Raleigh mall melee: A new lens into the way others see Durham?

This weekend’s melee at Triangle Town Center in north Raleigh – a reportedly gang-related brawl involving as many as 200 youth – left, thankfully, few injuries.

One boy was stabbed in the buttocks by a butterfly knife; a Raleigh law enforcement officer received lacerations and had to be treated at a Raleigh hospital.

To me, though, the last cuts and bruises may well be the dark underbelly of class and race that the fight exposed. They’re cuts and bruises that tell me something about the nature of the perception divide in the Triangle, and about the undercurrent of fear that underlies so many assumptions that neighboring communities make about the Bull City.

Durham has a slightly larger population in poverty, and a larger number of youth at-risk to join gangs or become involved in crime. And all too often, the stories we hear involving crime and, to quote the Herald-Sun, “gangland mayhem” revolve around Durham as a result.

Durhamites have become well-accustomed to the Internet sniping that results, with online message boards lighting up with comments like “Glad I don’t live in Durham!” and calls for National Guard troops to step in to bring peace to the “war-torn” streets of the Bull City. Underlying much of it as been a not-so-subtle insinuation that Durham’s population demographics, which include a healthy representation of white, black and Latino residents, somehow are causal for crime in Durham.

Comments like these have long left folks who love Durham scratching our collective heads. After all, as we’ve talked about the national crime statistics, which demonstrate a community much safer than its regional and national peers. We’ve talked about local crime data, which show the role of poverty over all others in explaining the causal roots of crime.

And through it all, many Durhamites come away feeling that the external visceral dislike we sometimes get as a community has less basis in a reality of social science and government data, and more in the unease that some seem to feel about persons who look, or earn, or dress differently than them.

All of which sets the table for a tet-a-tet, back and forth sniping between the two communities, a rather counter-productive exercise in image-making and image-bashing, it seems.

Yet the Triangle Town Center incident provides, for me at least, a new lens into the dis-ease and dislike that many who aren’t from Durham, and who don’t understand Durham, make about our home city.

Let me state the following up front: the examples below aren’t things that I intend to reflect directly on residents of the communities immediately neighboring the Triangle Town Center. They reflect instead, more importantly to me, the generally pervasive attitude of many who don’t (for instance) understand why living in a diverse community is an important thing, or valuable thing, in the eyes of many.

Naturally, the message boards at WRAL, NBC 17, the N&O, etc., have been filled with angry rhetoric today – some of which crosses blatantly into the territory of racism. I’m far more interested, however, in the kind of comments that comes from seemingly more reasonable people frustrated over having an event like Saturday’s brawl occur in or near their communities.

Their comments strike me as more significant simply because they do lack the vitriol, and because I think in many cases, they’re held by a non-trivial number of individuals who live in suburban and exurban communities. And I think they represent the mentality that has led too many communities to close their door to affordable housing, to offering social services, to creating a balance between the wealthy and the middle-class and the poor –- an imbalance that creates disproportionately challenged communities.

The comments I’ve been interested in come from City-Data, a popular web forum that discusses the pros and cons of states, cities and towns nationwide. The board has been inflamed in debate over the root causes of the mall brawl, with many of the ideas for remedying the situation suggesting concepts that would seem antithetical, I presume, to much of what many Durhamites think:

"Why would anyone be so presumptious to assume the race/ethnicity of those involved?? The article said nothing about this. In this day and age, the father figure is absent from many homes - race not being a factor."

Reply: "I think people are assuming this due to the fact that overwhelming super majority of the people patronizing TTC on the weekends belong to a certain race, so they were just applying logic. I doubt it will be mentioned in the papers or TV - not now or EVER - so the PP was simply making an educated guess."

"I may not be PC in saying this, but I believe one step may be the systematic elimination of affordable housing. Unfortunately, poverty breeds crime and gangs."

Reply: "That's what I'm thinking. Where should I live if affordable housing is eliminated. Not everyone down here is wealthy, or even comfortable enough for one of the shiny new 250K neighborhoods. There are many pleasant families and pretty homes in the 100 to 180K neighborhoods that need some sort of plan to protect them from gang development."

"Am I the only one not too pleased with the new "Wake Forest Loop" bringing bus service to/from WF to TTC....."

Reply: "You're not the only one. I want to live as far as possible from bus service, and I don't care who is offended by it. I don't need a bus, and I don't want anyone to take the bus to my house. And frankly, I would just as soon shop and play at a bus-fee location too."

Reply: "The big wheels in WF toot it like its the best thing to happen to WF in years - I respectfully disagree... Like it or not - the area around TTC has a lot of issues, and we don't need it creeping up Capital Blvd."

"No offense but I don't have time for "utopian ideas". Tomorrow morning I have to wake up, got to work, provide for my family, and insure that they are SAFE. I'd rather focus on absolute truth. If you choose to turn a blind eye to it, thats your right."

"It isn't racism, it's classism but it's also a realistic approach to curbing the problem."

"I assume you mean section 8 housing when you say "affordable housing"? That kind of affordable housing will drive crime rate in Cary up and make parts of town undesirable. Why in the world would the town of Cary want to even consider building a community of section 8/affordable housing? I personally do not feel that a $180,000.00 home is anywhere near category of expensive housing. If someone cannot afford a home of that price, they should simply live elsewhere. Why should residents of a town, that have paid good money for a home have to deal with the trouble that "affordable housing" brings?"

"Stopping bus service won't prevent most customers from getting to the mall. Stopping bus service will prevent many teens from getting to the mall. This isn't hard to understand."

"Just because someone wants things put in place for safety of the public does not mean they are racist. I'm sure that whites, blacks, asians, mexicans, etc. want to feel safe at this mall. You evidently are the racist one for thinking this would be a racist decision to put in age restrictions and stop the bus service to this mall. It is a public safety concern. It has worked in some of the northern cities."

Incidentally, to that last point these comments came largely from transplants to the area: folks from places like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, to name three.

Why go to the trouble to reproduce these comments here? Because I think they're instructive in understanding the lens of so many individuals who hold negative attitudes towards the Bull City.

The language in these comments is filled with assumptions about the poor, and about crime -- but just as importantly, assumptions about what kind of society the middle class deserve.

To the minds of these commenters, there seems to be an unwritten societal right that one should be able to buy their way out of -- or at least away from -- poverty. One ought to be able to move to a certain community, it seems, and rest in comfort knowing that the poor cannot live there.

After all, heck, $180,000 sure is an affordable home! Can't pay that? Have to rent? Too bad, we don't want you. (Though we'd like you to come in to work at our fast-food restaurants. Be sure to have a car, though.)

Similarly, there's a clear theme in these comments that public transportation is somehow bad. It's the theme, I suspect, that kept malls and shopping centers (like Crabtree Valley, or more recently, Brier Creek) from trying to exclude buses. Buses, the theory seems to go, bring in those who might not be able to afford to get there themselves -- those who don't have the means to own a car, in this worldview.

Tying all of these together, though, is this sense that there is a moral desert to being able to separate oneself from the weight of society; that society's problems aren't necessarily something you want to have to deal with.

And there's this sense in the comments of the alien, the others, among those who don't resemble the posters here. They use buses; they live in Section 8 housing; they don't look like we do. There's no acknowledgment that, at the end of the day, these people

These folks seem to have met the enemy in society. But perhaps Pogo was right: We have met the enemy, and he is us.

The reason that so many people with this mindset dislike Durham -- and don't be lulled into thinking this is a small sliver of the population in many areas of this country -- is that Durham defies the worldview of the commenter.

Durham is a city that doesn't exclude the poor, either through economic barriers or through a disdain. Durham is busy building a network of care to ensure access to health care services at a time when communities in eastern Wake are trying to force higher home values as a way of bringing in a higher-income resident. Durham is committing to major investments in its city center when other communities are still stuck in a sprawl-oriented mindset.

Durham is, to me, a city where people still matter -- where so many people are generally committed to a greater good.

I don't think ill of the commenters above. I tend to think instead that they just represent the perpetuation of a long way of thinking in American life, one which dates at least to the civil rights era, and probably much longer. One that reflects deeply ingrained ways of thinking about class and race that represent deep-seated assumptions that are, on the macro rather than individual level, almost as noxious to the social fabric as the overt racism displayed in the South's unfriendly history.

We can't change everything; and, goodness knows, I'll wager this point of view is fairly common (though certainly not universal) among the BCR readership already. So perhaps I should close it on a more personal, less universal note.

I'll just chalk it up to being another reason I'm glad I live in Durham.

 

Comments

[Wes]

You covered a lot of ground in the past, mcdemc. Let's count the incorrect assumptions in the previous post:

1. Children with involved parents will learn regardless of where they attend school. (Really? Even if discipline is a major issue at the school?)
2. I WANT to pay more money for my children's education.
3. Money donated to a public school will be well spent.
4. Private schools are all white.
5. Private schools teach children to abuse prescription and illegal drugs.
6. Friendships made at private schools are superficial.
7. Exposure to diverse populations has intrinsitc value.
8. Children who are not exposed to diverse populations will become bigots.
9. Children who are not exposed to diverse populations cannot think for themselves.

[mcdemc]

Maybe you missed the sensationalism comment, but nonetheless, let's address these...

1. Children with involved parents will learn regardless of where they attend school. (Really? Even if discipline is a major issue at the school?)
Yes, really.
2. I WANT to pay more money for my children's education.
If you don't want to pay, then don't. Your taxes already fund your child's school to an extent, so why pay more?
3. Money donated to a public school will be well spent.
I can't make any guarantees, but how can you determine any money that you donate to anyone will be well-spent? You can't, but you sure are hopeful when you write that check! Conversely, do you think private school tuitions are well-spent?
4. Private schools are all white.
That whole sensationalism thing...I don't really think this.
5. Private schools teach children to abuse prescription and illegal drugs.
I know the teachers don't teach them this, but the environment sure does at times.
6. Friendships made at private schools are superficial.
Well duh! :)
7. Exposure to diverse populations has intrinsitc value.
You're conversing with people who have diverse opinions. You continue to do so. Is there no value in these diverse opinions? If there is not, then why are you wasting your time? (and ours if you really don't care).
8. Children who are not exposed to diverse populations will become bigots.
Just a trend, not an assumption.
9. Children who are not exposed to diverse populations cannot think for themselves.
I didn't say that. I posed some rhetorical questions to help you ponder the rationale in insulating your children from the community they live in.

[Wes]

I realized that most of your post was hyperbole. I just enjoy the back and forth. :) One assumption that I do think you're making is that exposure to diverse populations equates to exposure to a diversity of opinions (#7).

[Crystal Dreisbach]

As a proud North Durham resident, I just want to say how much I love and agree with David Rollins' comment, "I really don't want to live around the kind of person that buys a cheesy house in Hope Valley Farms. I'd rather live around a bunch of nutty, progressive liberal, gay lovin', lacrosse hatin', organic eatin' freaks."

Thanks for the excellent post, Kevin.

[Gman]

I find it ridiculous that some people here actually believe that people don't even have the right to live in a safe neighborhood. I bet even the most far left liberal green tree hugger would not let their kids walk around some of the neighborhoods that they tout. I live in a SAFE neighborhood. Small children can walk around and be perfectly safe. People who can afford it have a right to live in a safe neighborhood.

[Gman]

Well said KeepDurhamDifferent!

I teach school and I see on a daily basis what diversity is. It's supposed to be taken for granted that diversity is a good thing, but where is the data to show that going to a largely white school is going to handicap you? We generally here the typical left wing excuse, "in the 21st century we all need to learn to get along with....blah blah blah..My classes are disrupted by minority students on a daily basis and I'm tired of liberals making excuses and telling me that I need to adjust to them.

There is no real world data to support the idea that your life will be better if you live in the utopia of diversity. There is plenty of real world data to show that you are more likely to be a victim of crime if you live in a diverse neighborhood. Terrorist attacks in Israel have dropped by 90% since they started building the wall. People have a right to protect themselves.

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

Dude, I'm not sure you got the gist of my comment. I was saying that *I* value diversity for its own sake, regardless of whether you or anyone else considers diversity to be a good thing.

I love to bash liberals as much as the next guy, but in this case I think you're barking up the wrong tree. With regards to being a victim of crime, I guess I have a higher threshold than most people. I went to public school and got used to carrying "mug money" in case I needed it. It's sometimes the price you pay for living in an urban walkable environment, especially if not's gentrified and still has some diversity.

[Erik]

Gman, EVERYONE has a right to live in a safe neighborhood, not just people who can afford it.

[WTF Man?]

I didn't know that trolls came out in the winter. I thought they preferred the warm, humid environs of the summertime.