Race In America (and Overbrook), Powerball and Immigration

Sorry for the lack of blogging on my part over the last handful of days. The heat has been on me BIG-TIME at work, and I have barely been able to breathe. However, a lot has been going on, and I fully plan to make up for lost time.

There has been a recurring theme that seems to keep bopping about my life for most of this week. Wednesday, I found myself breaking a serious workplace rule-of-thumb. I got roped into a political discussion with my boss at the tail end of the work day. Common sense (when I am exercising it) dictates that you never allow this to happen to yourself. My boss, a fairly well-to-do type, was espousing his views on a certain minority group and their supposed attitude towards work and way-of-life. I was almost out the door. I could have kept my mouth shut and driven home to my wife and son and let this one go. I SHOULD have kept my mouth shut and driven home to my wife and son and let this one go. I did not keep my mouth shut, I delayed my drive home to my wife and son, and I went ahead and shared my thoughts on the subject.

Later that night, Kim alerted me to the fact that she did not have enough gas in he car to get to work the following morning. And, since she seemingly saves these alerts for the coldest nights of the year, I was not pleased. However, the Powerball jackpot was over 80 mil so I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone, my being in my pajamas be damned. When I went in to get my tickets, there was a younger guy of Indian descent working that I had seen before and talked to in passing here and there. He remembered me coming in steaming a month or so previously when we had talked about my run-in at basketball with a mutant trailer-spawn. I thought it was cool that he remembered our talk that night, so I stopped to shoot the breeze a bit. Somehow Kevin and I (this is without a doubt the first “Kevin” I have ever met from India) found ourselves on the topic of immigrant families, race relations, and attitudes of people living in this country.

Thursday night on Boston Legal (one of my favorite shows, no matter how silly or preachy it gets), one of the subjects broached was that of those in this country living under the poverty line - and how that status affects the attention one might receive from your fellow man or even the government.

There are a couple of topics that I have long considered writing about, but haven't been able to properly wrap my mind around. The first is my personal thoughts on race in this country. The second is my thoughts concerning where I grew up: Overbrook, West Philadelphia. I worry that my thoughts on these two topics might make some people I care about think of me differently. Or, that I might not be capable of accurately conveying my thoughts and feelings on the subjects. I figure that if I am going to attack these subjects, that I need to put a lot of thought into them, and make sure I do them justice. Another big road block to me opening up about this sort of thing is that I have changed a lot in the past 5 years or so, and I am frightened sometimes by some of my attitude changes. I am happy to report that even though some things have happened that I have allowed to sink into my thinking some, the two discussions that I had this week have gone a long way towards showing me that I have not turned to the dark side.

As most of you know, I attended public schools in Philly from 1981 through 1991. My elementary school, while in the middle of a white neighborhood, was over 90% black as most families in the neighborhood sent their kids to parochial schools. My junior high years were spent at Masterman, a magnet school for supposedly gifted students at 17th and Spring Garden. I was taking the El and Subway to school everyday at the age of 12. It was exciting and scary. It exposed me to some things that a lot of kids my age in my neighborhood wouldn't see for years to come, if ever. I attended Parkway Program H.S. at 39th and Walnut (and one year at 11th and Market), where the racial split was probably 80-20 black, where I was told that I was the only white basketball player in school history at the time. I can honestly say that for most of my life, I have been able to interact with people regardless of their ethnicity, color or creed. I have had friends from all walks of life, and I have prided myself on surrounding myself with people based on their personalities and not their outward appearance. My family did not have a lot of money. We didn't have much in the way of clothes or toys, but my parents owned their home and we always had food to eat and there was always heating oil in the wintertime. I never felt I was better than anyone else (except maybe in basketball) and I have always been a fairly humble person.

That being said, what has happened to my old neighborhood (easily the greatest place in the world to have grown up) has greatly affected my outlook on certain sociological issues, and my life philosophy as well. My parents moved out of Overbrook two summers ago, selling their home of 22 years. They loved their house, but the neighborhood had gotten so bad that they were compelled to leave. Drugs, murders and robberies had become the norm, and a constant danger. Once they knew that they would have to raise my niece Gabriella, it became a no-brainer that they would have to sell and move. Overbrook ("Down The Hill") and Overbrook Park ("Up The Hill") were once thriving neighborhoods. If you take the unofficial borders of Overbrook to be from 63rd St. to the east, City Line Avenue to the west and north, and Race St. to the south - the neighborhoods supported three Catholic parishes and schools (St. Donato's, St. Callistus and Our Lady of Lourdes) at least two synagogues, numerous small businesses, two separate Little Leagues and other various social organizations. Overbrook proper was mostly Italian and Irish in ethnic makeup. Overbrook Park mostly Italian and Jewish. My Dad's family came to this country from Italy in the 1960s and all of them settled in the area. I spent the first 8 years of my life in Darby, and my parents moved us to Atwood and Lansdowne in August of 1981. I loved it right away. There were tons of kids on the block my age, and there was always someone to play with (usually sports). The happiest days of my life were spent on the concrete playground at Cassidy Elementary playing baseball or football with my childhood friends. I wouldn't trade where I grew up with anyone on this planet. However, you could not pay me enough money to try and raise a family in Overbrook today. The neighborhood has changed greatly in just the last 10-12 years. The changes that my old neighborhood has undergone have made me very bitter.

Overbrook was a truly insular place. Many people who lived in Overbrook rarely had to leave it. Just about everything you could need could be found within Overbrook or Overbrook Park. Overbrook was also a very racist place. I used to bristle at the jokes, comments and old-timer stories that were bandied about back then with regularity. Most of my school friends were black, and I couldn't see why there was so much fear and hate coming from the older people of the neighborhood. I would get shouted down when I tried to take issue with these attitudes, and I would get very defensive when my "products of their environment" arguments failed to sway people's hearts and minds.

While I will NEVER blanket-statement an entire race of people, nor do I feel fit to judge any other human being - I can never again make the "product of their environment" argument. I just don't believe in that theory anymore. The biggest reason? Overbrook. It's history, and it's deterioration. You see, I grew up in a fantastic environment. The description above does not begin to do my old neighborhood justice. I miss the people I grew up around, and I would give anything to have that back. Suburban life does not offer the family-rich environment I got to experience as a youth. People knew one another, interacted with one another, CARED about one another. My home didn't offer much in the way of love, but I was cared for by other people in the neighborhood. I will always be thankful for how the people of Overbrook and Overbrook Park treated me. As I said, there was nothing wrong with the environment I grew up in. However today the old neighborhood has truly become a scary place. At least three local businesses have had their proprietors killed in robberies. Crack use is off-the-scale, murders are commonplace. I didn't want to admit it, but these acts were not being committed in those neighborhoods prior to the demographical shift in the neighborhood populace. Every visit to my parents home during the last 5 years or so of their living in the old neighborhood affected me greatly. I would get profoundly angry, deeply saddened or some combination of the two. I was in a constant state of worry for my parents, and it ratcheted up my stress level greatly. Worse, I let it affect how I looked at entire groups of people. I allowed myself to wonder if maybe there was some truth to different races being wired differently. I found myself wondering why these things didn't happen (or at least nowhere near as often) in the white equivalent of poor areas (i.e. trailer parks, etc.). I found myself saying things that were at best, tinged with racism - and at worst, downright hateful. You see, the environment of Overbrook was a beautiful place. The environment didn't cause the new dominant demographic to change. The new dominant demographic CHANGED the environment.

This brings me back to the two conversations I was involved with this week. The first, with my boss, was relatively short. His argument is that certain racial groups do not "pull their weight" in society, and that it is up to white people and the government to carry the load. I countered that we are less than 40 years removed from the Civil Rights Movement, and the brutal treatment that people of color received at the hands of the white majority. That the building of true wealth takes generations, and that minority groups in this country didn't have access to education, high-paying jobs and the ability to acquire property or invest. He looked at me like I was crazy, my argument went right over his head, and as far as I know I didn't hurt myself with him at all. The second was with Kevin, whose family matriculated to our country 5 years ago from India. He asked me if I noticed that Americans of most ethnic backgrounds seem to begrudge relatively recent immigrants who take advantage of what America has to offer in terms of access to education, business acquisitions and the like. I told him I did, but that I didn't agree with most or any of that backlash. I shared with him a brief summation of the challenges that have faced immigrants to the United States for generations. I told him that every group that came over here has had to face down racism, Italian, Irish, German, Asians, and now most prominently those immigrating from our neighbor to the South... People from these groups had to take the worst jobs, the worst living conditions, and had to work their way up the ladder. He wondered why groups that have been here longer than his family don't take better advantage of the opportunities this country has to offer, and why education isn't stressed here as much as it is in the families of many of our new fellow Americans. I told him that the American people in general have grown to feel entitled. I told him that I believed that there are large segments of our population that feel that someone owes them something. Some of those attitudes, when the history of their people and how they were treated is taken into account, have some merit. As I argued with my boss, we are not even 40 years removed from a time where Blacks in this country were being hanged from trees in the South and very little was done about it. They did not have the right to vote. They were treated like sub-humans. It takes time for a group to overcome that type of treatment. It takes time for a group mistreated for so long to build true wealth. It takes longer than 40 years for this growth to occur. It takes generations. I did agree with Kevin on one point: if people that are up against it turn to education versus a life on the streets, they can evolve. I also shared with him a very painful point. Drugs and the street life are not relegated to one race. All three of my siblings are drug addicts. The two youngest are currently in jail, and the 2nd oldest of the four of us just recently got out.

The truth is the poor and indigent of this country are for the most part ignored. Sure, there is welfare, which may help some. But the system is abused, and throwing money and foodstamps at people in lieu of actually trying to work with them to improve their lives are two wholly separate solutions. Entire cities are being blighted, and subsequently avoided and forgotten by the rest of America. And, don't think for a second that this doesn't affect the rest of us. The cities are our cultural centers. As the cities die so does what's left of what holds us together as a people. There is no quick-fix to what ails our country. The fracturing of the American populace into racially-divided segments is at the heart of what is wrong with the system. And, I honestly feel that the powers-that-be PREFER it this way. With everyone broken up in their little groups, there is almost no chance that the groundswell of support needed for true change could manifest itself. Alan Shore, played brilliantly by James Spader on Boston Legal summed it up best: "37 million people living under the poverty line. What would happen if they all decided to rise up?".
 
I am in no way promoting hate-mongering, one race's superiority over another, or anything of the like. I have had too many truly beautiful people in my life from so many different racial and ethnic backgrounds to be any type of racist. Many of these people treated me like family. In fact, they treated me better then my family treated me. The main "theme" as it were for my sharing this blog is that I allowed what happened in my old neighborhood to change my views on some theories and beliefs that I held as truth. I was worried that my life philosophy might have been skewed for worse by how my childhood home has changed. The events of the past week or so have reinforced my beliefs that we all need to work together, regardless of our ethnic makeup, to make things better for everyone in our country.


Oh. I still didn't win the Powerball...

[Currently Listening: "Lungfish - All Creation Bows"]