1) If there’s a “mainstream”, then there should be “fringes” -even if they change with time. The national “model” in Argentina changed from the “conquistadores” descent in XIX century to include the Italian and other newcomers by the middle XX and the Jewish by its end. But today you can see outbursts of discrimination towards Bolivian, Paraguayan and Peruvian immigrants even though they are decades long established and economically integrated. They are the new “fringe” to point at as the global crises increases fear of competence for endangered working posts.

2) You’re right at the obscured role of the mothers in both narratives. But you won’t find a proper answer in Campbell’s Jungian mystic psychology. Better look at Lacan’s explanation of the Freudian “Super-ego”:
Mothers educates their children in the accepted social values, but they do this “in the name of The Father” (speaking in symbolic terms). Even if the real father is a criminal, the symbolic one is the source of the social law.

I can tell from my own expertise: my father died very young in an accident two months after my birth. My mother raised me and gave my all her cultural values. But, when she had to avoid deviations (like, say, smoking) she always stressed how my father was and his “virtues” legacy that I should keep alive.

So, in a wider scope, is the legacy of the “Founding Fathers” that gives the backbone to Society (with, perhaps, some hard to find tribal exceptions).

My best.

North Oakland is definitely different than North Oakland, which is why I specified the “North” part. But I disagree that Temescal, Rockridge, and Piedmont are the only integrated neighborhoods in Oakland. Downtown, China Town, Diamond, Jack London, the area around Mills – all those areas are just as diverse. And, in fact, West Oakland is hipsterville lately. (Fixed gear bikes rolling down Mandela Parkway.) You can check it all out for yourself here. Even when you look at percent poverty per neighborhood, North Oakland doesn’t look that different from most of the rest of the city (other than West Oakland).

2) I like that we’ve all been on a hip-hop kick lately…my 90s podcast we’ll be posted soon.

3) We have to remember that North Oakland is so different from Oakland. Temescal, Rockridge, and even Piedmont are known more by their neighborhood name, than as Oakland.

Much love homie.