Quote:
Originally Posted by punkviper
I'm just going to make an observation about the classification going on here: Why is it that predominantly Black economically depressed neighborhoods in Pittsburgh are labeled as "rough spots/places to avoid" but predominantly White economically depressed neighborhoods in Pittsburgh are simply called "Working Class?"
As someone who has lived in several Pittsburgh locations over 30+ years, i find it interesting when people immediately point to the portions of the city that are notably "Black" (Homewood, Wilkinsburg, Braddock, Hill District, North-Side, Beltzhoover, McKeesport, Hazelwood, McKees Rocks, New Kensington) when they want to raise the red flag. But if someone throws in a Millvale or a Clairton or a Crafton, then all of a sudden the tone changes and whomever brought up the idea is crossing the boundaries of 'common sense.'
Can we agree that White folks in Pittsburgh are & in many cases have always been afraid to go near neighborhoods in Pittsburgh that are deemed "Black neighborhoods?"
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I must be bored, more a case of insomnia to read back over this old thread and try to get a consensus of the posts that prompted such a critical post from you; not bad for your first. I'm hardly the old guard on this forum, I sure wasn't around when this thread was fresh, but from what I read the great majority of the posters agree with you. Seems like about four out of five of the contributors don't much avoid anywhere, black, white, or mixed. Now, I couldn't tell you what the race of the posters are, mixed would be my guess there too, so how can you make a statement that claims whites are or have always been afraid to go into black areas? I'll tell you up front I'm not black, but if I told you the mix of blood I do have running through my veins you wouldn't consider me white either. The point is I shouldn't have to tell you, and the other point is it's not the point.
I haven't lived in Pittsburgh for years, though I was raised there and in several different neighborhoods myself. A few of them made the F-list, East Liberty, Wilkinsburg for a year, Garfield for a few, we had whites and blacks living not on the same block but the next one up or down and the funny thing is nobody had to tell us that our block of Broad Street was more dangerous than one say on Shady or Highland Avenue, or just across Penn and into Friendship or over into Bloomfield we were poor, we knew it. We weren't stupid and were anything but ashamed. We didn't take it personal, we would do better when we had our chance and a helluva lot of us did.
If I'm not mistaken the general logic was that these were depressed areas; I've lived in a few American cities, and am old enough so that if I haven't learned something about the human condition I should be locked up, so I'll tell you this: there's one thing that makes an area dangerous, that makes some people within that area dangerous, and that's a concentration of the disadvantaged; their faults? their parents' faults? the fault of history or you can just fault an individual lack of initiative, but some areas on that list aren't even black.
I don't know, people are too touchy about race. Or worse, they are making a facile argument due to a surface examination. C'mon, anybody with half a brain knows that there's still segregation in this country, that one group of people gets too many passes while another is denied, but it's got so little to do with race anymore it is a futile distraction into a harmful distortion. Green baby, not black or white, that's always been the dominant color of the American way. We're not doing ourselves any good by drudging up the bones of our ugly past. It's just not true anymore, imagine if every family in Virgina Manor was African American, and every family up on the Hill was Russian or Irish or Italian, which area would still be more consistently avoided, by blacks, by whites, by whatever?
Race is too easy, too easy an out.
All that said, welcome.
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02-28-2008, 06:17 PM
race bubbles below the surface
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