Rough

About one week ago, while we were walking Alexandra's dog, a red, fairly new Mazda 3 pulled up in a driveway behind us.   We kept walking, figuring it to be the person who lived at that house.  It was but a second though, before the car's driver beckoned us back "Hey, do you live around here?" she said.
"We do, but we're not really from around here" I replied, assuming she was about to ask for directions.
"Well, you should be careful walking around here, if you don't know, it's a pretty rough neighborhood" she replied.
I didn't know what to say at the time, so I just said "it's okay, we walk around all the time, there've never been any issues"
"Okay" she said, as we started walking again.

The driver was probably in her mid-thirties, obviously from somewhere else as she sped down the road and turned right on Madison as we continued our walk.

I still have no real idea what she's talking about, primarily because I have no idea what makes one neighborhood "rougher" than any other short of calling it such.

The truth is, I've never felt in danger walking around our neighborhood, between W. 98th and W. 85th, Madison, and Lorain.  There have been a few loose, biggish dogs that have had me worried from time to time, but more kids wander around than anything else.  It's an inner-city neighborhood, to be certain, but how does that preclude it, by that very fact alone, from being as safe as the corner of Columbia and Wolf in Bay Village?

I'm exaggerating a bit to make a point; there are generally more sirens in our neighborhood than there are in Bay Village.  But even so, it's not so markedly unsafe that a warning to two white people walking a little white dog ought to be issued by concerned, upper-middle class women from Rocky River who got lost trying to get back to 90.  I can't fault people for being concerned, but I can and have to fault them for perpetuating the stereotypes.

What makes an inner-city neighborhood rough is vastly different, as far as I can tell, from what gets it to the place of being considered "rough."  In my mind, rough means dangerous- like, gang activity, drive bys, muggings and drug busts on the daily.

Some of that might or maybe probably does happen in my neighborhood to some extent.  But it's not brazen and it's not to the extent that groups of fairly well-behaved and joyful children don't run about playing any number of games everyday after school.  I've never once heard a gunshot and I've only seen cops driving through the neighborhood with lights on twice in ~6 months.

So why did someone stop to warn us?  Because people in our neighborhood make, on average, less money than people in Rocky River.  No one really owns their home in our neighborhood.  People do own some things- pit bulls, mostly.  I imagine it is a more dangerous neighborhood than others, but the roughness is primarily a matter of perception.

Until we stop thinking of neighborhoods as rough in and of themselves as a result of perception, they won't ever improve.  Not because they're not improving, but because we're basing it on a felt (though imaginary) need to be better than someone else to be well off.  Why live in the suburbs when you work downtown?  Because it's safer.  If it's not safer than somewhere else, then why live so far away?  Sure, the houses are nicer, but the innercity houses can be improved too.  But they won't be; as long as people believe the people who live in those houses are likely drug addicts, greedy, lazy welfare recipients without education, then they don't have to think those people deserve nicer places to live.

It's not that my neighborhood is actually all that rough or dangerous.  But it has to be thought of as such, or else a lot of work, a lot of staring yourself in the mirror and admitting issues and prejudices would have to take place.  It's so much easier just to call it "rough."

Maybe I'm naive and hopeful.  I don't care.  I just know that until we start believing that others are worth our time and investment, we, as a society, will continue to fall apart.  A lot of people love Cleveland and want to see it renewed.  I like to think I'm near the front of that line of well-wishers.  But we'll never see it happen, Cleveland, if we keep believing that the majority of our city is "rough" and doesn't deserve our time.  This city isn't just sports teams and restaurants.  It's people.  Believing in Cleveland isn't believing in some ethereal sense of civic pride from Strongsville.  It's believing that everyone in Cuyahoga county has inherent value- from the poorest person at the corner of Carnegie and east 45th to the richest person on Lake Road in Bay Village- and living, breathing, acting, as if that is true.

-Zack

"In our weakness help us see
That alone we'll never be
Lifting any burdens off our shoulders"

-Jars of Clay