My boyfriend and I are moving to Yakima, WA - which apparently has a high number of Mexicans. See, when I was told this - the first thought that came to my mind was “yes, finally some decent restaurants!!” My boyfriend’s mother’s first thought was about our safety…and gangs. She doesn’t want us moving there because of possible gangs and other dangerous activities that those darned Mexicans could be up to. :dubious:
She is an otherwise open-minded person, so this attitude surprised me. I did some checking, and though crime does indeed happen in Yakima at times (as crime tends to do where people exist), its not outragous or anything that makes me worry too much. There is a graffiti problem - but a friend of ours that lives there says that the majority of it isn’t the Mexicans, it’s bored white teenage boys.
I just don’t see why she’s so freaked out. I guess it has to do with upbringing. She’s from upstate New York and has lived in Redmond, WA for the last 30 years. I grew up in small towns in Utah and Nevada - all with large Mexican populations. Dangerous or scary is just not how I would describe them. Yakima is not LA. The other likely reason is that her precious boy is moving hours away and she’s pulling all the stops in the attempt to get us to stick around. Ha.
Sorry, just wanted to vent.
For the record - yes, fantastic restaurants. There’s this place is Selah that makes the best mole sauce I have ever had…words cannot describe. drools thinking about it.
Ah yes, that hotbed of crime… Yakima. (I grew up in Bellevue.) Something tells me you’ll live. Just have her come to visit as soon as you’re settled – that tends to make things seem a lot less scary.
Am I wrong and Mexicans are not involved in crime and gangs in LA? I did stereotype a little yes, but the association is not unheard of or without merit. Obviously not all Mexicans in the Los Angeles area are involved in crime, Its safe to say the majority are not. HOWEVER, it is much more likely to be the case there than here. That’s all I was saying, sorry I offended.
For the record, I don’t associate Mexicans with gangs, I associate LA with gangs. It’s a prejudice against a region, not a race - its a high crime city, and every ethnicity living there have people with blood on their hands.
Yeah I don’t see anything particularly wrong with what he wrote. He was just saying that LA is more dangerous than Yakima - who could dispute that? According to these statistics there were 1,350 gangs in L.A. County in 2001.
Yes, I was looking at that too. I think different cities report crime differently (Chicago seems to have zero rapes) but overall Yakima doesn’t seem to be the clear winner over LA. Keep in mind that a city doesn’t need to be huge to be have a crime problem, high unemployment goes a long way.
While standard disclaimers on stereotyping should apply, I live in a city with a rapidly growing Hispanic population (mostly, but not exclusively, Mexican) that has also seen a sharp rise, in recent years, in crime related to Latino gangs, particularly in the suburban and (formerly) semirural areas where they’ve tended to locate.
Of course there’s nothing about Latinos specifically that makes them more prone to criminal activity than any other immigrant group. The problem (this is just my WAG) results from the sheer number of them that are immigrating here in a very short period of time, creating new, very large communities of immigrants in a few years (as contrasted with other immigrant groups that may have smaller, more established communities, with slower levels of immigration). And while the adults who move here, as a rule, seem to be extremely hard-working and law-abiding (in short, exactly the kind of citizens any city would want), unfortunately it only seems to take a single generation for that ethic to be lost, as many of their children grow up spoiled and bored (and likely undersupervised, as their parents are out busting their asses to provide for them). Many of them gravitate toward misbehavior, as bored kids will do.
I’ve never had a problem personally, and I like where I live. (And having easy access to a bunch of great taquerias is certainly nice.) I don’t know much about Yakima, but your mother’s concern may not be entirely off the mark— not that it merits overreaction.
The OP stirs up memories for me. My mom’s from Yakima and my dad’s from Naches (I’m from Puyallup). Growing up I spent every summer picking cherries in my uncle’s orchard in Terrace Heights, and I would spend more time hanging with the Mexicans than I would with the “decent white folk,” as I found them far more interesting and affable. My aunt did not approve.
[BobDylan]I ain’t gonna work for Maggie’s Ma no more …[/BobDylan]