ASSAULTED on Prospect PL.

RBG wrote: You should be happy that only a few people have been assaulted...People are not going to take this sitting down and they shouldn't have too...

That's just ridiculous. It's true that people shouldn't take getting kicked out by their landlords sitting down, but attacking innocent people who have nothing to do with their plight isn't addressing their problem. If anything, it alienates people who might have been their allies, and makes them more likely to say "good riddance."

RBG wrote: Actually Armchair, many of the landlords of the larger (rental) buildings are not black, but in fact, they're jewish. As you probably know, they purchase these buildings in the 80's when the nabe was crackridden. Many of them purchased the apartments for as little as $1000 a piece---Many of the buildings were in foreclosure, abandoned, and the mortgage holders had defaulted on loans....During the 80's and most of the 90's, the landlords rented the apartments to low-income folks and basically took checks from the government (section 8) and left the buildings in disrepair...St. Johns between Underhill and Washington is a perfect example of this. Slowly, as the economy picked up and PH became desireable, the landlords started selling the buildings, selling their apartments in co-op conversions, and right now, many are no longer re-newing leases to longtime residents....I'm speaking strictly in rental terms....So, to use the tired argument of "most of the people who sold are black," is a tired argument. The disenfranchised folks I'm talking about never owned property in the nabe---these are people who are being pushed out because they their apartment buildings are being sold or their leases aren't being renewed... On my block alone, there are 3 buildings in which owners are not renewing leases and just a few days ago a FOR SALE sign went up on a Section-8 building...You should be happy that only a few people have been assaulted...People are not going to take this sitting down and they shouldn't have too...

than these kids should go beat up the landlords or former landlords. crown heights is due for a riot. been a decade now.

Subject: file a report!

They don't want you to file a report because they get beat on by their higher ups if it looks like crime is going up in the precinct. You MUST file a report. It is really important.

RBG,
I guess you're not of pale skin, because if so you should watch your back because otherwise you have no right to live here and come home late, according to the teachings of RBG.
Armchair said it best, if Darwin dosen't take care of the problem, economics will, or jail.
No Feelings of guilt from me.

Lock you doors?

"she said there are other systems at play besides white boy walking down the street and getting jumped by a presumably black kid. And personally, I would like to hear, well for clarification purposes, your explanation of your Darwin comment - because my interpertation of it is painting you not only as being naive, but also being a racist."

no shit! offcourse other things are at play too but lets not get too complicated here. its just a message board (and there goes my smilie, I use them to express my jolliness, i always smile and laugh in person). racist? oh come on you explain to me how thats racist! you know whats racist everytime i walk down a block some idiot kid from a working class nabe yells pork fried rice and racial slurs and sometimes throw things at me thats now racist! dont @#@$% get me started on being racist. afirmative action where they have quotas cause i'm asian and thats @#$% racist. i could tell you how many times i got beaten and chased and insulted cause of my race by lower working class kids. lets notbring @#$% race into this. its about economics and class. my darwin comment is simple, usually stupid kids get themsleves killed.

Subject: Re: White people are funny.

Boobear wrote:

dont @#@$% get me started on being racist. afirmative action where they have quotas cause i'm asian and thats @#$% racist. i could tell you how many times i got beaten and chased and insulted cause of my race by lower working class kids. lets notbring @#$% race into this. its about economics and class.

Race is often a signifier of class, so yes, it matters here.

I think it's insane for you all to expect to live in PH like it's PS. It isn't. The tradeoff for the cheaper rents and fewer baby-carriage intrusions is that the neighborhood is less shiny and happy than most of you would like. So, adjust. It's so arrogant to expect the people who have lived there for years to magically adopt your standards and mores. Too many of you, I suspect, hail from the 'burbs, where random violence is so anomalous it makes the 11 o'clock news. For the people that have always lived here, violence is just scenery. Ask anyone who went to one of the non-fancy high schools in Bklyn. That's just how they roll.

So, until the nabe begins to more closely resemble the UES (and, btw, why would anyone want that), you need to deal with the realities. No one shd be walking around at 2 am alone near the Franklin Ave subway stop. Your rent is presumably low; spring for a car service.

You think it's arrogant for people to not expect to get punched in the head? Give me a fucking break. We're not talking about putting in a Tea Lounge on Washington Ave. here, we're talking about being assaulted on the street where you live. This is where pride about being a native and of having seen some shit go down in your time runs up against stupidity. I don't care how anyone "rolls," you're allowed to say that this kind of thing shouldn't happen in this neighborhood.

Nobody is saying Prospect Heights is or should be like Park Slope, but I don't know how you're supposed to "adjust" to violent assaults. Take a car service home from the Upper West Side? Never leave the house? Please.

Sometimes it seems like the best way to make friends around here would be to randomly attack someone.

Hi Parkin' Place!

I figured some of ya'll would get riled up.

a) Nowhere in my post did I give random violence the thumbs-up.
b) Nowhere in my post did I say that the nabe old-timers would give random violence the thumbs-up.

I'm just laying out the realities as I see them. If you're a tall, pasty-faced white guy, you could not roam Harlem at night circa 1990 with a reasonable expectation of safety. If your response to that is "that's not fair," then talk to the folks in Harlem who have been there for a couple of decades and learn something about fair.

Ultimately, this is about cultures and classes clashing. If you want to talk ignorant ... it's ignorant to move into a neighborhood like PH where you benefit from others' misery -- namely, those who are getting squeezed out -- and expect the nabe to adjust to you. There has to be a middle ground.

And for those of you who think it's fruity to try to become part of the larger community by giving back -- whether thru tutoring, volunteering, or simply stop pretending "they" are an intrusion in "your" hood -- I just feel sorry for you. Packs of roving teenagers scare us all. But to simply write them off ... you may as well do us all a favor and move to Jersey already.

First person to scream "reverse racism" wins a celery stick from Wing Wagon.

armchair_warrior wrote: i hope darwin takes care of those punks that did this or economics and statistics would eventually.

this statement is incorrect. darwin's theory of evolution via the process of natural selection is genetically based. what you should instead have said is "social darwinism." the genetic variation between "those punks" and "those not punks" is not the driving force behind what i think your statement is pointing to, which in my best guess is the notion of "survival of the fittest." the problem with this ideology is that it is incorrectly associated with darwin's theory of natural selection. herbert spencer actually coined the "survival of the fittest" notion. darwin's theory states that those individuals with deleterious mutations/genetic variations do not survive to reproductive age, therefore they are not able to pass on their genes, thus their lineages die off.
most evolutionists disagree with social darwinists for a variety of reasons, you may see why...here's what wikipedia has to say...

"Social Darwinism is a term used to describe a concept in social theory which holds that Darwin's theory of evolution of biological traits in a population by natural selection can also be applied competition between societies or groups within a society espousing variations in ethic and underpin a political ideology with success determined by shifts in the number of adherants to a particular ideology. It is also used to critique human social institutions. Initially expressed in the writings of English philosopher and author Herbert Spencer, and of William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinism first became popular in the late 19th century and continued in popularity until the end of World War II. The application of the term to 19th and 20th century modes of thought, however, generally did not occur until after the publication of American historian Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought in 1944, which codified the concept in the sense it is generally used today. Thus the term is an anachronism, although it is still widely used by historians. In many ways it would be more proper to call it "Social Spencerism" instead of "Social Darwinism".
Historically, proponents of Social Darwinism often used the theory to justify social inequality as being meritocratic, and it has also been used to justify racism and imperialism, in a cultural application of Herbert Spencer's idea of the "survival of the fittest." Thus, Herbert Spencer's notion of the evolution of society and man's moral faculty had been altered to something quite contrary to his philosophy. Social Darwinism itself does not necessarily engender a political position. Some Social Darwinists argue for the inevitability of progress and social reform, while others emphasize the potential for the degeneration of humanity. To a certain extent, Social Darwinism, like Darwinian evolution, has been associated with the controversial field of eugenics.
While Social Darwinism applies the concept of evolution and natural selection to human cultural systems, the extent to which the ideologies related to it are a part of Darwin's biological theory of evolution or Spencer's classical liberal philosophy is arguable."

sorry but with all the debate on evolution these days i can't bear to see the bases of its ideas muddled. imho social darwinism is a bunch of crap.

busterbunny wrote: [quote=armchair_warrior]i hope darwin takes care of those punks that did this or economics and statistics would eventually.

this statement is incorrect. darwin's theory of evolution via the process of natural selection is genetically based. what you should instead have said is "social darwinism." the genetic variation between "those punks" and "those not punks" is not the driving force behind what i think your statement is pointing to, which in my best guess is the notion of "survival of the fittest." the problem with this ideology is that it is incorrectly associated with darwin's theory of natural selection. herbert spencer actually coined the "survival of the fittest" notion. darwin's theory states that those individuals with deleterious mutations/genetic variations do not survive to reproductive age, therefore they are not able to pass on their genes, thus their lineages die off.
most evolutionists disagree with social darwinists for a variety of reasons, you may see why...here's what wikipedia has to say...

"Social Darwinism is a term used to describe a concept in social theory which holds that Darwin's theory of evolution of biological traits in a population by natural selection can also be applied competition between societies or groups within a society espousing variations in ethic and underpin a political ideology with success determined by shifts in the number of adherants to a particular ideology. It is also used to critique human social institutions. Initially expressed in the writings of English philosopher and author Herbert Spencer, and of William Graham Sumner, Social Darwinism first became popular in the late 19th century and continued in popularity until the end of World War II. The application of the term to 19th and 20th century modes of thought, however, generally did not occur until after the publication of American historian Richard Hofstadter's Social Darwinism in American Thought in 1944, which codified the concept in the sense it is generally used today. Thus the term is an anachronism, although it is still widely used by historians. In many ways it would be more proper to call it "Social Spencerism" instead of "Social Darwinism".
Historically, proponents of Social Darwinism often used the theory to justify social inequality as being meritocratic, and it has also been used to justify racism and imperialism, in a cultural application of Herbert Spencer's idea of the "survival of the fittest." Thus, Herbert Spencer's notion of the evolution of society and man's moral faculty had been altered to something quite contrary to his philosophy. Social Darwinism itself does not necessarily engender a political position. Some Social Darwinists argue for the inevitability of progress and social reform, while others emphasize the potential for the degeneration of humanity. To a certain extent, Social Darwinism, like Darwinian evolution, has been associated with the controversial field of eugenics.
While Social Darwinism applies the concept of evolution and natural selection to human cultural systems, the extent to which the ideologies related to it are a part of Darwin's biological theory of evolution or Spencer's classical liberal philosophy is arguable."

sorry but with all the debate on evolution these days i can't bear to see the bases of its ideas muddled. imho social darwinism is a bunch of crap.where oh were did i talk about darwins biological theory? survival of the fittest was coin by Herbert Spencer and i know that so please dont read into things that i didnt write. i'm just saying that kid probably would win a darwin award some day. you should check out the site, idiots off themselves!

boo bear your not even worth wasting my posting time with. blaming the victims.

Subject: Re: White people are funny.

armchair_warrior wrote: its not excuse for being a jackass and a thug.

Dude, not three hours ago I was reminding someone else of the rules about not calling names because they were calling YOU names.

(And if you meant that people who beat up random people on the street are thugs, okay, but you weren't be very clear.)

Subject: Re: White people are funny.

EmilyM wrote: [quote=armchair_warrior]its not excuse for being a jackass and a thug.

Dude, not three hours ago I was reminding someone else of the rules about not calling names because they were calling YOU names.

(And if you meant that people who beat up random people on the street are thugs, okay, but you weren't be very clear.)i mean the thugs in the street. not him. i dont do name calling. i have terrible gramar let me go back and edit it .

busterbunny wrote: only if you read " the origin of species" first.

The entire book is available online for free here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/origin.html