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| Author |
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| 25 new of 79 responses total. |
slynne
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response 50 of 79:
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May 21 16:20 UTC 2002 |
You dont really think that people are more willing to live in racially
mixed surroundings do you?
There are a LOT of really nice neighborhoods in Detroit with pretty low
property values. Why do you suppose white people find those
neighborhoods undesireable? Is it the crime? Not any higher than you
would find in 'burbs. Is it the way things look? Nope, if you didnt
know better, you would think you were in the 'burbs. Is it the lack of
city services? Maybe but probably not. Some of the nicer neighborhoods
provide their own services as needed. Is it the schools? I doubt it,
living in Detroit is so much cheaper than living in the 'burbs that one
could send their kids to private school pretty easily. Could it be all
the black people there?
And please, please dont go into how diverse Ann Arbor is. I hardly ever
see any black people there. Even Ypsilanti which has a much higher
black population than Ann Arbor is pretty segregated.
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gull
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response 51 of 79:
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May 21 17:52 UTC 2002 |
Did you notice that as soon as Southfield passed 50% black people stopped
referring to it as "diverse" and started referring to it as "tipping"?
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other
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response 52 of 79:
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May 21 18:11 UTC 2002 |
I've never heard the reference.
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slynne
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response 53 of 79:
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May 21 18:28 UTC 2002 |
I have never heard it either.
But, there are parts of Southfield that are totally being abandoned,
that have that feeling of decay about them...kind of like Detroit but
not nearly as bad. Could it be because all the white people with money
are moving to Livingston County?
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scg
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response 54 of 79:
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May 21 21:52 UTC 2002 |
Metro Detroit is now the most racially segregated metropolitan area in the
US. As far as I could tell when I was working there a few years ago, the
pattern of black people moving into neighborhoods, and white residents fleeing
and taking the neighborhood's economic opportunities with them, seemed to be
continuing. People may not be as honest about what they're doing as they once
were -- they won't say they're mving to get away from black people, but rather
to get away from rising crime. Yet, when asked to cite examples of the crimes
they were fleeing from, it was often a stretch for them to find an example
or two. It seemed to be a case of being convinced that with black people
moving into their neighborhoods, crime had to be coming too.
I remember one case when somebody I worked with was mugged in the parking lot
of an upscale Southfield movie theater. She said she had assumed the black
man who had approached her and then mugged her was going to ask for
directions, or something like that. She was then the subject of lots of
comments behind her back from others in the office about how naive she had
been to assume that a black man approaching her wasn't going to mug her. This
was followed by comments from a couple of people around the office about the
need to move their families out of Southfield, before such a mugging happened
to them as well. Never mind that this was an isolated incident, or that the
guy was arrested shortly thereafter.
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orinoco
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response 55 of 79:
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May 21 22:33 UTC 2002 |
I never said people are willing to live in racially mixed surroundings. I
said people are _more_ willing. For the most part, we don't feel the need
to pass laws to keep out people we think are funny-looking, or set their
houses on fire, or what have you.
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keesan
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response 56 of 79:
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May 22 15:00 UTC 2002 |
My neighborhood was about 1/3 black when I moved in and is still about 20%,
in Ann Arbor (near Mack School). It is a pretty mixed area, with Russian,
German, Indian, Venezuelan, Chinese and several same-sex couples within a
block, also some people in their nineties and increasing numbers of babies.
Half rental, one rooming house. Seems to be a favorite area also for
mixed-race couples.
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slynne
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response 57 of 79:
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May 22 15:37 UTC 2002 |
My neighborhood seems pretty diverse too but it is still *mostly* white
people and just two block away on the same street the neighborhood is
*mostly* black people (across Michigan Ave which seems to be the border
between white Ypsilanti and black Ypsilanti)
Ok, some progress has been made and there are areas where people of
different racial and ethnic backgrounds live together. Maybe I notice
all the white people more than others because I grew up in Detroit.
When I first moved to Ann Arbor 17 years ago, it used to crack me up
that the students in my almost all white school would talk about how
diverse they were when every one of them was just like every other one
of them. They not only were racially homogenous, they also were socio-
economically homogenous.
95% of the kids in my class read "The Road Less Travelled" at
graduation which is funny when you consider what they thought the poem
meant but even funner when one considers what it actually means
(pointed out to me by md - I admit, I was one of the dumb ones who
didnt figure it out on my own).
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jmsaul
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response 58 of 79:
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May 22 16:29 UTC 2002 |
I've never seen the official interpretation.
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slynne
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response 59 of 79:
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May 22 16:42 UTC 2002 |
Ok, what it probably actually means. ;) I dont know what Frost had to
say about it.
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gull
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response 60 of 79:
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May 22 18:28 UTC 2002 |
Frost claimed it had no symbolic meaning, but I'm not sure if he did so with
a straight face.
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orinoco
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response 61 of 79:
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May 22 18:56 UTC 2002 |
He probably just wanted the rest of us to shut up and listen to the poem.
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jmsaul
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response 62 of 79:
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May 22 21:21 UTC 2002 |
Re #59: What, was he outing himself?
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senna
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response 63 of 79:
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May 22 22:39 UTC 2002 |
Ann Arbor is so-so diverse, with non-white people getting a fair shake and
not a whole lot of actual tension, but there are still issues. Take the high
schools, for example, where most of the same people take most of the advanced
classes and few if any of them are black. It was hard work getting to know
black people at Pioneer when I was there, because none of them had interests
in theater and the classes I took were ones that they had long ago written
off. I did manage to rub shoulders (more accurately, their shoulders would
rub past my elbows... as they faked me out of my shoes on the way to the
basket) with a number of black guys in a team sports class, a depressing
commentary on the state of racial integration in America.
It's not cool to be prejudiced anymore, which is a big improvement over how
things used to be, but there are still major issues. Now there's a movement
to increase multicultural diversity, a "do what you like" concept that has
good intentions and some good results but eventually causes more problems,
such as black kids hanging around wearing baggy jeans and ski caps listening
to Snoop Dogg at one table while white kids hang around wearing baggy Dockers
and backwards Abercrombie baseball caps listening to Eminem at another.
People don't believe they're prejudiced anymore, but they don't do a whole
lot of thinking about the "other side" and as a result you get problems like
the one Steve describes in his Suburban Detroit office. People just don't
understand what the "other side" does that's equivalent.
Southeastern Michigan has serious integration issues, but they're hardly
unique. My whirlwind tour of various parts of the country to watch sports
was noticeably white-oriented, between football games at Tennessee (where I
think I saw one black guy all day long, but fortunately he was sitting next
to me in a restaurant and fun to talk to) and LSU (the black kids in Baton
Rouge go to Southern, including the black woman who I talked with at a
concession stand after the first quarter) and Minnesota. People just
gravitate to what they know, but what people know these days isn't unified
anymore.
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jmsaul
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response 64 of 79:
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May 23 02:50 UTC 2002 |
Man, the most segregated place I've ever been was L.A. I don't think I saw
more than three Black people the entire time I was there.
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oval
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response 65 of 79:
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May 23 06:59 UTC 2002 |
that's why i love living in brooklyn in a very diverse area. my block is
mostly black and hispanic. the family next door has outdorr family barbecues
with kids and music when the weather's nice on the weekends. the guys across
the street play cuban music and play drums on their stoop. it's much nicer
and feels safer than when i lived in a 'gentrified' area.
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mary
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response 66 of 79:
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May 23 10:31 UTC 2002 |
The most diverse location in Ann Arbor has to be the Krogers at
Traver Village.
Just hang out in the produce area for 10 minutes and you'll hear
languages you've never heard before. Klingon, even.
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oval
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response 67 of 79:
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May 23 14:15 UTC 2002 |
'geekified'
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keesan
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response 68 of 79:
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May 23 15:20 UTC 2002 |
The Kroger's on Stadium (the big new one) now has one section selling Fayad
dried fava beans and bulgur, another section with bulk tortillas, the canned
goods section has canned beans of types I have never even heard of (Southern
style), the produce section now has not only cactus leaves and Chinese string
beans but some roots or tubers I could not identify. These are things you
could only find until now at a Chinese, Mexican, or Middle Eastern food store.
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jmsaul
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response 69 of 79:
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May 23 15:48 UTC 2002 |
Kroger's and Meijer's are both getting better about that. Hiller's is also
pretty strong (and has a lot of Eastern European stuff; you can even buy kvas
there).
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gelinas
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response 70 of 79:
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May 24 03:47 UTC 2002 |
(Ann Arbor is roughly 17% African-American.)
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senna
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response 71 of 79:
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May 24 17:57 UTC 2002 |
Surprising, isn't it?
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bdh3
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response 72 of 79:
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May 25 07:37 UTC 2002 |
Does the AAPD still refer to blacks by 'code'? Here in chicagoland
ever since I moved here a male black is refered to by the code
'male black' on the police radio.
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russ
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response 73 of 79:
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May 28 01:40 UTC 2002 |
Re #27: The phrase "severely flawed culture and public policy" describes
a lot about what non-leftists think about California in general.
Re #34: I've seen condos whose evaluation dropped from year to year.
Needless to say, I didn't feel like buying one (a rental unit doesn't
sock you with depreciation).
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lynne
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response 74 of 79:
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May 29 00:52 UTC 2002 |
Out here it's the Portuguese neighborhoods that are the really sketchy ones.
Our neighborhood has a pretty large proportion of black people (I'd guess
about 50-50 black-white). While my parents and I were moving my stuff in,
a black couple with a kid in a stroller entered and exited a house across
the street several times. My mother immediately concluded that it was a
crack house. (Guess which city my mother grew up next to?)
Boston is the next worse housing market after San Fran and LA. A condo out
here costs at least as much as a house in Ann Arbor and is probably in worse
shape/a worse location. We looked into buying a condo a few years ago (with
4 years to go in the graduate program) and it just didn't make financial
sense. As it is, we pay $1900 a month for a 3-bedroom with an all-new
interior, dishwasher, and washer/dryer, within 25 min walking of MIT, and
figure we have a pretty good deal.
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