Is it just me or do poor neighborhoods of the US have a safer vibe now and the suburbs like a distinctly threatening vibe? I live in a poor neighborhood and these days being somewhere like this and seeing like a gangbanger-ish car roll down the street doesn’t make me nervous but a cop car definitely does kind of like how those same types of gangbanger-ish cars made me nervous when I was a middle class kid growing up in a nice neighborhood in the 2000s but police cars made me feel safe and protected. Like it’s all switched for me. A few days ago I stayed a few nights at my dad’s huge house in nice neighborhood and I was alone one night and felt extremely unsafe. I was so relieved to get back to my apartment alone in a poor neighborhood. Has anyone else had this experience of such a transition over the last twenty years or so?
We tend to adapt to our environment and treat that which becomes foreign with distrust. This also applies to the evil we know and the one that we don’t.
My inner-city neighborhood is way more neighborly and has more social cohesion than the suburbs I grew up in ever did. We also have neighborhood festivals and stuff, so that’s pretty cool. Although we do have some drug houses and some homeless people who hang out near the commercial area and the crime rate might technically be higher than the suburbs (I haven’t actually checked), it feels safer because of the camaraderie.
When I lived in a poorer neighborhood it was more neighborly, but there was four shootings within a block of my house leading to three deaths, my garbage can was used as target practice, there were needles constantly found in the park on the corner, someone got mad and blew up their apartment building and muggings nearby were frequent.
I’ll take the nicer neighborhoods where interactions are less frequent thank you very much.
I didn’t say my neighborhood is poor; I said it’s inner-city. In actuality, it’s rapidly gentrifying. It’s still got some poor-neighborhood characteristics left (or perhaps just characteristics endemic to any place dense enough for good panhandling opportunities), but I wouldn’t be able to afford to live here if I had to buy in today.
When I lived in that nice middle class neighborhood growing up there was a drive-by shooting (which we all completely panicked about and made a huge deal), a meth lab that was discovered one day three doors down (the police came with hazmat suits and everything), my drug-addicted uncle was often wandering into the house drugged up on heroin, and there was this longstanding story about a guy a few houses down the other street who killed his wife then went up to a nearby mountain and shot himself. People had been warning me about poor neighborhoods all my life up until I was 21 saying they were even worse. But since winding up constantly in poor neighborhoods I’ve never been mugged, developed a generally thick skin, basic street smarts, learned who not to look in the eye, what not to do, how to react, how not to react, stay out of people’s business, what situations lead to what other situations, don’t be such a stickler about every little crime or suspicion of crime, listen to some gansta rap, know the greats, vibe, and everything is gravy. Seems simple to me now. Now I just enjoy the neighborhood. Birds chirping. Trees swaying. Haven’t heard about any murders, meth labs, and I can afford a place of my own, or at least a room of my own. It’s better than being a thin-skinned suburbanite who finds themselves walking on eggshells the minute a wild crime-ish energy appears.
Mugging? Drive by shooting? Gang banger cars? Can’t look strangers in the eye? Geez where do you guys live? Where I live, the only issue is some dude getting mad with a neighbor for feeding stray cats because the cats shit on his yard.
I’m with you. Police and gangbangers are the same group, with the only notable difference in that police are empowered to ruin your day by the government, while bangers will face consequences for shooting people while they’re asleep in their bed, or flashbanging an infant in their crib.
This is like reading both the GOP and DNC are the same 🤣
When it comes to unconditional support for cops, they are.
Not all Dems, but all of the DNC leadership.
A few neighbors including myself had our cars broken into in our driveways. None of us called the police, I personally didn’t because I have a car in my driveway that is unregistered and I was worried they would give me a hard time. My neighbor just shrugged and said what’s the point they’re not going to do anything anyway. It’s crazy that the cops are scarier than the actual criminals.
I would feel less at ease in an expensive house, thinking that it would be a good target for robbers. It’s not entirely true though. Robbers tend to target neighbourhoods that are less well off then their own link
Being paranoid about getting robbed wasn’t exactly my anxiety though. It was a lot more so the physical proximity to locally powerful people who make decisions every day that ruin dozens or even hundreds of lives in big ways with total impunity making me wonder how they are actually willing to entrap and hurt me or to have me be hurt. I hardly ever go to my dad’s house anyway. Material possessions aren’t a big factor in my sense of security. I have very little social competence in dealing with powerful people aligned for whatever reason in whatever way against me let alone physical competence (i.e. police), but there is a sense of social competence I have with people who would rob in a poor neighborhood. It’s like a different bioregion and I feel like it is increasingly separating from the entire rest of America like a checkerboard. I have seen so few police cars lately, it’s strange.
I’ve recently started exploring “downtown” which where I live in significantly poorer.
Going to all the super small business and just talking to people and being around seemingly decent people just makes be genuinely so much happier and has given me sime much needed faith in humanity
Just you.
I’m pretty sure I learned somewhere the more money you make the more you dislike poor people. this is probably the sentiment you are feeling.
I make good money but don’t hate poor people. Is it because I remember what it’s like to be poor?
That’s something people should consciously be aware of because with the system as fucked as it is now, we are all guaranteed to end up poor.
Assume you save up 5mil for retirement. You fall and break yr hip. Insurance covers 80%. How much of that 5mil you gonna have left?
Answer; by the time we get there inflation will have fucked all the value of the dollar. You’ll be selling you house to pay that bill, after emptying your bank account, cuz Medicaid doesn’t help until you’ve liquidated all your assets.
Lololol how many people with 5m to their name don’t have healthcare? And how much do you think a hip replacement is? 5M in retirement is something like 14k per month before socal security. Nobody in that class is getting bankrupted by a 40k surgery.
Healthcare in the US is dumb as fuck but the misunderstanding and uneducated repeating is dumb shit like this hurts my brain. There were 600k medical bankruptcies last year. 0. 0017% of the population.
Your comment is mostly intellectually lazy made up dribble.
That’s not how percentages work. Do you work for Verizon?
600k / 332M = 0.0018 = 0.18%
I typoed the math. You got me.
A fifth of a percent is huge!
I also don’t think the average person willve saved up 5mil to retire on, in fact I don’t think the average person will be able to retire, period.
The majority of bankruptcies are from medical expenses, from people WITH health insurance.
If you think that that’s acceptable, then I question your morality.
The whole point wasn’t in the actual numbers but feel free to use it to practice your algebra. Focusing on the numbers avoids the point completely, but I guess that is easier then root causes and structural problems to our capitalism/legal system.
And tell me where I said any of that is good? I said the comments made were made up, inaccurate, and didn’t represent the reality at all. Go look for some other boogeyman.
I’m sorry I called you out for fake news.
