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Chapter 43
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In Philadelphia the
street gangs have been replaced by floor gangs who now struggle with each other
floor against floor, and it can mean death to get off the elevator on the wrong
floor. More than 100 gang members aged 12 to 17 are killed there each year. One
of them was my local street seller - peddling my book, American
Pictures - just as
one of my
street sellers in Baltimore was killed.
I
have several friends who have been held up at gunpoint by 10 or 11 year old
kids shoot wildly around with Israeli Uzi's. By giving them a sentence often
twice as long as their age we try to remove a part of the ghetto
...in the same fashion as when we tear down the houses of the
ghetto - without removing the causes of the ghetto. |
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Though five out of six housing code
violations in slums are proven to be from the clear neglect of landlords and
only one in six can be attributed to despairing tenants, nevertheless the
popular blame-the-poor myth persists that "people cause slums." A couple of
slumlords I lived with in huge mansions outside the cities were certainly
helpful in spreading such ideas. |
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Yet having lived for years in those old dilapidated apartments
handed over to the poor when they are already worn out and used
up, I never witnessed any tenant destruction of the type which
makes a slum: leaking roofs, sagging floors and stairways,
defective plumbing, sewer pipes, and wiring. But never will I
forget the pain and anguish I went through with my best friends in
the Fillmore ghetto, Viliana and Lance, when their
daughter died falling through a rotten window which their slumlord for years
had resisted bringing up to code standards. |
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The underclass is constantly being squeezed and
pushed around. Urban "removal"-supposedly for its benefit - is everywhere being
used to get rid of, concentrate, or hide our undesirables. It often made me cry
to see how old historic European-looking "slum" neighborhoods are being plowed
under. |
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In Baltimore's charming ghetto we try to eradicate
the ghetto by plowing under the old cozy neighborhoods and
standing them on end instead.
Stacked up, you feel even more confined, and
accordingly crime gets worse and worse the higher we build these
slum stories. |
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American ghettos stretch out in thick belts five to ten miles wide around
downtown business districts as seen here in Houston - unlike in the Third World
where the rich live in the inner city (like the new gentry) and the poor in
shantytowns on the outskirts.
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It is a paradox that we always look for the
reasons for the ghetto within the ghetto, although it is implied
in the concept of "ghetto" that the causes are outside. |
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Especially in this ring of affluent white suburbs
encircling every city. |
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We have trees, swimming pools and all the possibilities for expanding
in the world. |
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We always live outside the city limits so our
children will not have to go to school with the undesirables and
to avoid paying taxes to the city although we get our income from
it. In
this way the cities get poorer and poorer. |
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And in this way we make blacks in America and
Muslim immigrants in Europe poorer and poorer. When I first came
to America every white owned 6 times as much as every black. Today
we make 8 times as much!
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