What's the deal with Forest Park?

[captaincatfish]

Originally Posted by goyguy

Now that this thread's been revived after about three months I'm going to go ahead and run the risk of steering it off the rails.
One of my many favorite sayings goes, "You can take the fill-in-the-blank kid out of the country/ghetto/etc but you can't take the country/ghetto/etc out of the kid." There's a lot of truth in that. Part of Forest Park's evolution has entailed attracting some AA mainstays of Cincinnati out there, such as churches (both newly established and expanded or relocated) and a branch of one of the city's oldest funeral homes. And for every head of household who was raised in a suburban environment such as Woodlawn there's at least one who's bought or rented "up" from a city setting which could be a poorer area like Avondale or even a public housing community. For all of their silliness, old TV shows like "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" touched upon what actually happens when folks from one sort of place land in another. They bring their culture with them. It's one thing to hang on the streets socializing at all hours, dabble in "vices" such as casual drug dealing, and so on when you're in OTR. It's quite another when you're in suburbia. You run up against people with no exposure to how life is in "da 'hood" and those who've strived to leave it behind. Resentment builds the more the new arrivals refuse to adapt and the inbumbent residents mutter, "That boy down the street whose mom just brought him here from Winton Terrace had some of his damn friends over at 3 AM again. After they rolled up and leaned on the horn they kept the music blasting and talked, more like yelled, for over an hour. Some of us work for a living around here" and so on.
Add to that the ongoing embracing of "ghetto stylin'" by its rightful owners and kids of all shades from all economic levels. Offending the old folks by donning raggedy clothes and smoking weed was played out by the '80s, but putting an inner-city AA spin on it still works. Some male teens of any race are all about perp-walking and hand-signaling around while uttering bon mots like "Where ma ho's at" and using degrading words such as "dawg" or "ni99a" as terms of endearment (both in hailing friends and for splicing into conversation.) Meanwhile their female counterparts also use, or more likely affect, the same street lingo and similarly emulate inner-city behaviors right down to deliberately getting pregnant. To their elders all of this is "shocking, I'm telling you, utterly appalling." This sizable adolescent subculture thrives no matter where you go, so putting it on Forest Park is unfair.
Carrying this a bit farther: with over 70% of AA households headed by a single mother, equating academic and professional success with "acting White," and idealizing "thug" and "gangsta" behavior Black folks got issues. I know all about how much the US continues to be a racist society: "noise ordinances" that never existed when pale kids roared around in muscle cars crankin' tunes, disinvestment by factories and retailers when a neighborhood "changes," bias - now more subtle - on the part of realtors, presumptions that someone only got where they are in a job because of affirmative-action mandates, on and on it goes. The sad thing is the predictable self-loathing and destruction that this brings, carried out in how much of the youth generation behaves while White kids latch onto its "coolness." There's no geographic boundary where all this is concerned - Indian Hill and the West End alike are impacted. Leaving or avoiding FP only means stumbling into it elsewhere.
"Just sayin'," now I'll climb off my know-it-all Caucasian soapbox.

Goyguy, that's about one of the best descriptions of certain aspects of black life that I've seen on this forum...doesn't matter a whit to me if you're white, you have ALWAYS been on point with your posts, and this is no exception---basically, you're calling it as YOU see it, and sometimes, it takes a differing viewpoint (and a different presenter LOL) to bring the truth to light

[Melissa1047]

Just curious you speak of "AA" what does that mean?

[captaincatfish]

Originally Posted by Melissa1047

Just curious you speak of "AA" what does that mean?

Hi Melissa...AA is Goyguy's way of saying 'black folks'---it's a shortening of the term 'African-American' which, had he used it repeatedly, would have made his post even longer (by the way, your friendly poster is 'AA' himself LOL)

[Melissa1047]

Thanks Captain!