yet gated communities, not public projects, are where the big profits are made today. (‘Job creators’, good! Community organizers, bad!) Call me a cycnic, but I suspect many of Mr. Zimmerman’s former neighbors think the only problem is that the gates weren’t high enough to keep Trayvon Martin out, not that the real purpose behind those gates is to keep them paranoid and exploitable.
Linda Featheringill
Interesting article you cited.
I never thought about the situation in that way. I wonder just how white Zimmerman’s community is. I also wonder about the ages of the residents. Teenagers might be a very rare commodity. People who walk to the store might also be rare. And yeah, we won’t even get into the hoodie bit [mostly worn by young people?].
Fear of The Other can be intense.
Once upon a time, I was in danger of being shot by my father when I made a surprise visit home because he thought I was a long-haired hippie male. Obviously, his eyesight wasn’t too good. And my dad was a walking repository of paranoid ideas. But in the context of this story, I could still have been dead.
My father was dangerous at times. Is it true that inmates in gated communities are also dangerous to the rest of society? Do we need to arm ourselves for protection against them?
Liquid
Before I forget my delicious hyperbole I must say that where was it declared that it’s “American” to jam a vacuum cleaner into the Womb of Freedom and suck out the Fetus of Justice?
Really!
I had a solid argument but my horrible imagery has clouded my judgment…that and the booze; always the booze.
WereBear
I’ve been hearing about the “gated community” craze in Florida for a few years now. I couldn’t figure it out; crime rates are dropping, and the people in them weren’t really rich.
But as a marketing scheme? Totally got it now.
In addition, Florida has always had these odd pockets of Only Old People; the kind where “get off my lawn” is enforced by mall cops. This must be taken to its illogical extreme.
JGabriel
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Richard Benjamin, NYT:
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I thought “secluded intimate neighborhood” meant “nudist swingers colony”.
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Bigi
We have our winner on who will be the first prominent Republican to call Obama a N-word: http://stfuconservatives.net/post/20158454336
It’s Rick Santorum!
Maybe he meant “blah person”.
Schlemizel
Having lived in Florida for a while I saw the gated community thing first hand. It very defiantly has to do with a fear of crime (somewhat justified, FL is a weird place with lots of problems) and also a fear of having the wrong kind of neighbors – not just brown or black but also trashy white neighbors.
the crime part has a lot to do with the huge influx of people & a lot of people with no place to go, a lot has to do with the crappy way the government deals with it – don’t spend a dime on ANYTHING that might prevent crime in any way. The neighbor deal has a lot to do with the crappy way they let communities develop – without adequate (or often any) zoning control. In my neighborhood were a few 1/2 million dollar homes, a bunch of 100-200k homes & many ‘tar paper & tin shacks’ often with a wash machine on the porch and a car up on blocks in the yard. A gated community is some bulwark against those things I suppose.
When Lawton Chiles was Gov he propose rasing taxes, it would have cost $4 a year per person, to build and maintain jails to hold the murders and rapists that FL routinely let go VERY early (many cells are full of life without parole kids who got caught with 3-4 joints under their draconian 0 tolerance laws). The GOOPER that thought he could replace CHiles started running ads calling him and the plan ‘tax-n-spend’. Then a bunch of tourists got shot. Didn’t change the outcome but it killed the GOOPERS career.
People in FL will spend $5k for a home alarm system, $800 for a handgun, $500 for a dog that is as likely to take out their kid or granny as any bad guy (and in my area we averaged 1 dog related death about every two weeks). but they would not spend $5 to lock bad guys away.
bjacques
There’s an easy solution to this. Machine gun emplacements across the road from the entrance. Shell the neighborhood and finish off the survivors as they try to escape. Why do people have to make everything so difficult?
WWALD?
(What would a Lannister do?)
Trebuchets and companies of archers, and a dragon for air support if he can get one, but you get the idea.
arguingwithsignposts
Given all the recent dust from the redesign here, this is a heart-warming story about blog CSS and coming out: Guy comes out of closet on Facebook to friends who are entirely too geeky to care.
bago
This is intensely personal for me. I had a friend also with the last name Martin that was shot and killed on his porch. Okay, anything else I type at this point will be stupid.
debit
@bjacques: See, I was thinking personal security turrets from Aperture Science.
bemused
Anyone seen the you tubes of Rick Santorum almost saying the ‘n’ word yesterday? Is this for real? It sure sounds like he almost slipped and said it. I don’t know what other word starting with ni he could have been going for.
debit
@bemused: Just saw it here. Wow. But, you know, Al Gore sighed, so both sides.
Egg Berry
@bemused: I have no love for prick sanitorium, but he might have been about to say “negotiate” in that clip. It fits with the context.
Darkrose
@Egg Berry: If he’d intended to say “negotiate”, there would be no reason for him to stop and check himself that abruptly. That’s exactly the kind of thing I do when I start to say “fuck” and realize as the word is forming that I’m talking to my mother-in-law.
bemused
@Egg Berry:
I can’t understand why he checked himself if he was going for the word ‘negotiator’ unless the other word comes instinctively to him.
Robert Sneddon
Over Here in the Cradle of Democracy, Britain’s version of Newt Gingrich has won a by-election and is once more heading for the Mother of Parliaments with an Access All Areas pass as the (only) Respect Party MP for Bradford West.
Gorgeous George Galloway the Comeback King took the seat from Labour after the incumbent MP resigned her seat for health reasons. His anti-war message resonated in a mainly Muslim constituency especially after the civilian shootings in Afghanistan and he swept to a resounding victory with 18,000 votes, a majority of 10,000 over second-place Labour.
Egg Berry
@Darkrose: @bemused: He checked himself because he’s a flaming idiot who doesn’t have a teleprompter.
bemused
@Egg Berry:
Probably so. He talks gibberish so anything might fall out of his mouth. I think his “blah” slip was real but even if yesterday’s blip isn’t what it sounds like, it will give him grief.
JGabriel
Murdoch calls enemies “right-wingers”:
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Irony has a little death.
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dr. bloor
@Darkrose:
I hate it when that happens.
I saw my first gated community when I went to visit a friend in LA about thirty years ago. The most Orwellian, bizarre thing I had ever seen, and I grew up in the suburbs.
Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel:
.
Let me just say that this is the kind of mistake one doesn’t make twice. I still have nightmares.
Kirbster
I partly blame universal air-conditioning for Florida’s proliferation of gated communities. There is no way that people could live in those closely-spaced concrete-block-and-stucco bunkers without AC.
Yevgraf
I like the geezer gated communities best. Imagine what sorts of nice people want to move to a place where grandchildren can’t stay overnight, and the sort of focus that it allows for you to perfect your golf swing, your Fox News watching, and your reinforcement of your nasty racist, classist, misogynist, selfish worldview, all while you collect Medicare and SS and complain about welfare.
Valdivia
@bemused:
darn it. I had my money on Newt. And much later in the cycle.
techno
Humans have been building “gated communities” for thousands of years–walled cities, drawbridges, moats, etc. anyone?
The idea that somehow people are becoming overly paranoid because of real estate marketing schemes is literally silly beyond words. People want to be secure in their homes. This subject is NOT negotiable—I mean, have you ever been around someone whose home was just broken into? If their homes don’t provide enough security, they want their “walls” extended to their whole communities. These people do NOT care if the crime rate is falling—the only acceptable crime rate for home intrusions is ZERO.
Chyron HR
@bemused:
He was saying “Niggoon”. That’s a term of endearment all the kids are using these days.
bvac
Boom http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=nzyvo8SKa0M#t=2065s
Citizen_X
@techno:
That could be said about rapes, or unjustified shootings under the Stand Your Ground law, or any other crimes (yes, even the ones that don’t occur mainly to property owners). A crime rate of ZERO! is an impossibility, though, and demanding that makes you sound like an unhinged paranoid.
Which was kind of the whole point.
rumpole
One random comment on yesterday’s scotus argument. One of the issues in the case is that the Medicaid funding in the ACA is somehow “coercive.” This is the same exact money that Rick Perry rejected within the last week. Of all the arguments in the case, this and the mandate are the most radical. And even this drew skepticism from the Randian wing. It would basically mean that the only way that the feds could give money to the states would be “whee! block grant! spend it on health care or something!.” (Unless it’s a really small amount of money, in which case conditions may be attached).
How do we know which is big and which is small? FREEDOM! That’s how.
There is a certain amount of chain-jerking that goes on in every oral argument-the justices come after people even when they know how they’re going to decide well in advance. It seemed like more than that.
Obama’s gonna win in November. I’m worried about 2016, because it’s during that term that the court’s balance will have a chance to swing. More Brennans–less Kennedys.
Here endeth today’s rant.
bemused
@Chyron HR:
Good one.
gvg
I’m not impressed actually. I live in Florida and right from the start I thought the repeated mentions of gated community were irrelevant. “Gated” communities and apartments are extremely common here and not very closely ties to rich or exclusive. they are a marketing scheme that has been over exploited to the point that most gated communities don’t care enough to actually close the gates or repair them when they break which they do often. Now some communities do care and are paranoid and those are the ones whose residents did think they :needed” the security. The rest are full of people who didn’t care one way or the other and picked that community for some other reason. a lot of the gates are just across the one or two neighborhood entrances and not even walled or fenced the rest of the way. Those are for keeping out salesmen/solicitors not walkers. They usually don’t shut the gates in daytime and just use the gates as a symbol that its now private property and that if someone complains they can run you off. If you are annoyed by door to door evangelicals, such neighborhoods do keep them away but also make for difficulty with after hours UPS package deliveries. There are a whole range of what gated means and some pretty standard modest apartments have gates. I had not realized it isn’t that way for the whole country until this story and the responses came up.
Florida was over built sometime before the real estate crash. People were in denial about it but it was obvious. This means builders were looking for any cheaper way to be different and special for some years before reality was no longer denialble, thus lots of gates. My sister lived in one of those gated apartments for several years. It was just like any other apartment. the gates got broken fairly often as they just don’t stand up to anybody frustrated pushing on them even a little.
techno
@Citizen_X:
So you are saying that everyone who has ever lived in a gated community in history is an unhinged paranoid? I guess the whole profession of city planning has been dominated by crazy people since the beginning of recorded history.
I do love folks who toss around psychobabble.
El Cid
Vapidly uniform “gated” communities did not arise in reaction to some security threat.
They were an economic model of housing development and their appeal was primarily investment- and aesthetic-based.
Most of the places these large gated communities arose weren’t in the midst of crime-ridden hellholes, but large, expansive rural areas where land was cheap but which ordinarily wouldn’t have lured wealthier people and mini-mansions there.
It’s not like in rural northeast Georgia the giganto-boom of mini-mansion estates happened because scared upper-middle-class whites had been struggling to secure their kids’ safety amongst their less-uniformly-elite neighborhoods in which they had been living.
Citizen_X
@techno:
No, just you.
And medieval walled cities, in a time of constant warfare? Not a good thing to strive for.
techno
@Citizen_X: I am a paranoid and you know this how?
I once lived in the toughest neighborhood in town as one of those idealistic “urban pioneers” for 15 years. Yes my house was was broken into. Yes, I did have to hold the hands of sobbing neighbors whose homes had been broken into. But I stayed and our neighborhood DID turn around. Must have been that “unhinged paranoia” that kept me going.
Slowbama
So the consensus is to include gated communities on the list of Things Responsible for Trayvon Martin’s Death? Trying to keep current here. How are we handling the “racially mixed” portion of the description above? Footnote, appendix item?
...now I try to be amused
@WereBear:
A lot of people want to do what rich people do, as much as they can afford.
Bill H.
If you’ve done any training at all, which I have for some years, you know that this is entirely untrue. Negative reinforcement is useful in small, repeat small, doses when used in conjunction with positive reinforcement, but done alone is entirely destructive and will result in disaster.
rea
Why was the black corpse tested for drugs and alcohol, but the living perpetrator wasn’t?
Because you need a search warrant to do that to a live person in this context, but not to autopsy a dead person.
Hujo
I inherited a cottage in a lakeside “gated community”. People here don’t seem any different from the ungated community where I have my principal residence, apart from the fact that they’re all white.
AA+ Bonds
Negative reinforcement is when you do something in order to remove a negative reinforcer, like when you fan yourself because it’s hot – here, heat is the negative reinforcer for fanning yourself (Zimbardo, 1992)
Normally I would not be a prick about things like this but I think we need the language of operant conditioning right now
AA+ Bonds
This seems to be a case of punishment, not negative reinforcement
Patricia Kayden
There’s nothing wrong with living in a gated community. I guess if I lived in a dangerous area, I would live in a gated community also (as does my cousin who lives close to Miami).
Zimmerman’s issue is that he was a vigilante and racist. And willing to stalk and shoot an unarmed teenager, even after being directed to stop following him.
22over7
When I read this article, the first thing I thought of is the proliferation of the “doomsday preppers” shows on cable nowadays. The nutjobs featured on those shows seem like the natural extension of those who want a “gate” into their community.
Has anyone watched those shows? The gibbering fear, the paranoia, the pants-wetting doomsday scenarios that these people buy into (oddly enough, the doomsday scenarios themselves are all different) make me think of those heady days of the cold war. Something’s in the air, and a lot of people are feeling a loss of control so terrifying that they’re stockpiling rice while assuming that the water running out of the tap will still be there. It’s unsettling, to say the least.
Gus diZerega
ancouver, BC, does not allow gated communities. They are illegal. Further, while sea side apartment towers can have million dollar penthouses on top, they also must provide far lower income apartments as well, in the same building. Gated community kinds of isolation are virtually impossible.
One prominent Vancouverite told me that among other things the cops never know the status of whom they encounter – could be poor, could be rich.
We all know what a ‘failure’ Vancouver is as a city…
Deb T
Am I mistaken that Trayvon was staying with his dad or a friend of his dad’s in that community? Was he just cutting through? If so, he probably did because he thought he’d be safe.
slag
@Yevgraf:
Hey-I didn’t know you knew my parents! How the hell are they? Yes, I know I should call.
The Republic of Stupidity
“Master-planned”?
Tad bit… Germanic… no?
How about “Your Final Solution” communities?
What’s the Orwellian euphemism for “gun turret” or “alligator-filled moat”?
Cris (without an H)
I grew up in the Northeast Heights of Albuquerque, an upper-middle-class, conservative, majority white sprawlburb of a majority Hispanic city. Right in the center of the Heights sits a gated community named Tanoan. And even as similar as economic and demographic conditions were inside and outside the walls, I always sensed a great deal of resentment and distrust between the communities. It was rather like the Sneetches, now that I think about it. Some people just have to feel exclusive.
Mark
Sacha Baron-Cohen nailed these places. He tells a real estate agent that his wife is scared of “man with chocolate face” and won’t move in if that’s a possibility.
nwerner
I’d be hesitant to make that generalization until you have reviewed the proformas of a low-income housing developer versus a master planned community developer. I have and the line item profit for the two types of development are dramatically different. Is it more ethical to make a 40 to 100 percent profit off of public money and tax credits or a sub-20 percent profit off of market rate buyers? That is also assuming that you can finance a land development project in the current market while the low income guys get bond financing, again backed by the implicit guaranty of public money. Finally, the low income housing is rarely constructed at a level consistent with a market rate builder, which is odd considering that the construction costs sometimes run almost double their market rate competitors.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@AA+ Bonds:
AKA You don’t need a Skinhead to know which way the Skinner Box blows.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@The Republic of Stupidity:
2nd Amendment Freedom decks and aquatherapy Victory gardens.
Junior Poblete
OK, so why can’t most new cars all get 50+ mpg if this technology existed in 1973, almost 40 years ago?