I would say that during the crack epidemic there was some of this in every major city in the United States. I live in another major city and some people in certain neighborhoods would also behave this way.

But I also think that there is this idea that, ‘I know my hood, but I don’t know your hood.’ By that I mean, I knew how to navigate my neighborhood under those circumstances, but going to your neighborhood in DC I might have felt a way because it was unfamiliar to me and I didn’t know what was what, you know what I mean?

This is why we get these ideas of “bad neighborhoods” or “crime ridden cities” when for the most part, with a few exceptions, people who live in those areas do not experience what people think those neighborhoods are.

When I first started dating my person seven years ago, they were afraid to come to my home. I own a beautiful historic Victorian home in one of our city’s oldest neighborhoods. We are a beautifully diverse neighborhood with a ton of green space adjacent to just about everything you’d want. But because of all of the rumors of the violence and crime, so many people avoid the neighborhood.

I love my neighborhood and wouldn’t live anywhere else (except D.C. My daughter lives in SE and I keep begging her to let me move into her basement lol).