Being White in Philly

[christiefan915]

I just got a manicure with the best new spring color! I thought I would post a picture of it:

View attachment 2039

That is really pretty. I read that Mint Green is the color for spring and bought a bottle of polish, and it looks like crap on me. Back to "normal" colors.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

The writer used only negative incidents or examples from the black underclass. "Everyone seems to have a story, often an uncomfortable story, about how white and black people relate."

His examples: white student with lost Blackberry confronted by angry black student; middle-school student steps up bad behaviour after being called "boy" by teacher; white, Russian student says blacks use skin color as excuse; white male gets mugged one night by black assailants..."not that it matters"; cops in squad car blame crime "mostly on black guys from North Philly; young black teen wants to sell Oxy to white architect; 87-year old man finds stranger in house: “It was a nigger boy, a big tall kid. He wanted money.”; man restoring houses lives next to black drug runner; little black kids come to white neighborhood for Halloween trick or treating .

How can you even think this isn't slanted?

Odd that you leave out the stories that did not have to do with crime/negative views. Tell me again who is slanted.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

The writer used only negative incidents or examples from the black underclass. "Everyone seems to have a story, often an uncomfortable story, about how white and black people relate."

His examples: white student with lost Blackberry confronted by angry black student; middle-school student steps up bad behaviour after being called "boy" by teacher; white, Russian student says blacks use skin color as excuse; white male gets mugged one night by black assailants..."not that it matters"; cops in squad car blame crime "mostly on black guys from North Philly; young black teen wants to sell Oxy to white architect; 87-year old man finds stranger in house: “It was a nigger boy, a big tall kid. He wanted money.”; man restoring houses lives next to black drug runner; little black kids come to white neighborhood for Halloween trick or treating .

How can you even think this isn't slanted?

here is one of them, almost a page of the four page article...

Jen tells me a lovely story: She discovered a public pool at 26th and Master in Brewerytown two summers ago. A beautiful pool, with cool slides. There were maybe 60 kids there—black kids—on the day Jen took her young daughter; the kids ranged in age from about five to 12, and there was only one other pa-rent around. Jen stood in the pool holding her hands out, teaching her daughter to swim. Eight or 10 girls surrounded Jen—they all wanted to show her how good they were. One said, “I am the luckiest girl in the world.” And why was that? “Because I live across from the pool.” She pointed to her house. It was a beaten-down row.


“These kids were so happy and sweet,” Jen tells me.


She is warning me, with this story. I’d told her about driving up North Broad Street and how miserable I believed living there must be. There’s a certain arrogance in my judgment, Jen is telling me. I might not know what people are truly experiencing.


As she was leaving the pool that summer day, Jen saw three or four older girls modeling her, with their hands out, teaching the younger ones to swim.


Engage, Jen is saying-—engage people, connect with them, without assuming what their lives are like, or judging them. It’s good advice. Because she’s right—the gulf is so wide that there’s much we don’t know about each other.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

Another:

Jen lives on Mount Vernon with her husband, an architect, and two children, eight and six; she’s been in Philly since she came to Drexel from Egg Harbor Township on a basketball scholarship two decades ago. Four years ago, Jen began looking into where Sebastian, now in third grade, would start school.


There’s a very good elementary school in Rittenhouse: Greenfield. And that’s the school the parents in Fairmount—the white, middle-class parents, which is Fairmount—shoot for if they’re going public.

Jen took a look at Bache-Martin, the public school four blocks from her house and 74 percent black: Teachers engaged. Kids well-behaved. Small classes. Plus a gym and an auditorium and a cafeteria, a garden, a computer lab. She enrolled her kids there.


Jen was not in the majority. Other mothers told her, “There is a lot of Greenfield pressure.” That pressure is from fellow Fairmounters: pressure to send their kids, collectively, to the right school. Greenfield test scores are a bit higher. It’s also not nearly so black.


Another mother told Jen: “I didn’t want to be the first”—in other words, the first to make the leap to Bache-Martin. “It takes a special person to be first.” Another told her: “Not everybody is as confident as you.”

Sipping tea in Mugshots on Fairmount Avenue, Jen rolls her eyes over the nut of the problem: Unfounded fear. Groupthink. A judgment on a school without even setting foot in it. “I wouldn’t like to imply that it’s about anything else,” Jen says, but of course it is: race.

There are ways around it, however. Jen became a kindergarten parent. She’d open the doors and get parents in there. Movie nights. Soccer and dance and art programs. Hip-hop dance instruction. A playgroup two mornings a week for toddlers. Local landscapers giving free mulch and leftover shrubs. She’d sell the school.

Even with all that, though, parents who’d check out Bache-Martin on open-house night still weren’t enrolling their kids. “I’m not sure who else is going there,” one mother told Jen. Same old fear.

Jen’s next step: a mixer at the Urban Saloon on Fairmount. The kindergarten teachers came, and parents brought kids. Jen laughs at herself, given the bald simplicity: Get the parents together having drinks and talking with the teachers and each other, then watch what happens. Get them nodding that if Bache-Martin is good enough for Marc Vetri’s kid—the restaurateur is a Fairmounter—then maybe … And sure enough, something shifted. Some 10 of the 15 families who showed up enrolled their kids. A new groupthink was forming. These home-and-school meetings over Saloon drinks happen two or three times a year now.

It helps that Greenfield is getting crowded and that the city is naturally expanding outward. “People in the neighborhood are now getting nervous whether there’s a spot for them here,” Jen says.

Nobody, through all this, said a word about race. At least not publicly.

Amazing how all of you proclaiming that the article was nothing more than white people talking about crimes against whites by blacks missed both of those...

 

[christiefan915]

Odd that you leave out the stories that did not have to do with crime/negative views. Tell me again who is slanted.

Which one was that, the one where the woman had a hard time getting white people to enroll their kids in a predominantly black school? The dog walker who says she's only afraid of people with weapons but still won't go beyond a particular street? The only part where I had the least bit of sympathy was when "Jen" went to the swimming pool and the young black girls used her as an example on learning to swim.

 

[christiefan915]

Another:

Amazing how all of you proclaiming that the article was nothing more than white people talking about crimes against whites by blacks missed both of those...

I didn't miss them, I acknowledged these two in my last post. But "Jen" is the only one I have any sympathy for, if that's the right word. And she was still working against the racists who didn't want their kids in the black school.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

I didn't miss them, I acknowledged these two in my last post. But "Jen" is the only one I have any sympathy for, if that's the right word. And she was still working against the racists who didn't want their kids in the black school.

The point was the author included a story from a white person about their efforts to change the prevailing attitude towards that school. The second story referenced the authors misconception of what the people in that neighborhood must think. But I know, none of that matters. All you want to see is that some old white guy dropped the N bomb.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

I didn't miss them, I acknowledged these two in my last post. But "Jen" is the only one I have any sympathy for, if that's the right word. And she was still working against the racists who didn't want their kids in the black school.

Also, out of all the quotes of stories you listed out for us... odd that you left out the two that weren't about crime. I wonder why that is.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

Also Christie, the story about the kid who was selling Oxy wasn't that about his being black, but that the person conveying the story understood the kid was just trying to get by. That the kid felt compelled to deal the Oxy due to a lack of other opportunities. But all you and the others see is that the kid was black. Again very telling about you.

 

[Phantasmal]

Also Christie, the story about the kid who was selling Oxy wasn't that about his being black, but that the person conveying the story understood the kid was just trying to get by. That the kid felt compelled to deal the Oxy due to a lack of other opportunities. But all you and the others see is that the kid was black. Again very telling about you.

I bet Christie has a special nail for you, too.

 

[christiefan915]

Also Christie, the story about the kid who was selling Oxy wasn't that about his being black, but that the person conveying the story understood the kid was just trying to get by. That the kid felt compelled to deal the Oxy due to a lack of other opportunities. But all you and the others see is that the kid was black. Again very telling about you.

The guy writes an article titled "Being White in Philly", uses a number of examples of portraying blacks in a negative light, and then has the gall to say "our carefulness is the heart of the problem", that we're too self-consciously polite around black people and this contributes to the problem. Where are the black people in this neighborhood he approves of? Where are the white people he disapproves of?

IMO if you want to talk about race relations then show all sides of the story, not just the part about how white people give their all yet still get victimized. How about black professors at Temple, black students at Temple, black parents who worry about their kids and want them out of poverty, for example.

 

[christiefan915]

I bet Christie has a special nail for you, too.

ROTFL, two in fact. Unfortunately my cheapo phone will only send pictures to another phone.

 

[Cancel 2016.11]

ROTFL, two in fact. Unfortunately my cheapo phone will only send pictures to another phone.

Haha!

About tht mint green, I know it's big but I don't like the way it looks on me either. The color just does nothing for me. I am sticking with coral, another big color this spring.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

The guy writes an article titled "Being White in Philly", uses a number of examples of portraying blacks in a negative light, and then has the gall to say "our carefulness is the heart of the problem", that we're too self-consciously polite around black people and this contributes to the problem. Where are the black people in this neighborhood he approves of? Where are the white people he disapproves of?

IMO if you want to talk about race relations then show all sides of the story, not just the part about how white people give their all yet still get victimized. How about black professors at Temple, black students at Temple, black parents who worry about their kids and want them out of poverty, for example.

ROFLMAO... and back to highlighting just what you perceive as the negatives... ignoring the positive stories... that tells us all we need to know about you Christie. You just jumped on board with the knee jerk reactionaries and could care less what is in the story on the whole.

I wonder do you hold the same standard when black authors/writers discuss race from the perspective of black people? Do they all get the opinions of white people on the topics they wish to discuss? Something tells me you don't hold them to the same standard.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

Non stop from the reactionaries on 'why didn't he interview black people'!!!!!!

BECAUSE IT WAS ABOUT THE PERSPECTIVE OF WHITE PEOPLE ON RACE.

 

[Howey]

The article is written by the author, when you comment on what the AUTHOR's assumption is, it is about the author, not the article. You are the one that made a false statement and are simply spinning your wheels to avoid admitting that you read it wrong.

The writer used only negative incidents or examples from the black underclass. "Everyone seems to have a story, often an uncomfortable story, about how white and black people relate."

His examples: white student with lost Blackberry confronted by angry black student; middle-school student steps up bad behaviour after being called "boy" by teacher; white, Russian student says blacks use skin color as excuse; white male gets mugged one night by black assailants..."not that it matters"; cops in squad car blame crime "mostly on black guys from North Philly; young black teen wants to sell Oxy to white architect; 87-year old man finds stranger in house: “It was a nigger boy, a big tall kid. He wanted money.”; man restoring houses lives next to black drug runner; little black kids come to white neighborhood for Halloween trick or treating .

How can you even think this isn't slanted?

Non stop from the reactionaries on 'why didn't he interview black people'!!!!!!

BECAUSE IT WAS ABOUT THE PERSPECTIVE OF WHITE PEOPLE ON RACE.

SF: Why did you conveniently skip over my post? You know...the post where this guy's actual newspaper says his story's racist?

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

SF: Why did you conveniently skip over my post? You know...the post where this guy's actual newspaper says his story's racist?

Honestly, I did not see that you had quoted me in that. I saw you quote Nova, assumed he had nothing good to say, moved on...

That said, there are numerous people who have had similar knee jerk reactions that many on the left have.

Did you notice the quotes of people who didn't think it was racist? Probably not.

Saying 'his own paper thinks it was racist' is nonsense. Another writer at the paper thought it was.

 

[christiefan915]

ROFLMAO... and back to highlighting just what you perceive as the negatives... ignoring the positive stories... that tells us all we need to know about you Christie. You just jumped on board with the knee jerk reactionaries and could care less what is in the story on the whole.

I wonder do you hold the same standard when black authors/writers discuss race from the perspective of black people? Do they all get the opinions of white people on the topics they wish to discuss? Something tells me you don't hold them to the same standard.

I'm sick of stories about [downtrodden, criminal, poverty-stricken, gangster, etc.] black people and the sainted white people who are there to lift them up. You do realize that's how the white people in the story were portrayed, right?

 

[Howey]

Honestly, I did not see that you had quoted me in that. I saw you quote Nova, assumed he had nothing good to say, moved on...

Oh. Well, that I can understand!

That said, there are numerous people who have had similar knee jerk reactions that many on the left have.

Did you notice the quotes of people who didn't think it was racist? Probably not.

Saying 'his own paper thinks it was racist' is nonsense. Another writer at the paper thought it was.

Were the people who said it was racist white? Yeah...of course they did.

Here's the thing - and I know we've been through it before. You have to stand back and look in situations like this. You are the one with the knee-jerk reaction, you and the other apologists for this guy.

Do you really think he'd be getting all this attention if he'd written about the problems facing poor blacks in Philly and discuss real solutions? Or the real cause of those problems? That's what a discussion about race is, not random racial assumptions made upon stereotypes.

In this case the guy wanted attention and he got it. No solutions, just attention.

And whites across the country, yourself included, got a chance to scream they're always being considered racist. Face it, if the shoe fits, you're wearing it.

 

[Cancel 2016.2]

Oh. Well, that I can understand!

Were the people who said it was racist white? Yeah...of course they did.

Some were, some were black.

Here's the thing - and I know we've been through it before. You have to stand back and look in situations like this. You are the one with the knee-jerk reaction, you and the other apologists for this guy.

LOL... so correcting mistakes made by the liberals on this topic is a knee jerk reaction? The fact that all of them comment on the negative stories in the article and not one mentions the positives, yet I am the one with the knee jerk reaction?

The fact that you now stoop to calling me an apologist for the guy shows that you are running out of ammo.

Do you really think he'd be getting all this attention if he'd written about the problems facing poor blacks in Philly and discuss real solutions? Or the real cause of those problems? That's what a discussion about race is, not random racial assumptions made upon stereotypes.

LOL... wow... clearly you didn't bother reading the article. For one, he does mention the problems facing poor blacks in Philly. For another, race discussions are not just about what is causing problems for poor blacks as you suggest. That is racist in and of itself. Finally, he did not make random racial assumptions based on stereotypes... that is pure nonsense on your part.

In this case the guy wanted attention and he got it. No solutions, just attention.

No, he wanted people to open up about discussing racial issues. He got that.

And whites across the country, yourself included, got a chance to scream they're always being considered racist. Face it, if the shoe fits, you're wearing it.

LMAO... no, but the author stated that is precisely why many white people don't want to discuss racial issues. Because people like you are so very quick to call them racists for doing so or for doing so in a manner that you don't like.