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Early on, during my walks around northern Fairmount, I’m surprised by a couple of things. One is the international flavor. On a warm Sunday in October, I buttonhole a woman I’ll call Anna, a tall, slim, dark-haired beauty from Moscow getting out of her BMW on an alley just south of Girard College. Anna goes to a local law school, works downtown at a law firm, and proceeds to let me have it when we start talking about race in her neighborhood.
“I’ve been here for two years, I’m almost done,” she says. “Blacks use skin color as an excuse. Discrimination is an excuse, instead of moving forward. … It’s a shame—you pay taxes, they’re not doing anything except sitting on porches smoking pot … Why do you support them when they won’t work, just make babies and smoking pot? I walk to work in Center City, black guys make compliments, ‘Hey beautiful. Hey sweetie.’ White people look but don’t make comments. … ”
That’s the other surprise: If you’re not an American, the absence of a historical filter results in a raw view focused strictly on the here and now. I meet a contractor from Maine named Adrian, who brought his Panamanian wife to live here, at 19th and Girard, where she saw fighting and drug deals and general bad behavior at the edge of Brewerytown. It all had her co-nvinced there is a “moral poverty” among inner-city blacks.
I've always said immigrants have a far dimmer view of the pathologies of inner city African Americans than White Americans and have no problem vocalizing it.
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American whites I talk to in Fairmount have a decidedly different take. Our racial history, as horrible and daunting as it is, has created a certain tolerance of how things operate in the neighborhood, an acceptance of an edgy status quo.
One Fairmounter blames herself for her grill being stolen from her backyard, because if you don’t fence it in, she tells me, you’re asking for it. A pumpkin gets lifted from her front stoop in the fall, she buys another. That one gets stolen, she gets one more. It’s called city living. Flowerpots, even trash cans—they don’t stick around. Porch chairs have to be chained together. Your car window is likely to get smashed every now and then.
I am white in Philly and I stay in the white areas, although I work with/encounter many wonderful Africans every day..
The black areas of the city are on par with the Muslim "no go zones" in Europe. Liberal white hipsters are still trying to find ways to "bridge the divide". They are the whites who end up getting mugged, assaulted, murdered, etc.
At least they took "tolerance" and "inclusion" to the grave!
I am white in Philly and I stay in the white areas, although I work with/encounter many wonderful Africans every day..
The black areas of the city are on par with the Muslim "no go zones" in Europe. Liberal white hipsters are still trying to find ways to "bridge the divide". They are the whites who end up getting mugged, assaulted, murdered, etc.
At least they took "tolerance" and "inclusion" to the grave!
Racism apparently spans across different ethnic, and socioeconomic, backgrounds...
Yep. That's the hidden message there but nobody wants to address the elephant in the room.
Sure, we can condemn the white Russian gal....that's easy to both spot and to address socially.
Nobody wants to touch on the racist views of non-whites like the panamanian woman....that's somehow taboo or "excusable".
Middle-aged whites like myself are not our parents generation. I personally get a little tired of hearing about "racist whites" when I look around at all the intra-minority racism getting pushed under the rug which is the growing problem as the old archie bunker boomers die off.
I have to hear how George Zimmerman is a "white racist" but had he been beaten by a white cop I'd have to hear about how the white racist cop beat up the latino.
Oh well. I can only control my own actions. I just dislike where society is headed with regards to racism, especially as the US becomes more and more multicultural. If we turn a blind eye to this we are backtracking on decades of progress.
How did you know how long the panamanian woman has been here?
I don't. But I understand more what that Panamanian woman thinks than what that Russian thinks.
I am from the Philly area as well and have been in those areas mentioned in the article. Why don't I live there or even in the city? Because I don't have to or want to live in an area that is unsafe (and has other problems).
But I'm not going to give a pass to someone who spouts racist boilerplate and whose words are then built up as concrete, legitimate commentary on a situation she really is not qualified to talk about.
I don't. But I understand more what that Panamanian woman thinks than what that Russian thinks.
I am from the Philly area as well and have been in those areas mentioned in the article. Why don't I live there or even in the city? Because I don't have to or want to live in an area that is unsafe (and has other problems).
But I'm not going to give a pass to someone who spouts racist boilerplate and whose words are then built up as concrete, legitimate commentary on a situation she really is not qualified to talk about.
Yup.
This was brought up by an article on the same website, where it's pointed out that the unemployment rate among black people in Philly is at 14%, and that this the vast majority aren't simply sitting on their porches and smoking weed.
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