A Matter of Perception

So Lavonda and I are trying to get a cab late at night to go back home to Harlem. I try to flag down a cab as empty cabs pass by. Then I remember, I'm a young black male. But good fortune shines and a cab lets out a passenger just a few yards ahead of me. I run up to the cab yelling, "cab please!" Despite the rolled down window, and more importantly, the empty cab, the cab squeals off.

Lavonda then takes over, goes to the corner and tries to flag down a cab. I saunter off as if I am not with her. A cab pulls over and I run back to her and get in the cab. "115th St. Please."
The driver then responds, "Where were you hiding my man? You just jumped in the car from nowhere."

I replied, "Sadly it seems as if I have to catch cabs using the element of surprise. I have to ambush them or they won't stop for a black guy." He laughed and then told me stories of how black people will haggle with him, blame red lights on him, and then run out without paying. I then asked him whether White people did the same thing. He said, "Well most White people won't argue with you. They will tell you before hand that they don't have any money and that they need to go to an ATM machine."
I asked him, "Then they run?"
"Well, sometimes yes." He responded.

I told him that I seriously doubted whether Blacks were more likely to leave without paying than Whites and that I think much of the discrepancy between the behavior of the two is a mere matter of perception. I then relayed to him a story about my law school. My law school is located in the Village. I had recently overheard one student speak of how she lived on 96th St. right below Harlem, and even though her parents had been worried about her safety due to it's proximity to Harlem, it was safe. I asked students whether they thought the Village was a dangerous place. All responded in the negative. Student after student informed me of how safe they thought the Village was. I then asked them if they thought Harlem was dangerous. They unanimously agreed that it was.

I then went to the New York City Police Department website and looked at the crime statistics for Harlem and the Village. The results are as follows. Bolded, italicized numbers indicate a lower crime numbers in Harlem than in the Village.

Stats for 2007

	West Village 6th	East Village 9th	Central Harlem 28th	West Harlem 26th	Lower East Harlem 23rd	Upper East Harlem 25th
Murder	3	0	1	1	6	6
rape	4	8	1	2	14	10
robbery	98	101	127	98	132	128
Fel. assault	72	80	95	46	84	101
Burglary	98	112	46	38	40	48
Gr. Larceny	564	406	155	169	107	115
G.L.A.	34	44	55	25	31	38

Stats for 2006

	West Village 6th	East Village 9th	Central Harlem 28th	West Harlem 26th	Lower East Harlem 23rd	Upper East Harlem 25th
Murder	3	1	12	0	10	9
rape	6	14	21	11	21	24
robbery	213	249	301	247	322	277
Fel. assault	121	165	188	105	329	237
Burglary	275	301	167	102	91	144
Gr. Larceny	1278	776	350	370	274	275
G.L.A.	72	76	55	54	57	82

Stats for 2001

	West Village 6th	East Village 9th	Central Harlem 28th	West Harlem 26th	Lower East Harlem 23rd	Upper East Harlem 25th
Murder	1	2	7	1	9	7
rape	8	12	18	9	31	27
robbery	290	246	244	220	379	275
Fel. assault	140	198	282	132	211	296
Burglary	294	316	141	124	190	172
Gr. Larceny	1222	738	155	326	249	165
G.L.A.	165	151	112	133	134	110

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/pct/cspdf.html

In some parts of Harlem murder, rape, robbery, and felony assault are less than in some parts of the Village. And burglary, grand larceny (theft of more than $1,000), and auto theft is almost always lower in Harlem than in the Village.

Even in the face of these statistics, my white peers were unwilling to admit that their community may be a dangerous one, and Harlem may not be as dangerous as they had assumed. But instead they tried to quell the dissonance in their minds, for Harlem is a Black and Latino place, and Blacks and Latinos must be very dangerous people. Furthermore the Village has a lot of White people in it, and White people can’t be more dangerous, more criminal than Blacks and Latinos, it just doesn’t make sense. So they attempted to explain away these discrepancies. “You know maybe there’re more valuable things to steal in the village. It could be people from other places committing crimes in the Village. There are a lot of college students in the Village, and you know college students get drunk and may become belligerent and do stupid things you know…”

I don’t really know. Is this to say that crime in the Village has a reason, is understandable, is okay, whereas crime in Harlem occurs because… because… you know…. because they’re Black? The more they spoke, the more they revealed to me their racist inclinations.

Malcolm X spoke of how the media and American society through many channels twists the perception of people in Harlem to create an image of savagery and criminality. This, he suggested, created a spirit of urgency and fear in the law enforcement officers so that they heavily and brutally police these neighborhoods, which caused anger in Harlem residents and creates a vicious cycle of fear and hatred. From the 60s, to the year 2007, has it changed? Has society’s perceptions changed?

Roll Out!

I just went to see "Transformers" and "Live Free or Die Hard." Both really high impact, thrilling, action-packed movies. I loved it, especially Transformers. But man, why is our culture so imbued with this shoot em up violence soaked mentality? I concede that I am part of this group of people who love to watch violent heroes saving the day through punches, kicks, assault rifles and explosions...

I've been socialized that way but I think a way out of such a mentality is worth looking into. A culture, epitomized by movies like these, allow a coward like George W. Bush to walk on to a air craft carrier and have Americans applaud. It allows world leaders to forestall social programs, food, and education for weapons. It allows our leaders to bomb other countries, talk about war and payback and revenge and striking back and being strong, and flexing, and proving how powerful we are, and putting on this constant show of force while children in the most powerful country on earth go to sleep hungry. I recently heard that Pakistan is constructing or has already constructed a third plutonium reactor in order to expand its nuclear weapons cache... Pakistan! that has more than a quarter of its people living in abject poverty! Don't think this is a problem islolated to so called "third-world" countries. The US government is currently spending BILLIONS of dollars to fight a losing unjustified war in Iraq while forty million Americans are uninsured, while people die on the streets because they have no home, and while millions receive a poor education with no music, art, or alternative programs!

The point is, the people of the world, the people of the United States, allow this to happen. "We don't want to seem like a bunch of sissies." "We have to show the world what we're made of." We've bought into this machismo, this male stereotyped bullshit that the only way to stand up is with a fist. What about showing the world that we're made of compassion, of reason, of the fabrics that weave the most admirable aspects of humanity? Now I'm not a pacifist, but I'm working on it. People told Mahatma Ghandi during World War II that if Hitler were allowed to continue on his conquest without violent reisistence he would cause the world extreme pain and death. Ghandi's response was rhetorical. He asked whether the current war had caused no pain or loss.

I do not know what a world without war, without armies, and without weapons would look like. But do we not have an imagination? Have we been prohibited to dream by some unstoppable power? We invent machines that can fly, replace vital organs, have cloned animals, have dissected the entire human genome, sent men and women to space, but cannot devise a way to solve conflicts peaceably? Nonsense. There are many who would have us believe that we cannot, that we should not dream such dreams and to do so is idiocy. Those who would have us believe this are many times gun manufacturers, generals, presidents, politicians and others who gain power from that belief.

Let's dare to dream people. Let us dream of heroes and sheroes that don't hold guns, revolutionaries that don't blow shit up, and leaders that don't have to die. Like I said before, I love Transformers, but we don't necessarily need a talking mac truck, with a deep booming voice and all types of missiles and guns attached to his arms to make significant change. Help me out, let's dare to dream.