Faribault Makes Another Top Ten List

Well, here we go again. Faribault managed to make another Top Ten list. You might remember back in June we were No. 6 on the Ten Worst Cities in Minnesota, this time we dropped in the latest survey to number No. 7, which is good I guess. The survey I refer to is the Roadsnacks 10 Most White Trash Cities in Minnesota.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines "white trash" as: a member of an inferior or underprivileged white social group. It's also a band from the early '80s whose biggest hit was "Apple Pie" and, just like the band, this survey is meant only as a form of entertainment, or "infotainment," as they state on their website.

Roadsnacks list their parameters for determining the white trash level of each of the 10 cites as: "Cities where there are lots of white people, cities where residents are poorer than average, cities where a high number of residents are high school dropouts, cities with higher number of bowling alleys per capita, high drug use, higher than average Payday Loan Outlets, violent cities (measured in aggravated assaults) and cities with a high number of residents on welfare." Supposedly they use publicly available data as well as Google Maps to determine each of these numbers to find each city's ranking, although they don't list specific sources.

Take away from it what you will, I know this is a better town than what is being portrayed in this article. I see people doing things to make this a better place to live every day, but until we all take ownership of our town and make the changes ourselves, this town is going to be seen by these surveys as a place to ridicule.