Poor vulnerable white girl

It's good to know that the next time that I as a black male bring my white girlfriend to visit my relatives in east flatbush, that her presence will decrease the likelyhood of us being attacked. We will just have to settle for the looks of surprise and anger from the community residents :shock: .

Have a blessed day.

X-brooklynite wrote: It's good to know that the next time that I as a black male bring my white girlfriend to visit my relatives in east flatbush, that her presence will decrease the likelyhood of us being attacked. We will just have to settle for the looks of surprise and anger from the community residents :shock: .

Perhaps, but I think that you are more likely to be attacked in a place like Staten Island!

I'm pretty convinced that white people are safer in places like Crown Heights than Black people in largely white areas like Staten Island or the old Bay Ridge. I'd love to see a comparison of racial attacks and verbal harassment.

This, however, doesn't answer the question of the safety of ALL females which is the point that everyone appears to be missing!

UNIVERSAL RULES ON CRIME

1) Criminals prey on the weak, the easy target, those that will challenge them the least. This is true EVERYWHERE.

2) Rule #1 is true when it comes to everything, not just your body. So if you leave your doors or windows open, don't lock your cars, walk around with purses hanging open or leave your bike chained outside eventually crime will find you.

3) Women are as a rule are seen as easier targets than men, especially if the perpertrators are men. This is because you are usually physically smaller and therefore, less likely to be able to defend yourselves.

4) Even the most naive person learns eventually. Whether you are black moving into a white neighborhood, white moving into a black neighborhood, a rural farmer moving to the big city for the first time, or a city slicker moving to the country, it usually doesn't take long for you to figure out the unwritten rules for your own safety. And if it does, odds are you don't survive.

Some things I'd like to point out about "will I be safe" questions...

Those are usually posted by people who are thinking about moving to the neighborhood but aren't very familiar with the area. Sites like this one are something not every neighborhood has, and it's not surprising that people Googling around for info on the neighborhood would find it, see that people talk about all sorts of stuff here, and ask questions. We also get a lot of other types of maybe-moving-here questions too, after all -- questions about what sort of Internet service is available or where the best grocery stores are or where the nearest hardware store is, for example.

Crown Heights is one of few neighborhoods in Brooklyn where it's still pretty affordable yet not too godawfully far from Manhattan and there are new apartments opening up here all the time. There are a lot of people moving here for a number of reasons -- in my case, for example, I was getting priced out the last area I lived in, wanted to stay somewhere near my friends, wanted to live in a neighborhood I hadn't experienced before, and liked what I'd seen of Crown Heights so far.

But I didn't by any means know specifics about most individual blocks, and I think we all know that safety can really vary in different parts of neighborhoods at different times, especially neighborhoods in transition. A few years ago when I lived in Greenwood Heights, for example, my block was quiet and mostly populated with blue-collar families, grad students, and nonprofit workers. A year after I left while my old roomies were still in the same apartment, the character of the block changed considerably. Several of the families had moved out, more homes had been hastily converted into cheap apartments, there was a drug dealer who'd moved into the basement apartment of my old building, and it just generally felt a lot more unsafe walking around there. Now, five years after I left, an acquaintance who stayed in the area tells me things have evened out and my old block feels safer and quieter again.

When I was looking at apartments before I moved to Crown Heights, I did archive searches here for street names to see what kind of posts there had been about the blocks each of the apartments I was considering -- not just to find out about crime, but to find out about anything anyone had mentioned (like whether a particular block is noisy, what the traffic there is like, etc.). For a couple of the places for which I couldn't find any information, I did ask about safety, especially after looking at a depressing place in a different neighborhood where the whole area looked downright stabby, because saftey's the primary concern for just about ANYONE who lives in NYC. I don't think I mentioned my own race when asking these questions, if I remember right, but I don't think that it's necessarily indicative of racism when someone does (naivete, maybe). I think it usually is just an attempt to give people who might respond more information.

It's also understandable that people who've lived here longer chafe at seeing people ask that type of question so often. But given that this is a neighborhood where there's a fairly big influx of new people moving in, that this forum is pretty easy to find online, that most folks coming here for the first time aren't going to know how to search the site for existing discussions about specific places, and that safety is usually one of the biggest concerns about anyone moving *anywhere* it's to be expected that we're going to get questions like this fairly often. I think we all need to take that into consideration and try to be patient with the newbies who ask these kind of questions.

I have to say thank you for the last posts. Please, please remember that when I asked my original question on another forum that I asked only if my daughter would be safe (as a woman). Never once did I mention our "race" and still haven't (I really hate the use of that word other than trying to get to one point faster than someone else.) You take the skin off of all of us and we're the same inside.
And we should all watch out for each other be it man or woman when someone is in a questionable situation. I like to believe if that were happening that we would all jump in to help someone in trouble.
That's one of the only decent ways to live in any society together. And that's what you would hope someone would do for you.
Again, it's back to living the Golden Rule.

Brooklyn Boy wrote: that its legitimate for white folk to be frightened by Big Scary Black Men (even though the author claimed sarcasm and later agreed with my premise), and that I'm somehow sexist. Whew!

You really are good at twisting things around into some bizarre interpretation to suit your point of view. Good for you!

To everyone else, I hope that you understand that I never said or implied in any manner that any such thing was legitimate! I said that it is legitimate to be concerned by crime statistics and alarmist posts on a public forum. Good lord almighty.

Yuck. Disgusting. Blech. Eww. I need to go take a shower.

If it’s part of a shared culture then the women would not be complaining – and some have in the thread above. Your links talk about Latin American and in Sicilian culture for travelers. Well, I don't think we're talking about the same thing. Most of the men in Crown Heights (and Bed Stuy and Manhattan) who've made rude comments at me (usually only AFTER I've passed them, and they usually act angry and hostile both if I make a comment back that is anything other than submissive and giggly, or if I ignore them) are neither Latino nor Sicilian. And when I've traveled to South America and to Southern Europe I've not had the same aggressive, hyper-sexual comments that I've received here. I recognized the rather sweet, semi-respectful compliments that the men made to me (not at me), and smiled at them ruefully. This is something different than we're talking about. I didn't grow up in an insulated white culture (downtown Detroit) and if the men - the ones I am talking about from my experience - could take it like they dish it out that would be one thing. But they move from using their mouths to try to intimidate and bully me, to using their bodies to try when I don't act the way they want me to act in response. That shows me that it's about control.
We're not stupid or culturally illiterate. We can tell the difference.

this message board, blog, discussion board, whatever you want to call it, is insane. Every black person I've ever talked to who has read it has just been frankly shocked and disgusted at how racist it is. I used to try posting to it, but I've come to the conclusion that this board is basically a space for racist white crown heights people to talk nervously about their desire for better coffee shops, their real estate investments, and their fear/hatred of blacks (albeit in very carefully smoothed out language that is actually not very subtle). Whenever anybody calls them on it, they circle the wagons and take turns bashing whoever has dared to point this out. I literally got so nauseated by it that I have vanished from the board, after a post of mine received a "guest" response referring to black people as monkeys (which was quickly removed). Clearly, it wasn't some random "guest" who thinks blacks are monkeys, but one of the lovely long time denizens of this board--and it frankly fits a good fifty percent or so of you. Brooklyn Boy is absolutely right in most of what he's saying. This really feels like the Gaza Strip around here. And don't bother writing a bunch of crap about how "racist" I am--as a biracial person with mostly white friends, it simply doesn't hold water. I'm just pretty sure that defensive, angry white yuppies who see themselves as occupying a morally virtuous space because of their ability to gentrify a formerly black neighborhood are not the neighbors I want. I hope you all get better jobs and move to Park Slope or Scarsdale or Ohio. You don't belong here.

Oh fer Christ's sake, Annie.

I remember that guest post. The IP address wasn't the same as any of the regulars.

Guest, thank you pointing out again that I chose an inappropriate example to illustrate my point. Personally, men who behave this way are not likely to be my friends, black, white or green.

Nor was I in any way trying to justify the behavior.

Please allow me the weekend to contemplate my message and compose an essay which better illustrates the point I want to make about people understanding each other's cultures.

anniewilde wrote: And don't bother writing a bunch of crap about how "racist" I am--as a biracial person with mostly white friends, it simply doesn't hold water.

oh wait, is this where I whip out the picture of my 'black friend'?