THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN CLARION CALL

PRISONERS OF THE GHETTO

I grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana and I frequently tell my kids about my life as a child. My neighborhood was basically an all African-American working/middle class neighborhood. At that time, class distinctions were somewhat muted and my neighborhood was a mixture of variety of people (physicians, teachers, postal workers, factory workers and etc). Some of my teachers were my neighbors with one of them living right next door to me for a time and she would walk to school with me occasionally. My grade school was right around the corner from my house. There was no craziness of any sort at that time and there was order. It was like a little black Mayberry as I think back, although I didn’t realize it at the time. Families predominated and, as I think about it, in a four block area around my home I can count on one hand the number of families headed by a single parent. Even the bad kids had two parents and families. That neighborhood no longer exists and its been replaced by something full of mayhem and dysfunction. However, I knew nothing about the ghetto while growing up and from my bank of experience at that time, there wasn’t the automatic association between an all Black neighborhood and the dysfunction that’s normally associated with many of them today. You see, I know and remember my neighborhood, so for me the norm is not what we see today. I know differently and this is why I tell my kids so they know as well. They won’t have my experience and I just need them to know differently.
This weekend my kids were with me as I was helping my father in law move from Newark NJ. Newark has a re-gentrified downtown, but many areas of the city are still in bad shape or getting worse. I think Mayor Cory Booker is doing what he can to positively affect things, so the purpose of this post is really not even to criticize him as frequently the problems are beyond the scope of government or politics anyway. (That’s not to suggest that there’s not a role for government to play, but that role is really to supplement the actions of the people in my view). So, these are just merely some observations I had while helping my father-in-law move from the house he lived in for the past 50 years. Sometimes what one reads in the newspaper or even watches in a documentary like the one below isn’t quite the same as seeing, smelling or tasting things right up front.
While we were moving, my father-in-law was on pins and needles and concerned about completing the move before it got dark. Initially, I really couldn’t figure out why he was so concerned as outside of the bars on the windows of most of the neighbors, nothing seemed particularly out of order. Moving is not an “in and out” proposition, so it meant that we all had to be there a little while and the longer I was there, the more I began to see. There were at least three people who came up offering to help us move for pay which I took to mean how desperate folks were for money. None of those who offered however struck me as particularly trustworthy. There were two drug addicts that came up to the door looking to see if there was anything we wanted to give away. We had to rest a sofa on the street for a short while to load other items on the truck and within 5 minutes someone popped up wanting to know if we were looking to get rid of it. At one point, I got thirsty and went down the street to the corner store to get a soft drink and walked right into the middle of an open air drug market. Three guys had the corner under control; one was standing there with two pit bulls, while the other two were busy filling the orders of all the cars pulling up. There seemed to be no shortage of customers.
The area felt was if there were two groups of people. Those who prey and those who are preyed upon.
I could see older people still living in the neighbor who were keeping up their properties beautifully, but afraid to come out. There were little kids playing and someone was having a birthday party with balloons festooned all about the place. All of this stood in stark contrast with the drug dealers and addicts. It was almost as if these people were trying to seize some normality out of a neighbor that was full of dysfunction.
All of this was occurring in an area that wasn’t even one city block long. My mind just gets overwhelmed when I consider that block can be multiplied several times over within this particular city and probably thousands of times over when one considers the situation in several urban areas across the nation. One can’t help but to feel depressed, but that’s no comparison to how those who are unable to escape must feel.