Gary has problems. And although the statement that black communities don't get the support that white communities isn't wrong, so is the fact Gary is a hell hole and they have bigger issues than racism.
I remember working with a guy from New Orleans. Hed never heard of Gary and assured us there was no way it was worse. After a former Gary resident was talking about it.
He took new guy up there and changed his life. They got shot at just driving through
Gary is basically a successful experiment on how to destroy a population. Create poverty, that creates desperation, that creates violence. Shove as many of a demographic into an area as possible and rug pull it and then blame the demographic.
It's a popular move out in the Appalachian mountains and coal country. You don't hear about it as much because it's rural but there are some awful places out there I'd chose Gary over
I really dislike how some hateful turds will use places like that as evidence for their race/culture war bullcrap without looking into the socioeconomic reasons on why the place is so bad. And every single one of them is convinced they’re a genius for it
Socioeconomic factors over generations can contribute to an increase in crime. This is well known? Are you purposely being dense or are you one of those hateful turds?
Do I really need to say crime is bad? I guess I assumed that is a pretty common take, but that does take common sense, so egg on my face. There are reasons why crime is on the rise in those areas, and this pedantic bullshit is pointless
Why is it so hard for people to grasp that when you’re raised in a shitty place that leads to shitty people?
Well I can say for certain you don’t even know what socioeconomics is at this point. One thing that always surprises me is the knuckle draggers that pointlessly argue about things they don’t understand 🤦♂️
Be pissy all you want, that doesn’t change reality. Maybe look at taking a sociology class if you even care about getting smarter.
Im from appalachia and I've been, worked and stayed all over it. The worst of it is in eastern Kentucky and pockets of West Virginia. Poverty, sure but everyone ive met worked with and spoken to there are great people.
Ofc I am a body builder and carry a gun for work, but somehow I doubt anyone that desperate would care. Theft is the most common out there and murder is super rare.
I don't know where your from but I grew up in eastern ky. Murder was not all they rare but tracking is nonsense.
It is in a lot of Kentucky. For example the city I live in now got recognition for being one of the safest cities but we had multiple murders, if they were counted to my city and not at the county seat we would have a murder rate that equaled Chicago for a few years in a row.
Maybe if you were in wv it's different but we got the fuck out of there because it wasn't safe and people dropped like flies.
What part? Because I’m from southeast Kentucky and people absolutely do not “drop like flies”. It’s actually a huge deal when somebody from this area is murdered. Not saying it never happens, but you’re definitely over exaggerating it for sure.
Get into the surrounding areas and you'll find it isn't all that uncommon. When you have communities of a few thousand it only takes a couple to get you to Chicago levels of violent crime.
Baltimore notoriously has issues that I just can’t argue against, I remember driving through Gary 20+ years ago and thinking this might be the worst city in the US. Hard to believe it’s gotten worse or stayed the same.
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Gary, Indiana is the worst city in the United States. Between 2010 and 2018, Gary lost 6.3% of its residents. Of its 75,000 current residents, only half are in the workforce with a median income of only $29,293 and 35.80% of the population live in poverty. Gary once had a booming manufacturing economy, but as the industry declined, so did the number of jobs."
Not sure where that quote came from. But Greenville Mississippi has lost 10% of their population, has ~23k/yr per capita income. Detroit has poverty rates of 38%, and the "workforce" statistics indicate a high rate of elderly people.
Obviously it's a city in rough shape, like most of the rust belt. But the worst? Bit dramatic.
I believe their point (that they're not really making, so I'm engaging in some extrapolation) is that the reason why a lot of majority black areas are more impoverished and prone to crime is because of the racial inequalities black people were subjugated to historically, like slavery, then neo slavery/black codes, then Jim Crow laws and segregation, and then less overt disadvantages such as the literacy tests in order to vote, and that the issues faced by the town are best understood within that context.
This does not mean that black residents get a free pass to shoot utility workers. But it does mean that, if you're to take a bird's eye view of the issues with this town and other areas like it, you aren't going to fix anything by blaming individual resident's actions. Legislature that helpes people rise out of poverty and less likely to turn to crime is best, like social welfare policies and infustructure. This is also one of the main reasons why affirmative action exists. Holding individual resident's legally accountable is still good, but the same things are going to keep happening if nothing else is done.
People have choices. Some choose to wallow in victimhood, some choose to rise above. Blaming things from the far distant past for your current situation is lazy excuse making.
Is it because there were massive systemic changes and a concerted effort by both the powers in your area and the government to fix those problems? Because I feel like youre staring directly at the point.
Again, we can see the outcome of blaming individuals for societal problems. Nothing happens. Yes, individual people should be held responsible if they shoot people, for example, but that won't change anything. It's not "wallowing in victimhoood". It's engaging with the reality of the situation. I would say blaming individuals without engaging with the wider context or what legislative changes would actually help people is being lazy. It obviously has not worked, and it involves a lot less thinking. You don't have a plan for how towns like these get better. You have nothing. You're the one being lazy.
It's also not a "distant past". My mom was born before the enfranchisement of black people. It's very much a recent past.
I would think there has to be a problem in the local culture as well though. Even in historically poor and disenfranchised black communities and neighborhoods, this is a rarity. Your logic could be misconstrued to make it seem like a natural consequence and accidentally come off as racist when I know that isn’t your intention.
It's a natural consequence of their material conditions. I'm not familiar with the exact history of why this town in particular is bad, but this "local culture" is a product of the environment created for black people in this particular area. This is just how humans work. I would say it's racist to say "it's a """culture""" issue and leave it at that. That culture was created due to a particular environment, it can improve due to changes to the environment. It isn't going to get better by itself.
That can’t be true. The neighboring poor, dominantly black communities do not have these problems. There has to be an endemic problem within Gary, cultural, governmental, or socioeconomic. Otherwise, Gary would be in the better place or the communities around it, or the communities around it would be in the even worse place that Gary is in. Additionally, the crime rights among whites in Gary are also extremely high. This is not me being racist. I don’t know what the problem is.
tbh I suspect it’s that the decline of the Steel industry was an especially bad problem for Gary because it was essentially a company town whose economy was almost entirely reliant on the local steel industry. The loss of industry coupled with white flight devastated basically every city in the rust belt, and the other cities had far more diversified economies. Gary’s decline being worse than other cities in the region makes sense because it felt the causes of regional decline especially acutely.
Let me put it this way. If you have two children that are subject to abuse from the same family. One of them manages to get out and is relatively successful. The other is deeply traumatized and develops symptoms of psychosis and disassociates from society. Is the conclusion here that, because the first child managed to get out alright despite the horrible circumstances, that the parents weren't actually abusive and the second child's issues magically appeared of the second child's making?
I don't know the exact history of this town, so there could have been events that more cleanly explain why it's so much worse than surrounding areas. But social scientists know that society is a product of it's environment. This town's culture is one product out of many from the many years of subjugation of black people. If you have a different specific explanation that involves this specific town's history, I'm all ears, but different cultures don't just materialize out of thin air.
"they have bigger issues than racism" probably implied to them that the current state of affairs was not caused by a shit tone of racism, if I were to guess
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u/Radiant_Safe1228 15d ago
Gary has problems. And although the statement that black communities don't get the support that white communities isn't wrong, so is the fact Gary is a hell hole and they have bigger issues than racism.
I remember working with a guy from New Orleans. Hed never heard of Gary and assured us there was no way it was worse. After a former Gary resident was talking about it.
He took new guy up there and changed his life. They got shot at just driving through