Quote:
Originally Posted by Prophetik Soul
I moved into the lower NE a year ago from DE (even though I am from Philly). I chose the neighborhood where I live based on a criteria that me and my wife developed as Christians: We would rather live in a mediocre community with some people we know and trust than in a exceptional community without any sense of community. Maybe you can have both an exceptional community and involved neighbors. But last I checked, some of these communities still dont African Americans in them. I chose the area because of the diversity, easy access to the highway, public trans. and I know a lot of people who live there. This provides support, security and a sense of extended family.
I spend some time on my block getting to know kids because they they are playing with my kids. But I also shoo them away from my house when they are doing dumb stuff. Fortunately we have a few adults on the block who are also like that. I dont claim it is easy at all and I am not planning to stay there forever. But I want my kids to see the world in its extremes so they know that me and mommy know what we are talking about when it comes to life. (Im not talking about walking into a crack house either).
Market El, my main point of sensitivity is that a broad brush is used on poor folk easily. I have been in and out of these communities for years and I have learned who is trying to do right and who isnt. Sometimes I am fooled or disappointed but it takes work to know who is serious. Arm-chair quarterbacks dont see that. I know people who live in these communities doing right but they are trapped. People make bad choices and sometimes situations happen to them...the kind that could happen to any of us. Many of us middle class folk are also one paycheck away from being in the same income bracket as poor people. But there seems to be no grace for poor folk. Many people get their ideas about others from the TV news which has no love for poor folks anyway. I dont advocate people moving blindly into communities like this. I only do it when I know people who already live there or when others are coming with me.
Question: You consider assimilation a net gain. I am still trying to evaluate it from the perspective of someone like myself who grew up poor. Do you believe this even if it meant the dramatic and in some cases, eventual decline of the black-owned businesses, institutions, and establishments that helped shield African Americans in various economic classes from overt and covert racism?
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You make consistently excellent points, this post no exception. And I understand what you mean when you talk about people painting the poor with a broad brush. Too many equate lack of income with lack of values, yet we see that there are plenty of people with money who either lack values or gladly pervert the ones they do have in pursuit of some short-term gain (or avoidance of short-term pain), and likewise we know that many poor people do their damnedest to uphold and spread the values they have in the face of long odds; pardon my trotting out Anderson again, but among these are the "decent" people who code-shift in order to make it in the world of the street that they must also negotiate. (BTW, these people figure into the answer to the other question you posed to me.)
But your last question is the $64k one. I guess I must ultimately answer the question "yes" if for no other reason than that I consider it the height of injustice and a betrayal of the country's stated ideals to restrict any portion of the population to an ethnic or socioeconomic enclave against their will or to cut off access to the highest reaches of the society for arbitrary reasons. To make sure that those who want to pursue those paths can do so, we must run the risk of having that option seem so much more attractive to many that they abandon the communities and places that nurtured them. (What's that old saying about the white man's ice and sugar again?)
But I do not pretend for a minute that the price the community that's left behind pays can be a steep one indeed, and that's definitely the case here. I will freely accept the charge that by living the life I do in the place I do, I am part of the problem more than the solution, and I do note that there are things even people like me can do to alter that somewhat without physically relocating, such as becoming a Big Brother, for instance. (My dad was one, BTW.) Maybe encouraging more assimilated upper-middle-class blacks to take on such roles might be a start towards paying back the social and cultural capital withdrawn. (I wonder what Kenneth Chenault* does in that regard? Something tells me that he actually does do something along these lines. At least I hope so.)
*I'm sure some of you have heard this name, but for those of you who haven't, Kenneth Chenault is the CEO of American Express -- the first African American to run a
Fortune 500 company; conversely, AmEx is the largest US firm headed by a black American.
06-03-2008, 12:23 PM
