- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
I learned this lesson as a twelve year old back in the early 80s when my parents decided they wanted to go to an "exotic location" for a Summer vacation.
So we ended up in the Dominican Republic.
It was actually quite nice. However, one day dad decided to rent a car and take us out for some sight seeing. Whelp, in Clark W. Griswold fashion, he ended up getting lost and we wandered too close to the Haitian border. I will never forget seeing those 3 Dominican border guards who suddenly appeared and told us to immediately turn around and go back the way we came.
Reason?
"If you go any further, you will be in Haiti. And there you will be raped and murdered."
Needless to say, that made quite an impression on this 12 year old.
I remember thinking: on the map it's just one big fucking island. Same climate, same natural resources...but different people on each half of the island.
So why is one half of the island an absolute hell-hole and probably one of the worst places on the planet, while the other half is a relative paradise by comparison?
Once I saw the demographics in each half...I had my answer.
I had a similar experience in Cleveland of all places. We got lost leaving a football game because the GPS decided to reroute us away from the interstate. We ended up on Imperial fucking Avenue, which is famous for being the home of the Cleveland Strangler, Anthony Sowell. As soon as I saw metal bars and grates on every window, liquor stores, pawn shops and cash advance places on every corner, I knew we'd fucked up. There were some interesting folks walking around, too.
Cleveland cop stopped us once we got out of that neighborhood, older black dude, he took one look in the driver's side window and said. "You guys shouldn't be out here this time of night. I only stopped you because I noticed you were actually obeying stop signs. Don't bother." Then he told us the best way to get back to the on-ramp without encountering dubious locals. You could tell this guy had seen some shit working that area on patrol.
Downtown Cleveland is...better than it was, at least. But there's still a lot of areas you don't go unless you're looking to score drugs or get robbed, maybe killed or worse if you're a woman. I've been to a lot of the most impoverished rural white trash areas in the Rust Belt, and in the South. Sure, they have their problems. Meth, opioid epidemic, burglaries and robberies, shit like that. But even in the shittiest of white neighborhoods, you don't see violent crime often. If somebody turns over a gas station out there, they get the money and fucking leave, they don't beat the cashier over the head. That tells me there are certain differences even between white criminals and black criminals. Even the most degenerate tweaker trying to support his habit doesn't do the same shit that crackheads do, he might be a bad guy, but he's got SOME degree of principles.