There are neighborhoods in my city that are referred to by mayos as "The Planet of the Apes." Some of my own relatives have used that phrase. But don't you dare call them racist because they'll get offended and go on a spiel about how not-racist they are.

On that note "The Planet of the Apes" comparison doesn't even make sense when you actually think about the movie. You have a society run by a religious patriarchy that doesn't believe in evolution, is okay with animal abuse, covers up scientific discoveries, silences progressive voices and is propped up by an elite police/military caste.

If anything POTA satirizes the far-right. But the right are horribly media illiterate so the messaging just goes over their heads. :wonder-who-thats-for:

If you were to ask my local city subr*ddit about the area I live in, they'd act like I like in an active war zone, Literally all anyone (white people) means when they say an area is "bad" is it just means there's black people.

When yakubians find out where I live, I always get wide-eyed stares and asked shit like "how are you staying safe!?" Like motherfucker, just mind your own fucking business, don't look like a mark, stop being a fucking goofy ass dork and just act like a normal person. This is an impossible task I guess.

Unfortunately, gentrification has made its way to this side of town and rent is increasing. All of a sudden we got shit like a cigar shop and charcuterie board restaurant right across from the title loan place and the liquor store. It sucks because this side of town has such a tight-knit community. I can rely on my neighbors to watch my place when I go out of town or the dude down the street bought some chickens and shares eggs with me and in return I'll throw him some peaches from the tree during the summer. If this was a white neighborhood, white folks would've already called the police for having chickens in the city or lost their mind of "property value" shit.

Yeah I moved to a rural town from a major city and some of the mayos keep trying to engage me on "feeling safer"

Like I'm sorry Carol but look at my butch ass. I do not feel safer being this visibly queer in a town of like 300 old white boomers flying Let's Go Brandon flags

I'll usually talk about the times I almost got hit by cars in the city instead though, that shit isn't happening when rush hour traffic is four cars on main street

I'm from south Chicago and people here talk like Englewood is some PVE area when my whole life here the only time someone tried to actually mug was literally in the loop when I was smoking in an alley on break. It's so god damn dumb and I'm getting madder the more I type. I HATE THE TERM CHIRAQ. THATS MY HOME YOU FUCKS

Edit: ALSO IT WASNT EVEN A POC WHO TRIED TO MUG ME BUT SOME TRAIN KID WITH A KITCHEN KNIFE. But laughs in CC

Gary, Indiana is a physical monument to the ramifications of surplus labor exploitation. It's a hallowed out husk of industrial decay caused by neoliberalism's outsourcing. Material conditions declined and exploitation increased as the power of labor collapsed. As material conditions decrease and central planning gives way, crime increases.

The capitalists have zero incentive to rehabilitate Gary, so they won't. And the ramification to this, is that no resources are expended to improve Gary, Indiana because nobody there has any value to capital.

Thus, Gary, Indiana is a "bad area".

ive been thinking abt moving to Chicago and so many mayos have pulled the “but its so dangerous” shit. if i bring up actual crime stats that show crime has been decreasing in these areas for the past 20 years they always have some half assed justification for why “its still bad there”. some fucks even bring up the 2020 protests and ill just be like “yeah i was in those and the only violence i saw was from police”

I lived in a "bad neighborhood" in my old city and when people asked me what it was like I'd tell them I heard gunshots outside the high school . . . whenever they hosted track meets.

Of course it's a racist dogwhistle. And of course calling out white folks on it makes them extremely indignant at you saying it's racist. It's one of those things about white society that makes me feel insane. You have to pretend it's totally not racist to say things like this and if you imply otherwise people lose it on you.

White people have spent decades carefully crafting these social norms that allow them to be racist while still having sort of plausible deniability that anything they say or do actually has racist motivations.

Edit: it's obvious but of course only predominantly black areas get hit with that label. Small all-white rural towns get that "totally safe" label, ignoring how dangerous those towns can be for black or visibly queer people. Usually right off the interstate is OK but venture off much further than that in some places...

My career has me in these types of neighborhoods all the time in the Acela corridor and it breaks me up.

All the people leaving for work in the morning are in uniforms: sanitation, UPS, USPS, Home Depot, Starbucks, you name it.

When I’m there during the day I have never ever been bothered, homeless people don’t really stay in these neighborhoods, and even at night if I have been bothered it’s because I walk into or around a busier nightlife street.

I am white and look very out of place. I am carrying extremely expensive photo equipment and almost always alone. I knock on random doors and canvas often.

Consistently, the most threatened I’ve been is in really nice neighborhoods with village police, (threatened with arrest) or outerborough townhomes/ close corridor suburban homes owned by old white guys with Ring cameras. (Threatened with being shot.)

:us-foreign-policy:

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If you dig into what they count as a "bad area" it basically always just boils down to :us-foreign-policy: anyway

I remember hearing about how bad Oakland was thought my childhood. When I was 18, I saw the population of Oakland is 400,000+ people and I realized a city can't function with 400k people constantly robbing each other, and it's probably just a place people live and try to get by, like anywhere else. Living there for 7 years confirmed as much

Back when all the "no go zone" hysteria was in full swing and the Daily Mail had produced a list of places in the UK where it's unsafe to be white and Fox News had a guy who couldn't pronounce Birmingham call it a virtual sharia state. I had an argument with an American redditor who was convinced [city I was working in at the time] was comprised almost entirely of Muslims and if you were white and in the wrong street you'd be straight up murdered.

No matter what I told him, he was still convinced he knew more about what it was like in [city I was working in at the time] than I did because he was told the real truth™ (by /pol/ users presumably).

According to reddit and even some people who live in Stockholm, if you stray far from gentrified shitholes like Södermalm you'll be attacked by waves of marauding immigrants who will throw grenades and flaming police cars at you. Which is ironic given that Södermalm used to be regarded as the premium 'bad area' with the nickname 'Kniv-(knife)-söder'. The same types of people who think that going on the blue line is like parachuting into Iraq.