Patterns of Exclusivity

Early last week my co-worker and I took the light rail to midtown for Thai. He's Bangladeshi, can't handle his wife's cooking anymore and his tastes are limited. Doesn't like or doesn't partake in calamari, Mexican, Chinese, beans, pork, beer, lobster, or avocados. But Thai? Yes! And I freakin' love Chada Thai's pumpkin curry with Thai hot peppers in fish sauce. But alas, Rachel Ray doesn't author the Franklin Monologues and I need to focus. I wanted to point out my pet theory of the week: a person's social contact is inversely proportional to their social paranoia. I live in no fear of anyone on light rail.

I ride my bike daily on Franklin Blvd. alongside G Parkway, through 41st and The Grains, up Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd through Oak Park, and down Broadway past the EDD and the county morgue. These are among the worst neighborhoods in Sacramento, and I have no intention on visiting the latter destination.

The Grains, about 1,500' in diameter, recorded three homicides, twenty two aggravated assaults, one rape, twenty seven drug crimes, twenty six robberies, and five weapons arrests in 2007. This 'neighborhood' begins exactly on the other side of Franklin Blvd. where I shot that photo of neglected ash trees. Perhaps a corollary theory is that the state of a neighborhood is directly proportional to the quality of their trees.

I've got little fear of riding through these areas, even for a white boy on a bicycle. And much of it has to do with the incremental, albeit small, contact I have with the residents. I acknowledge cars who give me space. I wave hello to grandmas, Sikhs, black mothers and Hispanic children. 18-27 year old black men don't usually even acknowledge my presence but on occasion a few have nodded back. And I fully admit, I live in perpetual fear of three shirtless black guys in a Dodge Neon. But I'm not looking for trouble and I am always aware of my surroundings; I'm not about to stop riding because of paranoia.

Social paranoia is a byproduct of our living arrangements. Not only do we exclusively designate a zone by activity (single use zoning), we also segregate zones by economic class. The rich want nothing to do with the middle class who in turn want nothing to do with the lower class. These arrangements, in my humble opinion, is but a catalyst that reinforces growing chasms between people. The intentional segregation of poor people has only led to catastrophic poverty levels.

I understand that in the past and in a few extraordinary modern cases, people of mixed economic class have and can live side by side. Well-to-do people might understand that the less well-off are actually people too, and that the less well-off have access to a public realm and contacts with wealthier neighbors that might allow for them to remove the shackles of poverty. And to be sure, I see that this cannot possibly exist with our current patterns of exclusivity.