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.