Suburbs: The American Nightmare

Suburbia is often seen as the safe, responsible goal for many Americans, yet Adam Conover gleefully strikes down any suburban pride to show how damaging it is to our society. Suburban life is often portrayed as the home of the American Dream. White picket fences have become synonymous with a socially successful life. Suburban towns are well known for their good schools, safe neighbourhoods and clean image. Yet, Adam’s job is to disprove the myths surrounding everyday life and the way he approaches “ruining” suburbs includes a sobering barrage of historical facts. Adam’s lesson opens the eyes of his audience; to ignore what he says is to ignore important topics like institutionalized racism, white privilege, and government irresponsibility. It’s hard to educate someone when they think they’re the bad guy, so Adam uses humour to make white members of his audience feel less persecuted just simply misinformed when he begins to talk about the continued racism. Adam is able to explore the audiences ignorances without making them feel ignorant. Adam brings in experts to speak to add credibility to his points. A new concept that I learned from this episode was the red-lighting and current invisible segregation our country suffers from. It’s easy to believe that once the government has made something illegal, it’s stopped but unfortunately that is untrue and Adam makes that especially clear. He comforts the audience that although we live in a nightmarish system, we have the ability to actively work towards changing it simply by having concepts “ruined” for us. Adam uses data and undeniable facts to show just how pervasive racism and inane rules kept up by the government are, while padding it all with humour to make it more digestible. You walk away feeling knowledgeable and inspired to make change and do more research rather than feeling annoyed because he “ruined” suburbs