The last several days on the road have been
interesting. This country is amazingly
beautiful. We drove through the Rockies,
stopping in Denver to see my grandma and meet my cousin’s new baby. The older I get, the more I appreciate
spending time with family—I don’t get nearly enough of it. As we headed east, we drove through farm country
in Kansas, where the golden wheat fields were set against the background of a
purplish gray sky. Ominous looking, but
beautiful.
The rolling green hills of Missouri
were dotted with lovely lakes and ponds all along the way. I always have associate Missouri with racial
strife, prejudice, and white supremacist movements, but apparently there is
also beautiful farm land there too. Who
knew?
I am obsessed with East St. Louis
This was my first time in St.
Louis and I have to say, this city is unforgettable. Yeah, the St. Louis arch is an impressive and
imposing figure on the city’s skyline and the architecture of the buildings and
bridges is noteworthy, the most striking feature about St. Louis is her lesser
sister across the river—East St. Louis. East
St. Louis is one of the most fascinating cities in America. It is also one of the poorest, most violent, most
abandoned and most racially segregated cities in America. Sure, I have seen St. Louis appear many times
at the top of the list for most violent cities in the U.S., but I didn’t
exactly know what that looked like until I went there myself. My mother, the goodtime gambler (I’ve never
called her that until right now), wanted to visit a St. Louis casino and the
Casino Queen happens to be just across the river in East St. Louis. I’m not much of a gambler, but I did want to
see what East St. Louis was all about, so I figured I would drop off moms at
the casino and then drive around East St. Louis
a bit (two birds, ya know?). Well first of all, I was struck by how
abandoned it was. I was driving for
blocks and blocks and never saw a single soul.
There were no businesses or services for blocks. Nothing.
Not a corner store. Not a
mechanic. Not a restaurant. Not a school.
Absolutely nothing except for abandoned buildings and houses, which
served as evidence that life did exist there once upon a time.
Eventually we saw some homes that were
occupied by tenants, a few women and their children walking down the sidewalk,
and some men hanging out on the corner while others worked on a nearby car. How could THIS abandoned city be one of the
most violent spaces in America? Well let
me tell you, I have spent time in South Atlanta, the Anacostia neighborhood in
Washington D.C., Harlem, the south side
of Chicago, West Baltimore, South Central Los Angeles (in the ‘90s), and the
Ninth Ward in New Orleans, and East St. Louis is in a class of its own. Like most violent cities, East St. Louis has
a broken public school system, high unemployment, and insufficient
housing. But with large swaths of the
city abandoned, crime is rampant and goes largely unchecked. While driving through, I couldn’t help but
think about how vulnerable I was. If
someone committed a violent crime against me, who would be around to see it and
report it? I saw little to no police presence in the city (not that I’m
suggesting police are the answer) except near the casino. The city goes out of its way to protect
visitors but seems to do very little to protect the city’s residents. Later that night at the hotel, I read more
about St. Louis and its problems with political corruption, police misconduct,
and urban slumlords that make the city’s future precarious at best. Oh, and did I mention that East St. Louis is
overwhelmingly black? Racial segregation
undoubtedly plays an important role in the continued violence and poverty of
the city. I can’t help but wonder about
how these same issues will be at work in Dayton....
************************POSTSCRIPT*****************************
August 9, 2014, just six days after I posted this blog, Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager was gunned down by a white police officer in Ferguson, MO- a suburb of St. Louis. The struggle continues....
No comments:
Post a Comment