Not as much as someone who makes insinuations that people are afraid to go to certain parts of town not because it is unsafe, but because they are racists (which you did).
The rest of your post made more sense, and was much more measured this time.
Not as much as someone who makes insinuations that people are afraid to go to certain parts of town not because it is unsafe, but because they are racists (which you did).
The rest of your post made more sense, and was much more measured this time.
I don’t recall using the word racist… Of course neither did the person who maintained that people in northern New Mexico “scare” people who no hablan Espanol.
It must be just a coincidence that the only part of town that has a large black community is the Kirtland Addition.
How come nobody’s ascared to go into Appalachia so far?
No, you didn’t use the word, you insinuated it.
Which is why I said you insinuated it.
Why would it be coincidence? Large black communities in cities are more likely to be crime ridden than large white communities. That may well be because of the poverty, lack of education, and social predjudice that does not affect white communities as drastically, and have nothing to do with the fact that people there are black, but it doesn’t change the fact that if there is only one dangerous part of a city (as if you could really say “this is the dangerous area, and nothing else is on an absolute level”), it is more likely to be an area containing minorities than whites.
I’d paraphrase Jesse Jackson, who said that if he were to come out in the middle of the night and heard footsteps behind him and turned around to see a black man following him, he would be very afraid, but the same thing would not happen if the person following him was white. Denying the averages and statistics does nothing to help prevent racism; the goal is to change the statistics and people’s opinions.
Because I don’t know exactly where you mean when you say Appalachia. It’s a pretty big area, and not as even a consistency crimewise as a specific segment of a city. I sure as hell would be scared to go into certain parts of Appalachia, just as I would be scared to walk into a biker bar in certain parts of the country.
Look, I thought your later posts were a lot more reasonably toned, and I do not have a bone to pick with them. I just thought it was a bit cheap to respond to someone’s comment with the insinuation that he is only scared because he is uncomfortable around people of different race. I don’t think you had much evidence to throw that out there, and it’s a pretty serious charge.
Yeah Mister Frog, I agree with most of your points. And there is no question that many predominantly black areas have problems with poverty and crime. The main reason - and I’m really not trying to be a bleeding heart here - I assumed race was the issue is because the Kirtland Addition truely does not feel more dangerous than, say, the SE Heights in Albuquerque. The only thing that makes it different, that I can tell, is the color of the community’s skin. For the life of me, I can’t imagine why someone would be afraid to walk around (much less, drive around) the Kirtland Addition in the daytime, which was the OP’s question.
From the Wikipedia article on Appalachia:
More than twenty million people live in Appalachia, a thickly wooded area, roughly the size of Great Britain(emphasis mine), that covers largely mountainous, often isolated areas from Alabama and Mississippi on the south to Pennsylvania and New York on the north. In between lie large chunks of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio.
Back in the mid 80s I lived in the Ocean View section of Norfolk, VA - 13th Bay to be specific…One block off the beach. An average evening would have the bikers [renegades IIRC] on one side of us, the crack house on the other side of us, and the rednecked assholes taking shots at someone with a medium caliber gun. Made me glad that the place mrAru and I lived in was built like a bunker - those short windows high up on a wall that you normally see in basements [on our ground floor flat] set in cement brick walls…
One special time I was coming back from the beach dressed in sweats over my bathing suit, with a string bag with a towel, suntan lotion and a book. A chevette with a couple of rather scroungy looking guys in it stopped, then followed me back to my place while they shouted and cajoled and asked my price for various activities. I got into my place, and they started pounding the door so I answered it with mrAru’s Dan Wesson .44 pin gun in hand. That finally got them to leave me alone. I would really hate to think of what could have happened as it was the middle of the day, and absolutely nobody else was around at the time. Oh, and the neighbor over the fence on 12th Bay was teh sailor who killed his wife and left her in the bath tub for a month, and kept using his neighbors bathrooms to shower in and claimed that the smell was the damaged bathroom…
I spent part of my childhood/teen years in Stockton, CA during a time when it occasionally had a higher per-capita murder rate than Compton. I’ve heard that they’ve cleaned things up quite a bit lately, but I’ve got no urge to go and find out for myself. When I lived there, there were several parts of town you didn’t go if you were the wrong race, especially during the day when everybody was home. One of my older friends (30s at the time) took a wrong turn once when driving his BMW. He was followed by two gang cars for several miles.
One of the most violent parts was dubbed Oakieville, for its predominantly white-trash demographics. I used to work near there and had to deal with the residents on a regular basis. You didn’t go anywhere alone any time of day or night without at least a knife, unless you liked living dangerously. You paid attention at all times. You never let people get too close. You never carried anything that looked valuable and you never dressed nice. Gods forbid you ever drove a nice car into Oakieville, because it was a good bet you wouldn’t have it intact for long.
One of my sister’s friends, who worked as a security guard, was shot to death around 1993 or so. This happened during the day in the “nice” part of town where we lived. I had guns pointed at me twice, saw at least one knife fight at the local mall, and was followed more times than I can remember, so not all of the incidents happened to someone else.
Believe it or not but most people in the UK and Australia (or at least those who have never been to the US) are under the impression that gangs rule the streets of US cities and that all Americans carry guns.
When we aren’t exclaiming over how every woman in New York City weighs under 100 lbs and apparently has a high-paying but non-existent job that allows her to meet all her friends for lunch and shopping every single day (all those SATC episodes).
Freejooky
Yeah.
yeah, I know, you said “cities” in the actual post
Not just b/c of the tide- it looks like swamp thing frequents the place! :eek:
the shadowy figure in the background