Is The West Side Doing Better Than The East Side? (Cleveland: homes, neighborhood)

[Kamms]

Roll your eyes at facts.

[Kamms]

Originally Posted by SmittyXCWRU

I am aware of the location of Clark Fulton. I meant that it, despite being one of the worst if not the worst, neighborhood on the west side, it's still much better than most of the east side neighborhoods.



I won't deny Little Italy having some racial undertones to it, but is having a flash mob disrupt the Feast of the Assumption really our standard for racial acceptance? I would imagine it being either an ethnic festival or a religious festival (or some combination of the two) probably lends itself to a primarily white attendance regardless of the rest.

Also, Little Italy has been helped tremendously by having well-defined natural borders and a very small geographic connection to East Cleveland despite being physically close. The place is surrounded by a steep hill leading up to the nice sections of Cleveland Heights, a railroad tracks with a huge hospital and college campus on the other side, and a massive cemetery. With those things, if Little Italy ever did go through a downward spiral like Buckeye or Slavic Village, it would have been gentrified very fast and likely end up not all that different from what it is now: a heavily gentrified neighborhood with an Italian past, some nice restaurants, and a Catholic Church.

Of course its geography isolated it and made it more insular thereby allowing its residents to ''defend'' it. It was also and may still be the center for organized crime. Its location is not what kept it from going downhill. The residents of this neighborhood were ready for war; that's what kept it from going downhill like Buckeye.

St Patrick's Day is a an ethnic and religious celebration as well; currently experiencing aggressive groups of black youths fighting and disrupting the day, espcially around Public Square and Tower City. This was never an issue before. It is naive to think the religious and ethnic aspect of The Feast is what is keeping African Americans away. The Mafia kept this area the way it is and blacks as well as everyone else respected that. This is still Cleveland, or what's left of it.

Sounds like you are not familiar with The Feast. Most of the properties and homes in the area are Italian owned. How many African Americans work in the businesses or live the homes or apartments up there?

[Kamms]

Originally Posted by reretarff

Shaker Heights is the same thing as Cleveland Heights, only has better schools.

They both have a large Jewish population.
They both have a stable equal racial population.
They both have a very large nightlife with a lot of restaurants.
They both have big historic mansions and smaller historic houses on tree lined brick road streets.
They both are close but a safe distance from the inner city. (Except where Shaker Heights borders Buckeye-Shaker and where Cleveland Heights borders East Cleveland (Forest Hills))

Shaker Square is in the City of Cleveland.

[Kamms]

Originally Posted by reretarff

Most Italian neighborhoods were and are like this. My wife's dad grew up in Glenville in an area with a lot of Italians. During WWII when he was 10-13 years old, he would get beat up by Italians because he was Jewish. Because of that, his family moved all the way to Beachwood. This is what made Beachwood Jewish today.

When my parents moved into Mayfield Heights back in the 1980's, about 4 or 5 different neighbors came over and checked to make sure that they were white. Mayfield is very Italian now, but about 30 years ago it was almost 100% Italian.

The Jews did not run to Beachwood because of the Italians; it was the influx of African Americans and blockbusting that went on there in '50s. See Howard Metzenbaum. Then the Jewish owned businesses went up in flames.

[Kamms]

Originally Posted by SquareBetterThanAll

I don't buy into the whole conspiracy thing, but it's hard to argue that personal responsibility doesn't come into play. Even in the worst neighborhoods people know the basic idea behind why you go to school. There are other issues at play, of course, but you can't 100% throw up your hands as a person and say, "It's all outside forces dictating my life and therefore I have no responsibility for anything that happens to me."

I never understood the purpose in burning down your own neighborhood. Seems like if you really wanted to get your point across you would go to whoever is holding you down and burn down their neighborhood instead. Of course, that depends on what your motivations are.

In discussing thee current state of the east side and Cleveland, people never mention the destructive rioting that went on in the mid to late '60s. Many cities never recovered from these events; Detroit, Newark, Chicago and Cleveland.

[SmittyXCWRU]

Originally Posted by Kamms

Of course its geography isolated it and made it more insular thereby allowing its residents to ''defend'' it. It was also and may still be the center for organized crime. Its location is not what kept it from going downhill. The residents of this neighborhood were ready for war; that's what kept it from going downhill like Buckeye.

St Patrick's Day is a an ethnic and religious celebration as well; currently experiencing aggressive groups of black youths fighting and disrupting the day, espcially around Public Square and Tower City. This was never an issue before. It is naive to think the religious and ethnic aspect of The Feast is what is keeping African Americans away. The Mafia kept this area the way it is and blacks as well as everyone else respected that. This is still Cleveland, or what's left of it.

Sounds like you are not familiar with The Feast. Most of the properties and homes in the area are Italian owned. How many African Americans work in the businesses or live the homes or apartments up there?

I'll agree that the reason why there are almost no blacks in Little Italy is racism and fear, but regardless it wouldn't have ended up like Buckeye. Sure most of the property is still owned by the Italians but most of the people who actually live there are Case students or yuppies. It's not very Italian anymore. Even Holy Rosary has about as many Case students as Italians at this point at least any given Sunday. Of course the Italians who live in the suburbs still come back for special occasions like the Feast, but most of them don't live there anymore. Face it: Little Italy is gentrified to the point where it's not much different than the rest of University Circle anymore.

And yes, I am familiar with the Feast and lived a half mile away from Little Italy until two years ago. I'm not just randomly posting from Wisconsin; I did live there

As for St. Patrick's day, that's a very different celebration than the Feast in that it's held downtown rather than in an ethnic neighborhood. If you hold the thing on Public Square of course it'll get disrupted on occasion. If the St. Patrick's Day parade went down Rocky River Drive or something, it'd be a different story.

[reretarff]

Originally Posted by SquareBetterThanAll

It's a good thing.

In that case thank you

[reretarff]

Originally Posted by mbowes80

Please define "inner city"


I don't see any evidence/references/statistics provided to demonstrate that it's "mostly" this in the "inner city." I have to assume you're just presenting a cliche stereotype.



Please define "ghetto"


So people who aren't smart don't deserve a chance at decent life?



Suburbs? Ugh! What'd they do to deserve that??

By inner city, I mean the city of Cleveland, in this case the east side.


By ghetto, I meant a bad neighborhood with lots of crime, abandoned houses, open lots, drugs, gangs, guns, violence, cheap housing, section 8 and a mostly African American population.


There is no such thing as smart and not smart. There's smart and there's genius. By realizing that a person is smart, I meant that there's people in the ghetto who realize that school and future is important, and those people get good grades, go to a good college, get a good job and if they stay in Cleveland, then they will probably buy a big house in the suburbs.

Then there's the people in the ghetto who don't give a damn about school or their future, get bad grades, do drugs, join gangs, get arrested, have multiple kids with different people and then when they're adults, they struggle to pay bills and end up living in a small bad house in a bad neighborhood while their kids end up doing the same thing that they did.

[reretarff]

Originally Posted by Kamms

Shaker Square is in the City of Cleveland.

Where did I say Shaker Square? Shaker Square is an upscale shopping/restaurant plaza on the border of Cleveland and Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland.

[reretarff]

Originally Posted by Kamms

The Jews did not run to Beachwood because of the Italians; it was the influx of African Americans and blockbusting that went on there in '50s. See Howard Metzenbaum. Then the Jewish owned businesses went up in flames.

Where did I say that all of the Jews in Glenville moved because of the Italians? The Italian bullies is the reason my wife's dad and his family moved to Beachwood. Blockbusting was though the reason most Jews moved east.