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I think you need to go back and explain to him that Mississippi is 40% black and mostly rural. And that there are actually a lot of black people in the rural south so his argument completely falls apart.
Perhaps that is why there is no answer. Perhaps this is a known fact. This brings up a question of the dynamic between rural Mississippi and rural Iowa. I know the dynamics are going to be different.
I can't even fathom why a black person would want to live in Iowa unless there's an immediate job opening and there's no opportunities for them anywhere else.
Do black neighborhoods, churches, restaurants, barber shops, etc. even exist in Iowa?
I'm not downing Iowa, I just can't imagine having any motivation to move there if I was black.
I don't think this thread is really as cultural as it is racial. It could be called black vs. white, but its really small town vs. city
In my experience, small town folks are generally resistant to change, not trusting of city folks, and tend to complain when city slickers move into there area, regardless of race.
Crime also scares them more than city folks, and they believe people from the city bring terrible morals and crime regardless of race.
If I hear that someone was shot down the street from me it enters and leaves my mind in a couple minutes unless I am somehow related to it in some way. A small town person may obsess on the fact that someone was shot even in the same metro area as them. They seem to think that if it happened to someone it can happen to them. Most city folks realize that most ppl kill only ppl they know and most criminal victims are either criminals themselves or asking for it. By asking for it I mean verbally attacking other people, walking alone drunk at night, not locking doors, etc.
I hear people say "we used to not lock our doors".
That just doesn't make any sense to me, even if you live in the most safe area in the world, why not lock your doors? is it really that much of a hassle?
No, it isn't as bad as Atlanta, Detroit, Gary, East St. Louis, etc. but when there has been several home invasions within a block or two of me (including the people behind me), I can hear gunshots every now and then, I see gang graffiti spring up and then spring up again in the same spots when it's cleaned up and pretty much all of my neighbors have had their vehicles broken into telling myself that "Oh, well, it's not as bad as Atlanta" doesn't make me feel any better and it especially doesn't make our reality here any safer.
Inner-city Atlanta and New Orleans are definitely NOT the standards of what kind of community I want to live in.
I'm sorry, but that sounds like typical white suburban area crime to me.
Most gang graffiti is just little wannabees and HSers who are not in gangs that are bored, "gang graffiti" happens here in nice areas.
As for vehicles being broke into, thats very common in the ritziest parts of 90% of cities in the US. To be honest with you, if they didn't lock there doors or roll up there windows, there cars were not even broke into, your neighbors are just dumb and naive.
As for gun shots, how often do you hear them? They were probably just people trying them out.
The recent crime wave may seem terrible to you, but based on what you have posted here it sounds alot like the crime ive experienced in all white suburbs in larger cities.
Lets compare what you have experienced to my experience living in an almost all white APT complex on the richest side of town in a city that will remain un-named.
Drug bust, down the street, A shooting across the street, a string of home invasions where 20 homes got hit in a matter of 3 months. The fed team even came thru cause a fugitive was on the run an had been spotted in the area many times, there was also quite a few drug dealers.
This was over the course of 3 years...
This is what I consider low crime I lived amongst it and none of it effected or scared me, if it was a violent area the story would have gone more like this in a 3 year period....
double homocide down the street, open drug dealing, drug houses, people shooting up an smoking crack on the sidewalk, robberies every day, shot out streetlights, shootings all over the place, a drive by at the convienance store, next door neighbor stabbed to death, raids every couple months.
^Now thats crime, and I know this will blow you away but the bad areas in the places you named, Camden, Detroit, ESTL, EVEN THAT SCENARIO pales in comparison to the reality there, its sad, but its reality there.
Maybe you should visit hoods in other cities, so you can better identify when a neighborhood is really starting to go downhill an its not just a normal increase in crime or minorities. Theirs hundreds of telltale signs, if you have spent considerable time in bad neighborhoods and good ones you can spot them.
You also have to spend time around thugs to really identify them. For example how many people are outside at night? More than a dozen on your block every night an they are skinny an dirty? Ok you got a problem. What do the youngsters in your neighborhood wear on there teeth? Is gold teeth more popular than pearly whites, ok you might have a few little thugs in your hood. If those things become a reality in your neighborhood I would advise you to sell because property rates are probably on there way down.
Last edited by Observation; 03-07-2011 at 08:35 PM..
I can't even fathom why a black person would want to live in Iowa unless there's an immediate job opening and there's no opportunities for them anywhere else.
Do black neighborhoods, churches, restaurants, barber shops, etc. even exist in Iowa?
I'm not downing Iowa, I just can't imagine having any motivation to move there if I was black.
I don't think this thread is really as cultural as it is racial. It could be called black vs. white, but its really small town vs. city
In my experience, small town folks are generally resistant to change, not trusting of city folks, and tend to complain when city slickers move into there area, regardless of race.
Crime also scares them more than city folks, and they believe people from the city bring terrible morals and crime regardless of race.
If I hear that someone was shot down the street from me it enters and leaves my mind in a couple minutes unless I am somehow related to it in some way. A small town person may obsess on the fact that someone was shot even in the same metro area as them. They seem to think that if it happened to someone it can happen to them. Most city folks realize that most ppl kill only ppl they know and most criminal victims are either criminals themselves or asking for it. By asking for it I mean verbally attacking other people, walking alone drunk at night, not locking doors, etc.
I hear people say "we used to not lock our doors".
That just doesn't make any sense to me, even if you live in the most safe area in the world, why not lock your doors? is it really that much of a hassle?
Black churches do exist in Iowa. My father has some relatives in Waterloo. And I could think of another reason. Iowa could be just as rural as Mississippi, but the last time I checked, there were Black people leaving Mississippi for Midwestern states, Iowa among them. Mississippi's violent crime rate, poverty rate, unemployment rate are all much higher than Iowa's at the moment. Actually, math and reading scores for African-Americans are higher in Iowa than Mississippi. One could think of a few reasons for African-Americans to move to Iowa if safety and better schools are in the mix.
I can't even fathom why a black person would want to live in Iowa unless there's an immediate job opening and there's no opportunities for them anywhere else. Do black neighborhoods, churches, restaurants, barber shops, etc. even exist in Iowa?
I'm not downing Iowa, I just can't imagine having any motivation to move there if I was black.
I don't think this thread is really as cultural as it is racial. It could be called black vs. white, but its really small town vs. city
In my experience, small town folks are generally resistant to change, not trusting of city folks, and tend to complain when city slickers move into there area, regardless of race.
Crime also scares them more than city folks, and they believe people from the city bring terrible morals and crime regardless of race.
If I hear that someone was shot down the street from me it enters and leaves my mind in a couple minutes unless I am somehow related to it in some way. A small town person may obsess on the fact that someone was shot even in the same metro area as them. They seem to think that if it happened to someone it can happen to them. Most city folks realize that most ppl kill only ppl they know and most criminal victims are either criminals themselves or asking for it. By asking for it I mean verbally attacking other people, walking alone drunk at night, not locking doors, etc.
I hear people say "we used to not lock our doors".
That just doesn't make any sense to me, even if you live in the most safe area in the world, why not lock your doors? is it really that much of a hassle?
Those are some pretty big stereotypes of "rural people".
There are certainly black churches, barber shops, etc. in Iowa. The state's black population has tripled to around 90,000 in the past 3 decades or so. In my hometown of Iowa City the black population doubled in the past 10 years.
There are now around 300,000 minorities in Iowa, up hundreds of percent in recent decades. The real growth has happened in the past 15 years or so. Low crime, low unemployment, good school, a healthy state budget, low cost of living. It's a very attractive state for standards of living - it's just overlooked much more because of its weather and location. This is perfectly fine for most people in the state, they don't want the secret getting out.
Iowa does have the same social problems you have in more populated states with greater number of minorities/low income - just not nearly on the same level. It's probably easier to access social services here than in other states, not as many people using them in general.
Most states that are primarily white don't have the same social problems as more diverse states. A minority does stand out much more in Iowa. You get a lot of people who want diversity (just to say the state has grown), but don't want the cost of diversity, if that makes sense.
Iowa does have the same social problems you have in more populated states with greater number of minorities/low income - just not nearly on the same level. It's probably easier to access social services here than in other states, not as many people using them in general.
Most states that are primarily white don't have the same social problems as more diverse states. A minority does stand out much more in Iowa. You get a lot of people who want diversity (just to say the state has grown), but don't want the cost of diversity, if that makes sense.
People focus way too much on states sometimes. I care a lot more about Northwest Indiana than downstate Illinois. NW Indiana is nearby and I've gone to bars out that way on Friday and Saturday nights. Something that happens in downstate Illinois doesn't affect me at all. Meanwhile, there was a huge heroin ring recently busted that went from the southwest burbs in Illinois to Dyer, Indiana.
Maybe overwhelmingly white states have less social problems because these are usually states with less dense of a population and are filled with things like mountains or in Iowa's case, cornfields. America is a very diverse country and it is nice to live in a metro area that more accurately reflects the country as a whole.
Of course, I'm aware that people in Iowa tend to identify themselves as Iowans before anything else - even people who live in the Iowa city or Des Moines metros. Minnesotans do to which really doesn't make sense to me. Iowa I can understand but how does someone from downtown Minneapolis say "I'm from Minnesota" before saying "I'm from Minneapolis".
I know I'm straying completely off topic but yeah..
Kudos to the Iowa forum moderators. Thank you for being cool. This is a good discussion we are having. It's a relevant discussion. However, if this discussion discussing racial changes and crime was in a certain other forum, a certain moderator would have prabobly closed the thread five pages ago..
Chicago's underclass migration seems to be an intense regional problem because we have started experiencing it pretty bad in Galesburg, Illinois as well. I think in large part that may have to do with the prison just outside of town: People are evicted in Chicago and families have moved down here to relocate to follow a family member in jail. As a result, the gang (not really gangs, more like families) conflict situation has started to heat up, I hope the situation is brought under control.
I can't even fathom why a black person would want to live in Iowa unless there's an immediate job opening and there's no opportunities for them anywhere else.
Do black neighborhoods, churches, restaurants, barber shops, etc. even exist in Iowa?
I'm not downing Iowa, I just can't imagine having any motivation to move there if I was black.
It's people like you who have probably never set foot in Iowa, that make stereotypical statements like that. Yes there are blacks in Iowa, Juneteenth black history celebrations, black history museums, Frederick Douglass lived in Iowa while he was fighting for freedom from slavery, we have chapters of the NAACP, the high school I went to in Davenport was 40% black. Two of the four high schools in our city have black principals. Sudanese and Somalian immigrants are some of the biggest additions to our population. Not every place in Iowa is a bunch of old fat white farmers growing corn. Will it ever be NYC or LA, no, but it's not mayberry either. Come and visit the state before you make such uninformed blanket statements. Obviously there's something here drawing black people to the community or they wouldn't keep coming here.
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This is a good discussion we are having. It's a relevant discussion. However, if this discussion discussing racial changes and crime was in a certain other forum, a certain moderator would have prabobly closed the thread five pages ago..
