Midway travel question

marlowe1
Tue, 06 Sep 2016 15:26:35 +0000

I have no information on the current situation. However, in the sixties, before the advent of significant U. of C. policing, and at a time when Woodlawn began in earnest south of B-J and the other university buildings on 60th, I experienced several incidents which I would not have experienced in a safe neighborhood. I was living in an apartment on Dorchester nearly a full block south of 60th. In a previous post I have described those incidents. Several of them had as their common denominator that I was perceived by the black kids of my age living around me as a privileged white kid. These incidents were not byproducts of black on black violence.

I expect a similar dynamic would be at work today, whether living in, transitting or visiting neighborhoods where white kids or any white people at all do not customarily live or visit. One’s presence will be perceived by some in those neighborhoods as an invasion and will be a source of resentment. I was told once in a kindly way on a Saturday night by an elderly black resident to get off the streets for my own good. A student going into such a neighborhood is to one degree or another an interloper. This normally does not lead to anything unpleasant, but on occasion it does, as it certainly did for me. That seems to me a natural if lamentable consequence of the terrible divide in opportunity and experience that exists between these residents and the students and other people of the University. The consequence of recognizing this resentment and danger, if you believe it exists, need not be that you never leave the University precincts. I did not move out of that apartment on the edge of Woodlawn nor did I cease to walk on occasion through Woodlawn. Indeed, perhaps in part out of bravado, I customarily caught the El on 63rd to go into town in those days, whereas most U. of C. students avoided the El and no one took buses. The Illinois Central commuter train was then the standard of perfection as regards safety.

Some of my uneasiness was no doubt in my own mind. However, that unease, some of which was certainly justified, was also beneficial - it made me want to confront and try to understand, as best I could as a white student, some of what life must be like in a black neighborhood. I don’t regret that experience at all. I would encourage today’s students and their parents not to insulate themselves too thoroughly from whatever version exists around today’s campus.