“Urban” is more than just a synonym for “black”


phillyrubble

The following is a fragment of the story of a white Ph.D. working at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, but it’s probably universal for any of us who worked at an urban university on the East coast — many of them are located in poorer neighborhoods, where property values are low, and we work there in a little artificial bubble of privilege.

The narratives that students and faculty told about Baltimore were stories of fear. There is almost a hazing of new arrivals. You’re told where not to walk, where not to go. You’re told where is not safe after dark. You’re told of all the muggings and the murders (even if, when you finally look up the statistics, you realise that affluent whites are not at all the victims of Baltimore’s crime problem). And it seeps into your skin.

I worked at Temple University in North Philadelphia, and it was exactly like that. I lived in a northern suburb, Jenkintown, about 10 miles from the university. It was your standard middle-class suburb; lawns and SUVs, upscale grocery stores and very nice parks. Some mornings I would take the bus, which wended its way through various other suburbs, all pretty much the same, to the Fern Rock transportation center, where I would take the subway under North Philly — I wouldn’t have to see it at all — to pop up at Temple. Other days I would take the faster route, catching a train a mile down the road and zipping straight to Temple by an elevated route…but then I’d see North Philly.

It’s a depressing sight: crumbling row houses, burnt out buildings, vacant lots filled with garbage. Every once in a while you’d see that people were living inside these shattered shells; through broken windows or houses with walls entirely missing, you’d see children sleeping on the floor inside. They were always brown children, of course.

There were several occasions when the subway broke down, and I’d walk to Fern Rock, or even, a few times, all the way home up Broad street. The place didn’t look any nicer close up. But strangely, I was never really afraid — I’d see lots of people, sitting out on the stoop, or hanging out in groups on street corners, or likewise doing their business in the ruins, and sometimes they’d look at me in surprise. Nerdy white boy strolling through their neighborhood? A curiousity! But I was never threatened or harassed. Most of the faces I saw had a look of resignation, not hatred.

It sounds just like Baltimore.

I grew to love Baltimore. I met my husband and some of my best friends there. But in five years living in that city, three of which were within a bock of the Caroline Street projects, and two local schools, I never made friends with any of the city’s African American residents. The bars and restaurants and cultural institutions that I love so much catered to that semi transient, mostly white, population that moved there for school or work, and left when they had kids.

And here’s the thing: the city that people like us lived in is nothing like the city that most of Baltimore’s population live in. Yet ours is deemed “economically important”. And I know full well that that economic importance is used to justify the police activities in Baltimore. After all, how will Hopkins and UMD attract top talent to a city without a couple of craft cocktail bars?

And we can’t accept that. My lifestyle in Baltimore ought not, must not be used to justify the violent oppression of those whom the city has ignored and mistreated. Fixing Baltimore must primarily fix the city for the majority of its population. Those of us who’ve lived there must recognise that, and put our experience of Baltimore aside. When we tell people about how hip and cool Fells Point and Canton are, when we talk about all the festivals, when we discuss the city as though the tiny portion of it we know is all the city, we are complicit in a narrative that wants to erase the reality of the city for most of its population. And that erasure, as we have seen, is more than rhetorical.

Jenkintown, Abington, the northern suburbs are pleasant places to live. Temple has a lovely urban campus, and was a great place to work. But in between is the place Steve Lopez described in his novel, Third and Indiana, the place called the Badlands. It’s a place rich in people, and poor in everything else, and it’s a victim of neglect and despair.

That’s what needs to be fixed. And it needs something other than gentrification, which usually means carving out a space for wealthy white people to move in, at the expense of the residents — we need to appreciate the people who already live there, and have worth and only need opportunity. But investing in infrastructure seems to be a low priority in this country, and investing in infrastructure that would benefit brown people? Not worth doing at all. That’s the legacy of the structural racism that dominates the United States.

Comments

  1. says

    And it needs something other than gentrification, which usually means carving out a space for wealthy white people to move in, at the expense of the residents

    Yes. Baltimore went through several regions of “gentrification” during the 30-odd years I lived there. Usually that amounted to wealthy people realizing they could get great deals on victorian brownstones in certain neighborhoods, moving in and renovating them, then demanding more policing, better roads, and clearing away the former residentsriff-raff. In Baltimore they even rammed through some tax-breaks for people who wanted to buy and renovate brownstones in Bolton Hill; a handout for wealthier white ‘urban homesteaders.” Looking back at it now, it almost sounded like brave settlers going out to build a farm in “indian country” ethnic cleansing recapitulated.

  2. says

    PZ:

    That’s what needs to be fixed. And it needs something other than gentrification, which usually means carving out a space for wealthy white people to move in, at the expense of the residents — we need to appreciate the people who already live there, and have worth and only need opportunity. But investing in infrastructure seems to be a low priority in this country, and investing in infrastructure that would benefit brown people? Not worth doing at all. That’s the legacy of the structural racism that dominates the United States.

    Well said, and I agree. I expect there will be a little group of white folks who will manage to disagree though, and handily twist things about so that those unsightly brown peoples are once again to blame. For everything.

  3. tinkdnuos says

    I grew up around Abington and Jenkintown, attended Temple for law school, and I’ve lived in center city and South Philly. I live back in Jenkintown now (just across the street from the train station) and I frequently make the commute through North Philly for work, play, and family visits.

    And your experience rings so true, particularly about walking through the neighborhoods. Even today, when inequality has widened and the Broad Street subway and Fern Rock themselves are regarded by some as dangerous and exotic, places like Germantown, Point Breeze, Olney etc. still welcome all comers. One cannot truly experience, nor truly love, this city without spending time in the neighborhoods where people experience their time in generations, rather than semesters.

    Thanks for sharing this.

  4. frog says

    I drive through West Philadelphia to get to work, and it’s similar on that side of town. It took a few months before I stopped worrying–and yes, I grew up a lefty-liberal white person. We really need to address the chasm between ideals and actual reality.

    Familiarity, far from breeding contempt, has led to a change in perception. Now when I see a group of teenage black guys walking along, my first reaction is “friends hanging out” or “kids heading home from school.” I don’t know how to get other white people to grasp this, though. I have friends and coworkers who think I’m some sort of daredevil to make this drive. I kind of want to make them all wander around West Philly until they calm the heck down.

    And even so, I’m not like some paragon of equality, here. I’m literally driving through; I’m not of the neighborhood. I wouldn’t fear to stop at a local bodega and I happily drive with my windows down, but I’m the visitor, not the local. But I do wish more people could see what I see every day: normal people going about their normal lives, just wanting to earn a living and raise their kids.

  5. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    Down in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don’t stop

  6. moarscienceplz says

    You know one thing nearly all of us could do tomorrow to start fixing this? Ride mass transit to work tomorrow. OK, maybe PZ can’t. It would expose you to people of diverse backgrounds, and it would most likely start to inform you of some important infrastructure improvements needed.

  7. unclefrogy says

    in the U.S. we focus on race as one of the main ways to differentiate each other if we are successful in eliminating race and racial prejudice I suspect that we will just substitute class instead. There seems to be some need to see ourselves as different from each other. Religion as practiced is an identity, a way that sets the believer off from the none believer. Same thing can be said with nationality. Cultural identity?
    I seldom hear any thing other than some form of us v them. So easy to just brush off those not included or even notice doing so even when thinking of solving those big problems. As in how are we going to fix their problems not even realizing that in that approach it is again us v them and not we.

    uncle frogy

  8. carlie says

    You know one thing nearly all of us could do tomorrow to start fixing this? Ride mass transit to work tomorrow. OK, maybe PZ can’t.

    I’ve lived in five states, and a few more cities. and I’ve never lived in a place that had public transportation anywhere near either my home, work, both, or even in the city.

    OH HELL NO – when I went to blockquote, it did an auto-add of “read more (link to FtB)”. I am complaining about that NOW.

  9. says

    moarscienceplz:

    Ride mass transit to work tomorrow.

    There needs to be mass transit for one to ride it. There isn’t any where I live.

  10. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Ride mass transit to work tomorrow.

    Oh, you mean very inefficient system where my 1.7 mile trip to work would take longer via mass transit than walking to work? That is the suburbs here in Chiwaukee. Which doesn’t make sense when over half the time I need to stop by the grocery store and/or pharmacy to pick up needed supplies.

  11. says

    I went to Baltimore a couple years ago for an academic conference, and the “bad” parts of town was all that anyone would talk about in reference to the city. Tiresome, really.

  12. says

    Only when visiting the US have I had people warn me about going to various neighbourhoods, that it would be a really bad idea to go to area X, because something might happen. I’ve never heard people so worried about heading to, or just through a neighbourhood. The places I have lived like Ottawa and Vancouver have neighbourhoods that are considered to have problems, bad neighbourhoods where many would not want to live. I’ve certainly never heard anyone warn someone not to go there, or being scared to travel through them. I suppose those people might exist, but I’ve never heard anything like that.

  13. frog says

    It would be great if US cities had real mass transit.

    I grew up in NYC, and rode mass transit to school starting at age 12, and to work until I was 40 and moved to Philly. I tried riding mass transit here, but it was so time-consuming and undependable that I gave up and now I drive. To a NYer this is like sacrilege.

    I realize Philly at least has a mass transit system, which is a benefice for all the folks here who can’t afford a car, but it could be a million times better. So many things could be better if we would invest some public money.

  14. Kevin Kehres says

    @13 Travis:

    I was specifically warned to avoid a certain neighborhood in Vancouver because of the drug dealing problem. I ignored the warning and saw a drug bust right in front of me…so yeah, it happens.

    I’ve also been warned about certain neighborhoods in Barcelona and Paris, for what it’s worth.

    I lived in a “mixed” neighborhood in Jersey City, NJ for about 10 years while working in Manhattan, and commuted daily via mass transit. Never had any problems — but I never made any friends from those interactions, either. I did learn what crack smells like, though.

  15. says

    I use the mass transit system when I visit NYC. It’s good. Where I live, there is no mass transit, none. And the politicians here are not interested in investing in infrastructure that might benefit poor or low-income people.

  16. Beatrice, an amateur cynic looking for a happy thought says

    My experience with this kind of thing mostly relates to despicable treatment of Roma people in my country and Europe in general.

    When the us vs. them demarcation aren’t on racial basis, then it’s usually some combination of xenophobia/classism/nationalism/religious bigotry.
    For example, all the warnings I got about not stepping into the Muslim part of Mostar. (took long walks all around the town, no sign of trouble ever)

    Kevin Kehres,
    is it a safe bet to guess that those neighborhood in Paris and Barcelona were predominantly black and /or immigrant ?

  17. says

    Lynna 16
    Or, I would venture to suggest, black people. The light rail line from here (Portland Oregon) to Vancouver (Washington) doesn’t exist because Vancouverites didn’t want any black people from Portland having easy access to their town; the city officials didn’t frame it that way, but the letters to the editor sure did.

  18. llewelly says

    Dalillama, Schmott Guy:

    The light rail line from here (Portland Oregon) to Vancouver (Washington) doesn’t exist because Vancouverites didn’t want any black people from Portland having easy access to their town; the city officials didn’t frame it that way, but the letters to the editor sure did.

    Well, you know, if all three of Portland’s black people had taken a trip to Vancouver, that sure would have been a huge “crime wave” .

    According to wikipedia, Vancouver is 2.9% African American, and Portland is 6.3% .

  19. photoreceptor says

    I have lived in several cities – grew up in London, lived a few years in New York and then Paris, plus some other smaller towns. I think you could apply the term “gentrification” to all those places, even if I am white. In each of them, (sub)urban diversity evolved into ethnic separation as property values increased and ordinary folks were forced to move further out: my own working class parents in London as a result of the stock market boom attracting wealthy yuppies, arabs in the Paris area called “La Goutte d’Or” as wealthy white french people looked for housing, southern black Harlem gradually pushed northwards as new money arrived looking for a place in Manhattan. In my opinion these painful events target the poor, not necessarily black but often so. Property developers are about as low down on my scale of human beings as one can get. And each time the cities lose a bit more of their souls, what makes them fun places to be in the first place.

  20. Uncle Ebeneezer says

    I worked at Temple University in North Philadelphia, and it was exactly like that. I lived in a northern suburb, Jenkintown, about 10 miles from the university.

    No kidding! I lived just around the corner from Buckets in Jenkintown, back in ’96 for a spell.

  21. says

    We were there at the same time! I was there from 1994-2000 (I lived in King of Prussia in 1993 — boy, was that a mistake. Dystopian mall town.)

  22. carbonfox says

    I’m starting classes at an HBCU in an East Coast city, and people have gone out of their way to warn me, among other “useful” “tips”, that I need to purchase a taser, or better still, a gun. Yet, in the SAME CITY, I attended undergrad at a famous and wealthy white school (located just three miles from the HBCU) and, tellingly, not once was I advised to carry. For my part, I’m excited to go to school where people have actually had to work for things (although heart-breakingly so), instead of being surrounded by spoiled asshats*, and of course, not once have I felt even remotely threatened by the “urban” (ugh) residents.

    That’s the legacy of the structural racism that dominates the United States.

    I often fantasize about how much progress the US could make if not for its prevalent racism. I feel that so much opposition to universal healthcare, for example, stems from the fear that a single black person could be helped. After all, racists hardly veil their disgust that welfare programs might help minorities. It boggles the mind that working and middle class whites would actively work against their own economic interests just to ensure that, even if they (the whites) are going to be screwed by the super-rich, at least people of color will be screwed even more. No matter how badly said whites are harmed by 1%er public policy, their sole consolation is that they still have institutional power over minorities, and somehow, that matters enough to make it worthwhile. *sigh*

    *One or more of whom spoiled asshats vandalized and damaged my vehicle–which I had just purchased that month after saving up for three years–in a drunken fit one Friday night (to say nothing of broken windows and bottles strewn all about campus), and yet Fox News was not on the scene to decry the “rioting”.

  23. Tethys says

    I moved into one of those supposed bad urban neighborhoods with a diverse ethnic population. Getting to see the way the police treat black people first hand was an enormous culture shock for this white suburbanite. Watching the black children play cops and robbers, with the cops as the bad guys was a completely new thing for me to wrap my head around. I wish there was public transit, but one look at the bus lines shows clear racial discrimination. The high speed commuter buses go through our neighborhood, but they don’t stop here. I have been warned by many people (including my racist family) about my dangerous neighborhood. It’s been ten years, and I have yet to have anything bad happen while I am out walking around doing my errands beyond the occasional proposition from complete strangers following me in vehicles. The most dangerous thing has been white asshole renters with drug problems, but my racially diverse neighbors and I ganged up on them and got them all evicted due to too many police calls.

  24. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    In 2004 I visited Europe and was schooled in what it’s like to be part of the reviled underclass (Thanks, W). We were told told to disguise our Americanism:
    – Wearing Jeans? No.
    – Wearing a flag bespeckled backpack? Right out.
    – If asked your origin, always reply “Cana~blurble”.
    – stay out of Paris, those Frenchies H.A.T.E Americans and will be totes rude at you.
    – Don’t talk, just point at want you want, American accent cannot be disguised.
    pffft: even with all that fear mongering, we never felt oppressed, (even when seeing anti-US graffiti painted, big, on various walls) our “privilege” shielded us from ever seeing what it is like to really be reviled underclass.
    =====
    When I came to school in Cambridge, (i.e. across the river from Boston) we got the usual freshman rundown of bad places to go in “the city” (i.e. Bean Town). The only area on that list was colloquially called “the Combat Zone” (other towns call similar areas “Red Light District”). But that “rundown” was usually presented, not as a Warning, but as a freshman Challenge. I tried to fulfill that challenge one night with a few frosh buddies, but we abandoned the effort, short of reaching it. { Sheesh, got sidetracked there. } When I lived in Boston I was totally deluded that Boston was NOT “Urban”, Boston was a “college town” (based on the overwhelming quantity of colleges there) Urban is what we called Manhattan, Boston was Bean TOWN (nota bene).
    ugh. oops. not going anywhere, forgot what point I intended to make. maybe just trying to share another viewpoint, for no real reason.

  25. magistramarla says

    Here in San Antonio, Tx the voters voted down a proposition for building a light rail system.
    Mayor Julian Castro tried really hard to go around that by supporting a plan by our bus system to put in place a modern trolley system from downtown out Broadway, hoping to expand it out to the airport, I believe.
    Mayor Castro left for DC (man, I hope Hillary picks him as a running-mate!) and the new mayor and city council immediately scuttled the plan.
    The bus service here is slow, the disabled service is unbelievably terrible, the roads are over-crowded and badly in need of repair. Of course, the good old boys think that everyone should be driving a truck or SUV. They “roll smoke” at our Prius from their awful trucks and my hubby doesn’t dare to ride his bike the way he did in California, since there is a certain segment of the population that thinks that only those who are “tree-huggers”, are “illegal” or have lost their license ride a bike to work and consider it a badge of honor to run them off the road.
    We want to live in a city with decent public transportation.
    BTW – On our recent trip to Europe, I found the underground in London to be safe and efficient.
    The super-fast trains in Italy were wonderful! Since I was in a wheelchair, we were assisted and treated wonderfully almost everywhere, and we were upgraded to first class on the trains so that I would be comfortable.
    We were only taken advantage of once – by a cabbie in Paris.

  26. anbheal says

    @18 Dalillama, you nailed it! You know that old aphorism “there ain’t no cracker so poor that he won’t take food out of his baby’s mouth and give it to a banker, so long as he’s certain that no n*****s will get fed?” Well, it took DECADES for a commuter rail to connect the south shore of Massachusetts to Boston because a couple of trust-funder WASP enclaves were convinced that a connection to Boston would allow blacks to access their towns. These assclowns preferred a two-hour commute, due to the complete fiction that bored black teens would fancy an afternoon in a boring suburb with nothing to do and nothing within walking distance. And that these teens would bring their blackness along with them. Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket refused ferry services from New Bedford and Fall River and Providence for the same reason (Cape Verdeans are too black, you see). Stanford pissed and moaned for years about the expansion of BART, for who knows what horrible people from San Francisco might come out to pollute their precious campus. And you can’t find a single white motherfucker in suburban Atlanta who isn’t paralyzed with fear over the expansion of commuter rails. I’m white and middle-aged, so I shouldn’t presume to speak for teenage blacks and Latinos, but why in Fuck’s Fucking Sake would they have any interest in hopping the metro out to some boring-assed suburb where nothing happens, ever? (Unless, of course, they lived there….which is naturally a more horrifying concept to the denizens of the leafy lanes). It’s the weirdest mythology, but it is absolutely white fear of blacks heading in the reverse direction that buttresses their perpetual objections to improved hub-and-spoke public transportation.

  27. mickll says

    investing in infrastructure

    For that to happen America needs to get over it’s irrational fear that any government programs outside the military and the police are a precursor to Stalinism.

  28. unclefrogy says

    @28
    I thought that Stalinist Russia was characterized by a large secret police force with prisons all over including Siberia and a huge standing army not a subway?
    uncle frogy

  29. mickll says

    Yeah, over investing in the sort of military and police apparatus that Stalin used to make Stalinism scary isn’t un-American apparently.

  30. says

    unclefrogy @20,
    Actually, the Moscow subway is a thing of beauty.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Metro

    Dalillama @18,
    Again, that’s what happened (at least) twice in Sydney. Residents campaigned against the heavy rail (s-bahn) station in Woolhara (a very upmarket suburb), and again on the Paramatta-Epping link in Lindfield (again very well-heeled), as Parramatta is regarded as a “dangerous” (read poor and/or non-white) suburb. Totally stupid and short-sighted nonsense.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woollahra_railway_station