Philadelphia has a reputation. Expression of this reputation comes from a variety of people, including people who have never lived here. They have heard things. Maybe they visited and they took what they saw and they decided that it meant certain negative things. I do not like this.
When I moved to Philadelphia, I was relatively unburdened by other people's view of what it was going to be like. I got to make up my own mind based on what I saw and what my experiences were.
Philadelphia has its problems to be sure. No one is denying that. It is a city of streets and neighborhoods. You could be on a nice street one minute and 2 blocks later, you might be on a more rough and tumble looking street. There are brand new housing projects that look like something straight out of white suburbia mingled in with poor, old, rundown neighborhoods. Philadelphia has a large black population-- almost as large as the white population in fact. All the things that I just mentioned help contribute to this reputation I am talking about.
That reputation is that if you are a reputable white person, large parts of Philadelphia should be strictly avoided if at all possible. It is dangerous. You will be the target of a crime if you are caught in those places. If you must go through them, so do only by car, only when it is light outside, lock your doors, and do not make eye contact with anyone.
Oh, and by the way, the neighborhoods you should be avoiding are peopled by mostly black people. Often, those who maintain this view of Philadelphia beat around this point. It doesn't really have much to do with that, they claim. Or they suggest that it isn't their fault that bad looking neighborhoods happen to be full of black people. It isn't racism. It's just the way it is. So they say.
I despise everything about this. These kinds of attitudes have put our city where it is. They lead to white flight. They lead people to live out in the suburbs and commute 30 minutes, 45 minutes, an hour to work just to avoid "those" places and "those" people.
Look, forget what you have heard for a minute. Just humor me. As a young women's leader, I drive out to southwest Philadelphia each week to pick up young women to come to activities. Southwest is definitely predominantly black. A lot of the buildings are old. Some of it looks run down. Sometimes there is graffiti. It is the kind of neighborhood that causes the kind of reaction I described above. Lock your doors and let's get outta here ASAP. It is notorious. Guess what? I like it. Like I said, I drive down there weekly. There is some cool architecture down there. Unfortunately, we live in a culture and world that perpetuates poverty through a variety of factors including racism and a broken healthcare system. So maybe a lot of people down there don't repaint their houses every few years. When something breaks, maybe they can't readily afford to fix it. Or maybe they spend their whole lives at work and do not have the time to deal with it. So things aren't always the neatest looking. Additionally, it is a neglected neighborhood. Downtown and into University City, there are "ambassadors" paid by the city to do things like pick up trash. No one is paying anyone to do that out in southwest Philly. So there's more trash on the ground. Do you think that's because the people that live there are bigger slobs? I don't. I have driven there day and night and I have never once felt threatened. I actually get out of my car while I am down there *gasp* with some frequency. When I knock on the doors of my girls' houses, they invite me in. Everyone comes to see who it is and say hi. The neighbors in the adjacent houses greet me. There are lots of people out on the streets. Very often, the young women see people they know, and they holler and wave out the car windows while the people on the streets wave back. I asked one of the young women how girls camp was after she got back just a few weeks ago. You know what she told me?... It was good and fun, but I wanted to come home because I missed Southwest so bad. This is a tight knit neighborhood that really great people call home.
So it makes me sad when people visit Philadelphia or move here already equipped with ideas about how it is here. They look at a neighborhood and decide that rundown must automatically equal scary and dangerous. And they never take the time to get to know the people that live there. Then they leave this place with their erroneous ideas still in place and perpetuate those stereotypes to others. And the cycle continues. It is time for us all to quit putting people into boxes based on where they live, how much money they have, or the color of their skin. It's a lot harder to practice that out here, and I see good people, who have lived in Utah (or elsewhere) their whole lives, who never really had to confront issues of poverty or race head on, struggling with this. Even I have a long way to go still. There is no "us" and "them" in the church or in the gospel. There are only children of our heavenly father. I am not suggesting that every person who is white or every person who lives in the suburbs is awful or bad or even has these ideas. I am trying not to put people like that into boxes either and claim that they (we) are all the exact same. I am not calling for everyone to move into southwest Philadelphia either. I am just asking people to step outside themselves a little; to quit assuming that just because you are a white person in a poor, black neighborhood that you must automatically be the target of a crime; to decide not to believe that just because a neighborhood has a high crime rate, everyone there must be committing crimes and must be out to get you; and to realize that putting ourselves out there to serve our brothers and sisters of all walks of life is important.
No more of this Philly hatin', okay? You be the next one brave enough to change the trend.
7 comments:
Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant! So well put! When you write about something you really care about, you are so great at expressing yourself ShaNae.
I would add to this list: garbage cans. How many garbage cans do you see on the sidewalks of SW Philly? Now, compare that to the number of trash cans you see when you're walking around 8th and Pine. Yeah. People really wonder why there's more trash on the ground? In addition to poverty making it harder for people to take care of their own community for a variety of reasons, poor neighborhoods are very often abandoned by city governments, who throw resources at wealthy neighborhoods. You see evidence of this in the 4-inch potholes surrounding the trolley tracks, fallen, dangling street signs, lack of trees and small green spaces, etc.
Excellent post.
Neighborhood is one of my favorite words. And I like how you show that neighborhood is important in Philadelphia--even parts that can be unexpected. Many thanks.
yfac
HI ShaNae! Glad you found work. If you ever need a connection for a job in Utah, let me know...
Thought this excerpt was pertinent to the issue in this post:
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one...just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I like keeping up w/the great people of P1. Never been in a ward like it, before or since!
I adore Philly. I adore her people and her neighborhoods, as evidenced by the high percentage of I <3 Philly posts on our blog. I (think I) totally get what you are trying to say in that we do not need to be afraid of or avoid certain people just because they come from a certain place or background, and we should see them as people, children of God, brothers and sisters.
However, I think it is simply untrue to say that some of these areas are not dangerous. They are. Southwest, for instance, has a much higher crime rate than, say, Center City, and most certainly than Bryn Mawr, Ardmore, etc. I'm not saying at all that it should be avoided; in fact, I've spent a good bit of time there myself in my 7 years in Philly and have gotten to know incredible people there. Because of that (and simple common sense), I know that it is still a definite minority that would commit crime there. But like I said, the frequency of crime just is higher there. Even in talking to some of "my girls" in the P3 Relief Society who had lived all of their lives there, I knew that certain parts of Southwest heard gunshots fired at least every week, if not more. That didn't make them any less wonderful or any less spiritual or any more likely to commit those crimes themselves, but they lived in an area that that happened. Several of the incredible Asian families in South Philly come from Southwest and, again, while they are fabulous, they themselves told me of the relatively greater incidence of crime.
That said, I still go to these areas. I still love the people there and wholeheartedly acknowledge that most of them are fine, good people, neighbors, and friends. However, that does not mean that I'd go traipsing around by myself there at midnight or that I wouldn't be a little more careful. For instance, Rio is well known for its crime and favellas. It is a stunningly beautiful city with mostly very kind and helpful people and we were fortunate to have nothing but good experiences. Everything we read said to avoid these favellas, though - outsiders WILL and HAVE been mugged, injured, etc. That doesn't mean that wonderful people don't live there, but they are places that have their own community that does not really allow outsiders. Philly neighborhoods are fortunately not nearly as much like that, and I certainly feel I can enter any neighborhood there. Having known that a good number of the singles ward guys who lived from 44th-45th street have been mugged or robbed, I am more inclined to be careful there, and to take a bit of extra precaution.
Whew. That was long-winded. Sorry. I guess the point is that I am totally with you in giving PEOPLE the benefit of a doubt and expecting and receiving the same goodness and honesty, etc. from those from poor/black areas as from rich suburbs (or perhaps abundantly more so), but in the AREAS, I don't think it is racist or judgmental to excercise caution.
Love ya. :)
Preethi, thank you. That was exactly the point I was trying to make. I am not claiming that southwest doesn't have a higher crime rate, or that it doesn't have major problems. I generally don't advise people, especially women by themselves, to go traipsing around anywhere after midnight. You are right on. I am all for using common sense and exercising caution. I simply feel that making blanket statements about the way communities or areas are lead to blanket statements about the way the people in them are. I just see people in our ward and in our city let misconceptions or judgments about certain places keep them from serving people who are perhaps most in need of our service, and I think it is very, very sad.
It is, by definition, "judgmental," to decide to take more caution in one area than another. It's not necessarily a bad thing. (Personally, I think you should just always be cautious.) But saying otherwise is simply not accurate.
I gotta get my RSS fixed for you guys. It makes me miss wonderful posts like this. I was talking to someone last night about this sort of thing.
I also love 52nd Street in Philly. It's crazy. If you go, you WILL be the ONLY white person there. There are so many shops and local artist Hip Hop cd's being sold. It's CRAZY!!! But I never once felt like I was going to die. I wish more people would realize they things they are saying IS racist.
Even things like "I wish they would just speak english, it's America" is kinda racist to me. I often times here that come from Utahns who speak about the hispanic community. Sigh!
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