Less
than a month ago, my husband, daughter and I moved from one side
of town to another. We left the environs of what was once perceived
and touted as an area that was welcomingly diverse in terms of
race, economics, religion and social strata until about five years
ago. It was – and is today – filled with apartments,
condos and single family homes at various price points, ranging
from the affordable high five figures to a newly constructed and
luxurious $300,000-plus.
This was an area where a warehouse foreman might have lived alongside
an engineer, where a teacher with a master’s degree might
have made small talk with a high school-educated stay-at-home
mom with three kids. This was an area that was not clearly homogenous
by any stretch of the recent imagination, yet it ranged from being
lower to upper-middle class, with a variety of homes, cars and
toys at various price points as proof. Its occupants were of every
human hue, shade and tone, and the smells brewing in the kitchens
could have probably qualified for a United Nations of olfactory
ingenuity.
This neighborhood is now ‘transitional’ in the sense
of trending downward, rather than the gentrification and urban
renewal popularly associated with the term, when white investors
buy distressed properties and hire contractors to do the work,
or when young yuppies pool together funds and spend weekends having
real estate rehab parties. The word is that former residents of
recently torn down public housing have been shipped to the area
with Section 8 vouchers in hand. This is but one of many rumors,
“words” and reports substantiated by people’s
personal experiences and third-party tales of woe.
In recent years, as the population of the area
has yellowed, browned and blackened, as foreign accents and languages
have become more resonant, as signage for businesses are filled
with tildes and accent marks, as salsa, merengue and reggaeton
music have replaced R&B and rock tunes blasting from cars,
as headlines in the media seemed to collectively conspire to blacklist
the neighborhood, as fear-flight made homeowners settle for foreclosure
or abandon their homes before being sold … we were pressured
by family and friends to consider a move.
People said:
“You’ve got to consider the school
district.”
“It’s turning into a Little
Mexico out there.”
“Property values are tumbling; being
in-town is where it’s at.”
“Somebody got shot at an ATM a few
nights ago.”
I was more willing than my husband to attempt
to wait things out before listing our home for sale. I had grown
up in a predominantly white neighborhood and since striking out
on my own had purposely chosen to live in more diversified areas.
But my husband had had enough. Too much loud music blasting on
Sunday mornings and an El Salvadorian three-year-old riding his
tricycle in his underwear in the street were enough for him, and
a police stake-out across the street at an alleged drug dealer’s
house was the last straw for us both.
“Good thing that didn’t make the news.”
And so we moved to a neighborhood less than five miles from where
I had grown up. A place sprinkled with minorities and praised
for its quality elementary schools, stay-at-home mom groups, family-oriented
community events and quiet tranquility. A neighborhood whose only
headline in the local paper revolves around the future developmental
prospects of a shopping mall that has died a slow, painful death.
As my family joked about “moving on up”
like The Jeffersons and my husband basked in the sleepy suburban
scenery, the euphoria was quickly clipped on the first night in
our new home. We awoke the next morning to a neighbor knocking
on our door and warning us of a series of approximately 50 car
break-ins the night before. Outside flurries of shattered glass
from my husband’s truck lined our driveway.
This had never happened in the bad neighborhood we just left.
The cop writing incident reports admitted that crooks come to
this side of town specifically to raid vehicles. I asked why and
he shrugged his shoulders. But conversations with smiley-faced
neighbors who boasted about leaving their vehicles unlocked overnight,
leaving house keys and gadgets in car consoles and other signs
of perceived invincibility filled any void the police officer
neglected to mention.
Then a couple of weeks later, we
got some mail from the Homeowners Association. We expected it
to be the bill for the first month’s monthly dues, only
to find a report of vandalism at the community pool. Pool furniture
had been destroyed, the pool itself had been damaged, and presumably
stolen items were scattered poolside. Homeowners were forewarned
that projected repair costs could range from $8,000-$10,000.
Such vandalism had never happened in the bad neighborhood we just
left.
And most recently my husband was driving down a nearby street
with our daughter in tow, when he saw an SUV loaded with a family
of five and a white teenage girl looking him in the eye, bopping
her head to a beat and singing, “Niggah….!!!”
My husband, a no-nonsense, 6’6” brother from the South
Side of Chicago, summarily turned around, followed the truck and
cut it off in the middle of the street. As he approached, the
white girl who had committed the offense nervously rolled up her
window, and the white father driving the vehicle twitched with
the fright of being unexpectedly confronted.
My husband went on to identify the girl who had directed the N-word
towards him, while the family apologetically claimed to be simply
listening to the latest unidentified rap song by an unidentified
artist. “White folks can be niggahs, too,” one of
them said. “No, they cannot,” my husband said before
providing a brief history of the N-word and its intended uses
and functions against Black people. After more words exchanged,
the family was apologetic and conciliatory, perhaps more out of
fear than a new desire to fight the power.
My husband came home with the veins in his forehead prominently
popping, his fists clutched tightly at his sides, his jaw squared-off
and fixed in anger.
This had never happened in the bad neighborhood we just left.
BC Columnist K. Danielle Edwards
is a Nashville-based writer, poet and communications professional.
She is the author of Stacey Jones: Memoirs of Girl and Woman,
Body & Spirit, Life and Death (2005) and is the founder and
creative director of The Pen: An Exercise in the Cathartic Potential
of the Creative Act, a nonprofit creative writing project designed
for incarcerated and disadvantaged populations. Click
here to contact Ms. Edwards. |