New to the Area, Getting Some Mixed Opinions.. Please Help!

Wow,

Subject: Good lord

hellodarling wrote: What?! How did this turn into a racial conversation?? For the record, that was never my intent and I sincerely apologize if you feel that way. My concern has ALWAYS been to find out more about our neighborhood, as I would like to be an active participant and not living in a "bubble." I merely posted the question because others had mentioned areas to stay away from, and I was wondering what more seasoned citizens would consider those areas to be. That's all. I don't care if you're white or black or purple and I don't appreciate being accused of racism or being closed-minded or whatever. If I only wanted to be around closed-minded whitebread folks, I'd move back to Texas. But I don't, so I'm not.

I'll be sure to stay off any future threads for fear that it might turn into something like this again; I was just hoping to meet some neighbors. To everyone, thanks for the sincere assistance and recommendations. It's appreciated.

That was an outragous post to you. I am not white, I'm biracial. I was looking into a nice big apartment in Crown Heights. I love Crown Heights., absolutely LOVE it ! I was already to sign the lease until I got a good look at the posts on THIS forum. While it would have been fine for just me, I decided that it just wasn't fine for my 16 year old white looking daughter and I have absolutely no problem with admitting that. Btw, we have always lived in largely Black neighborhoods.

Anyway, I think that if you are going to be just fine. I found the people in the area you are in to be very friendly and very nice. There were other areas nearby that I would probably avoid. I would follow the advice given here and walk around with someone at night.

I'm a liberal and an anti-racist, but there are some uber-liberals who take liberalism way too far to the point where they use their anti-racism to excuse things nobody should excuse or tolerate.

I fully agree with Ben that Anniewilde is going too far in her comments.

Sometimes I think very important issues are discussed here, but in the virtual forum, our words can sound sharper than we might mean for them to, or than they might sound if delivered face-to-face...

small point, Annie: in truth, Brooklyn feels nothing like the Gaza Strip.

Subject: Really

Anonymous wrote: At the bottom of most of these fear related post there is prejudice; The fear of the Unknown Other, as it were. And, yes that fear is human.
Don't mean to put words in your mouth, Anniewilde, but it seems to me that you're not so much angry (as bojolais suggests) but exasperated by most people's unwillingness to dive into discourse about just the "fear of the other" and the equal unwillingness to admit that ALL OF US (yup, me and you and everybody else) are prejudist to some degree. Because - were will we get with all this w/o putting all of our cards on the table and just TALKING about it? I mean; I just love how everyone is anti-racist here! Judging from these posts, there are no racists in America but we're all scared.

You may be correct about these fear related posts. Or maybe it's reading the posts about gunshots and attacks that are behind some of these fear related posts. I mean, don't you think that people who move to CH already know that there are BIG BLACK MEN LIVING THERE before they come to this forum and read about crime or are these new white people moving into CH just stupid and unobservant? Don't you think that if they were afraid of BIG BLACK MEN, they would have moved there in the first place?

Do you think that when someone expresses fear of crime, responding with "Well, it's a Black neighborhood, what did you expect" is really the response you want to give to prove that you are not a racist and that the person afraid of crime is? You should seriously rethink it and think about how it sounds. I know that this is clearly going to come as a shock to some of you but I've actually lived in Black and Latino neighborhoods where there weren't shootings and attacks.

was that near st. marks? on my way home last night around 1/1:30 i saw a ton of people standing around outside the biker bar. didn't seem like anything crazy was going on but it was a helluva lot more people than i usually see there.

we heard the shots as well and called 911

Anonymous wrote: [quote=filmlover44]

You may be correct about these fear related posts. Or maybe it's reading the posts about gunshots and attacks that are behind some of these fear related posts. I mean, don't you think that people who move to CH already know that there are BIG BLACK MEN LIVING THERE before they come to this forum and read about crime or are these new white people moving into CH just stupid and unobservant? Don't you think that if they were afraid of BIG BLACK MEN, they would have moved there in the first place?

Do you think that when someone expresses fear of crime, responding with "Well, it's a Black neighborhood, what did you expect" is really the response you want to give to prove that you are not a racist and that the person afraid of crime is? You should seriously rethink it and think about how it sounds. I know that this is clearly going to come as a shock to some of you but I've actually lived in Black and Latino neighborhoods where there weren't shootings and attacks.

Filmlover44, I do see your point about how gun and shooting posts here might have initiated some of the fear-related posts, although I certainly never stated "Well, it's a Black neighborhood, what did you expect". I guess my major point is: People in this city do get blinded by size and price of homes and seem let that be what decides everything about a move and for some reason, and a lot of white people assume that the way they behave is some sort of norm. So, yes: I think there are plenty of new white people moving into CH who are just stupid and unobservant, who know that BIG BLACK MEN live here but somehow expect these same BIG BLACK MEN to stick to their own. MANY of these new white residents do NOT get to know their neighbors, they do NOT look anyone in their eyes or greet people on the street, etc. That kind of stuff is actually considered rude and snooty in some areas of this city where people have grown up and lived their whole lives (as I'm sure it would be in SmalltownUSA as well!). To NOT consider that you might not be greeted with smiles by everyone in particular area if you're white, then you need to look up gentrification in a dictionary asap.What has one got to do with the other? People's rudeness means that they deserve to have random acts of violence perpetrated upon them?

Also, these same people would probably ignore their fellow new "white" residents. To me, this entire discussion smacks of racism. Racism in the sense of "whitey keep out."

This is still part of the largest city in the US right? In any major city people ignore each other. There are too many people to pay attention to all of them. That said, there is no reason to be rude, no reason not to aknowledge people on the street, etc.

But its not just new people that do it, those that have lived here for their entire lives do it just as much to the new people too. It's a two way street. make people feel welcome and they'll probably be a lot nicer to you.

In summary, quit with the, racist, "White people don't get the 'hood'" crap. If the neighborhood is dangerous to white people, its probably dangerous to those that are non-white, and vice versa.