I was a more ardent racist when I lived in the hood. The good news is that I managed to bounce, and I'm out of the hood. Probably for good. My town is white to an almost comical percentage, and the percentage of black people is less than 2%. I sometimes go weeks without seeing a black person in my town. When I do, I mentally check off a box that I played Where's Leroy (much like Where's Waldo, but lots more fun at museums and craft beer festivals).
Now I've calmed down a lot. I don't carry a gun anymore, I don't need to. There was a nice lady who worked the gun counter where I bought my Mosin who commented on my concealed carry permit. "Oh that's great, do you carry all the time?" Nope. She was so disappointed. I remember when I did though, and I did because the slums of Los Angeles are nothing like this place. This is pretty chill. I haven't physically stepped over somebody passed out on the sidewalk or in the doorway of a business since I got here. I have not lived in, nor have I seen, an apartment building with rolls of razor wire edging the roof and hanging down the corners of the building.
Nobody has bars on their windows here. Fucking NOBODY. Back when, I used to go check out an apartment and count buildings with bars on the ground floor windows and keep a separate count for bars on the 2nd floor windows. Then I'd drive until there were only bars on the first floor, then maybe 50/50 bars on the ground floor. Those neighborhoods were generally too expensive for me. Time to turn around and be realistic.
This fall semester is my last one in grad school for a medical thing. I don't want to be any more specific than that. I'm still curious about race and behavior, so every once in a while I go into research mode and search academic databases for articles that have something to do with race. There is an interesting line of research about biracial people and organ donation/rejection. It turns out it gets harder and harder to find a match for organ recipients the more multiracial they are. The best matches are brothers and sisters, and it gets worse from there out. Maybe you recall a story out of Southern California where a family found out that one of their daughters was going to need an organ replaced later in life. The parents decided to have another kid for spare parts. That stirred up a pot. Black people don't respond to high blood pressure medications the same way anybody else does, so calcium channel blockers are first-line treatment for them and everybody else starts on a diuretic, and then a beta blocker.
Olanzapine is a 2nd generation antipsychotic that has amazingly beneficial effects for people who have a certain genetic profile. This information comes from pgxlab.com, a company that analyzes genetic information for primary care providers. 3% of black people, 24% of white people, and 45% of asian people have the genetics to make the best use of this medication. I asked if they broke out their percentage of Han chinese people vs the general asian profile, and they do not. Their staff were a little uncomfortable that I even brought up the question, but Han chinese are apparently very different from the other chinese.
http://www.pgxlab.com/test-menu/sult4a1/They don't break out the racial profiles on their website, but they do in the clinical literature. Ask for a packet on that test, they'll send one off for you.
White people fall all over themselves trying to "prove" that black people are just like white people, except that they are from certain areas. As though areas had some kind of magnetic properties or vortexes or something that made people act like fuckoffs. I once worked with the grandson of the first black man to buy into Inglewood. It had been (one of the four) Hollywood neighborhoods before there was a Hollywood. He was proud to have been part of dragging that neighborhood to its knees. One time I did the math about what was worse in terms of murder for black people, the KKK or Inglewood, CA. I checked my facts with the NAACP in Baltimore.
According to the home office of the NAACP in Baltimore, the total number of lynchings of black people in the United States counting both North and South, was 2,400. Give or take. Total lynchings by the KKK was about 3,600. One third of the KKK's lynchings were of non-black people. I almost said white, but there could have been a couple of token celestials or wetbacks in there, the NAACP is not interested in that information. So, since 1865, the KKK blatantly murdered 2,400 black people, and those events were nice date night material for white people from time to time. I have seen the photographs of smiling young white couples with strange fruit on the trees behind them. That was real! Let's not cover over the past. That was what happened.
How many black people were killed in Inglewood, CA in the last fifteen years? According to the LA Times, this single neighborhood out of 270 in the LA County area, is responsible for the murder of 250 black people, massively dominated by gunshot, since 2000. Inglewood is not the worst neighborhood in LA county, by the way. It's safer than 24% of neighborhoods. 1865 was 150 years ago when Baby New Year drops out the slot on Jan. 1, 2015. So, there have been ten 15 year periods since 1865. Ten times 250 is 2500, or pretty close to the total number of lynchings of black people in the entire 150 year history of the KKK.
Inglewood, CA is about as dangerous to black people as the KKK is. Was. I don't think there are any date-night KKK lynchings anymore. Been there, done that. It's over.
Holy Ghost, I had no idea there was a place with a murder rate this high. Whitman Park, NJ. What a shithole.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arc ... ey/282286/I remember when I had to do a certain number of community service hours to graduate from high school. After about thirty calls to chairities, I finally found somebody who would take me. It was a black day care in the hood. At the ripe old age of 17 I figured, how bad can it be? It's a DAY CARE for CHILDREN. This can't be that bad. Come on. I told my dad where I was going and his face turned (even) white(r). "No, you're not going there. No way. That's a dangerous part of the city." Yes I am, this is the only place that said yes, so I'm going to go do my hours and graduate. You got anything better lined up?
I went. I had no idea I was going to face a phalanx of non-day-care ghetto black kids waving baseball bats in the face of the kids I was supposed to play baseball with. I can't quote it anymore, it was too long ago and I don't remember. It was still total culture shock. If you ever felt bad about being picked last for a team, then suck it up. These kids were ready to go toe-to-toe over who batted first.
I dunno. Maybe my career driving an ambulance in the hood for years, or living in the barrio for DECADES, doesn't mean anything. Maybe demographics isn't destiny. Maybe the social justice warriors are right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b6eCXjjukwhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqziQX7eEv0