I’ve lived in a big city for years now. Never seen anybody get mugged, or shot, or carjacked, despite doing activist work that often has me visiting poor minority neighborhoods.
The only time I ever really felt uneasy was when I had to walk alone at night through a neighborhood where all the businesses had bars on the windows. Worst thing that happened was a couple of people asking me for money, and they didn’t give me any shit when I said I didn’t carry cash.
But any time I visit the small town where I grew up there’s always someone or another acting like I came back from a fucking warzone lmao
a lot of US conservatives experience notions of safety/crime by
, and since huge parts of the US have a rural-white / urban-brown diverse situation going on, it’s the coded way to express racial bias.
i grew up and spend the first half of my life in areas where the rural communities were as racially diverse as the cities, so it was not something i recognized until i moved to the “rural = white” parts. if you get a white conservative cornered on this topic, rub their tummy/make them feel safe and tease it out… it’s always about them being
don’t get me wrong, there are always people in rural areas that have apprehension about the city who are not fucked up about race. the overpolicing, the prices, the unfamiliarity with navigating / complexity with parking (often paid) and traffic patterns. for people without social connections in the city who are having to go there for some administrative/bureaucratic b.s. or a big event, the city quickly becomes a place where there are lots of institutions putting their hands in your pockets. regional urban hospitals can absolutely nail families visiting from the boonies on food and parking. not to mention, there are a number of downtown areas where finding a fucking free/public bathroom is a goddamn nightmare if you’re just arrived and on your own. which is absolute bullshit, imo. a big fancy city with no easily accessible public bathrooms in the central core deserves all the scorn and piss and shit on its sidewalks and streets that humans put there. i personally hate that the most.
but to your point, the conservatives complaining about “crime” and “safety” (and explicitly not “safety from zealous cops”) are talking about their racial hangups.
This isn’t just US conservatives. A Polish upper class lesbian I knew remarked on ethnicity a lot and told me to be wary of my neighbourhood due to “many ethnics” as she put it. Racism seems to be a universal rich people thing as well. :/
I just feel like there has to be some connection to all the dipshit racist Eastern Europeans who love America and Capitalism but hate communism
I don’t recall her ever speaking of US or capitalism. She was possibly the richest person I’ve met in Europe and the cultural gap between rich raised rich and poor raised poor was too great. She had no friends in the country so I felt bad over leaving her be and kinda hoped she’d get better but she didn’t. She was the type not to think she’s racist because she fetishized black women.
Just speaking from personal experience. She sounds awful.
She helped me a couple of times, but I was definitely very uncomfortable around her. :/
Eastern European libs fetishize USA, and it logically leads them into racism, because, of course, the only reason non-white people in the free, equal and rich US are disproportionately poor is because they are lazy and stupid.