Inner-City Residents Do Not Ruin Cities: Policies and Poor Management Do
I am trying to understand how inner-city residents ruin a city. If they are not making policy, how is the decay of America’s city their fault at all?
It is hot outside, and I have been hibernating. For the past three or four days, the heat index has been in the triple digits. My hibernation is not necessarily a bad thing. It gives me time to catch up with my favorite shows via Netflix, I can clean under my bed and even wipe down door knobs.
Now, I am watching television and I see another city, this time, Newark, New Jersey, is under the siege of leaded water. It sickens me, AGAIN, to know that little children have been drinking poison water that their parents more than likely pay for. It hurts, AGAIN, to know that a city with a large portion of Black and brown residents, is poisoning its citizens.
Any time I think, my brothers say “uh oh!” Now, I live within the Memphis metro area. Every day when we turn on the news, it’s like a roll call of minorities in crime. There are Google searches about how to avoid the “black side of town,” or all of the different ways, “Black people have ruined Memphis.”
Somebody please tell me how Black people specifically and inner-city residents generally ruin cities? I am about to give you a list of how inner-city residents DO NOT ruin cities, because they are generally not in charge of the educational systems, infrastructure, or employment practices. As far as I can see, they are victims of the intersectioning of poorly funded schools with teachers who couldn’t care less, crumbling infrastructure in neighborhoods that have been routinely redlined in the past, lack of access to health care and fresh food, and discriminatory employment practices that seek to maintain a white, middle class hegemony and a teeny-tiny Black upper-middle class.
- ) Inner-city residents ARE NOT in charge of employment practices. Here in Memphis, everything is based on who you know. One could be a rocket scientist, but that rocket scientist does not know anyone at the lab where he/she is applying, that rocket scientist will be handed a broom and mop and told that that is all he/she is qualified for. Meanwhile, Billy Bob or Main-Main, who hasn’t had a lick of college, is given the title and pay of a rocket scientist with full access to a laboratory full of dangerous chemicals and experiments that may change the destination of mankind. Billy Bob or Main-Main only got that job because he knows the hiring manager. Meanwhile, the rocket scientist moves away, because he is tired of the games. This is how cities experience brain drain. When cities experience a brain drain, everything begins to go downhill. How are inner-city residents to blame for that?
- ) Inner-city residents ARE NOT in charge of deciding which infrastructure projects are funded and which are not. I am just shaking my head at this lead poisoning. Seriously. You tell me, reader. How are inner-city residents to blame for this? Inner-city residents are generally not in charge at city hall. They do not make policy and they certainly do not decide which projects are funded and which are tabled. They do not decide who gets poison water and who gets clean water. And that’s just the public side. I just read a story that declared many inner-city residents do not have access to high-speed internet, because private companies who provide those services simply do not want to install the infrastructure there.
3.) Inner-city residents ARE NOT in charge of school hiring and curricula. Many American schools are failing. I watch and listen as the people in my neck of the woods try so very hard to separate themselves from “city” students. In this area, there is a death fight between county schools and city schools. The county schools BELIEVE that they have an advantage, because these families live in suburbs with access to high speed Internet, tutors, and charter schools. I find it hilarious that no one asks general education professors which side has an academic advantage. I’d say neither. Students are being tested out of critical thinking skills, spelling and social studies are almost non-existent, and all students struggle with reading and writing — regardless of their zip codes. I don’t care if their high school can boast that over two dozen students made perfect scores on their ACT examinations. I have been teaching higher education for many years. I have never seen an ACT score nor do I care. All students show up to college with the same deficits.
4.) Inner-city residents DO NOT hire police officers, EMT drivers, and firemen. There is a shortage of policemen. This shortage in the Memphis metro area is not caused by the high crime. Not surprisingly, this shortage is caused by a cut in pay and pension dealt to the police force and the fire departments. Many police caught the blue flu and the firemen caught the red rash and obtained employment in other cities where their expertise is not only respected, but well-compensated.
Yeah, inner-city residents had nothing to do with the budget cuts that caused this subsequent epidemic.
While people may complain about the high crime and the poor schools of the inner-city “dragging down” their cities, absolutely no one is addressing the long-standing practices and policies that continue to fuel the nihilism, hopelessness, and violence that characterize many inner-city neighborhoods. And quite frankly, I am tired of people blaming inner-city residents for the gross mismanagement, poor policies, and soft-spoken racism that come from our city halls. Enacting racist/sexist/elitist policies without exactly calling them that is disingenuous. As a country girl, I notice several things about the city that point out the gross hypocrisy that continues to malign American racial politics: some folk just do not want to live next to, eat with, and attend school with people who do not look like them. Period. Policies are constructed around those attitudes. The absence of the “Whites Only” sign does not necessarily imply that there is an absence of the “Whites Only” attitude. Hate that is hidden behind layers of bureaucracy is just as devastating and deadly as hate manifested by a white hood and burning cross.
And while many people find this hard to believe, there are actual people, and not simply statistics of a social science study, living in the inner-city. It is not called, “the hood” or “the ghetto.” It is simply called, “home.” And once in a while, if you believe this kind of thing reader, people may want to see their politicians improve “home” rather than blame it for an entire city’s woes.
This is not from a class, but from my personal diary.
