<p>Isn’t Harlem pretty gentrified?
When my daughter was in 8th grade her class took a trip in June to NYC/DC & stayed in a hostel in Harlem ( in DC they stayed at George Wa Univ)
And when D1 was working with youth & staying in UChicago dorms another June, with CityYear the youth were terrified because they were AA & the street they were working on was Hispanic.</p>
<p>I went to SF a couple years ago- we used public transportation & apart from the obnoxious vagrants around the wharf, I felt very safe.</p>
<p>Use two different kinds of locks, as described [url=<a href=“http://sheldonbrown.com/lock-strategy.html]here[/url”>Lock Strategy]here[/url</a>]. Two different kinds of locks which each require a different heavy tool to break reduce the chance that a thief will have all of the tools needed to steal your bicycle.</p>
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<p>San Francisco has higher crime and lower crime areas. You probably did not go to the higher crime areas.</p>
<p>Where are the high-crime areas in San Francisco these days? I am there pretty regularly, and all the areas I used to think of as “bad” were more or less gentrified a decade ago or earlier.</p>
<p>I agree with this wholeheartedly. I live in the Chicago area and have come to expect a certain kind of risk from living and working in a major metropolitan area. That’s a choice I make because of the many good things that come with living in a large, colorful, exciting city. It would not be wise to consider attending school in an urban area without thinking about security, but it would be equally unwise to think crime is not a concern at a rural or small-town school. </p>
<p>As for Evanston, in particular: It’s true, Northwestern is in a rather upscale part of the town. But there are some poor areas of Evanston. None of this would keep me from going there as a visitor, student or resident, and I can’t imagine Northwestern students would venture accidentally or on purpose to the “poor side of town,” as there are no particular retail or entertainment attractions in these areas. But people should know that the notion of Evanston being “iffy” in parts is based on reality.</p>
<p>We were there less than a week & the only places we went were Golden Gate Park, around the Presido, the Castro, & North Beach. & Oakland.
I’d really like to go back- we had a great time.</p>
<p>By hitting the tourist spots, you DID hit areas that have a steady incidence of crime. Mugging, purse-snatching, auto theft do happen in those areas. Oakland is also perceived as a high crime area, but that is very much a neighborhood thing. Yu didn’t wander through the Tenderloin, though, which is sketchy by any standard. I am glad you loved it there. Be sure to head to Berkeley and Marin next time. Also great places, and very beautiful.</p>
<p>A lot of white Americans from communities where there are few or zero black people feel nervous and uncomfortable in a neighborhood where there are a lot of black people walking around. That’s what’s behind a lot of the “unsafe” vibes people report in Hyde Park, New Haven, and the neighborhoods around USC and Penn. I don’t hear the “scary” or “dangerous” reaction nearly as much about urban campus locations with a lot of poor white people (Lewiston, Maine for example) or Latino and Asian people (Berkeley) which are more often described as “run down” or “rough” or what have you.</p>
<p>Most people who feel this kind of racism do not realize what’s going on in their minds and would insist that race has nothing to do with their judgments about safety. They are usually nice people who are kind to everyone they interact with, and they would have no problem with a black roommate for their child. They really believe, in good faith, that they are colorblind. They just know that they felt unsafe on Street Y or Campus Z. But that’s my diagnosis of the problem.</p>
<p>We barely even hit many places to eat- so we definitely need to stay longer.
TOuristy places often do have more crime- but I expect some is just being careless.
D2 for example is headed for a very safe country- Costa Rica- but in the touristy areas they may have pretty sophisticated scams/thieves.</p>
<p>She had her wallet & cell phone stolen almost immediately upon arriving in Chennai when she was 19, so that probably has taught her some street skills- i hope anyway.</p>
<p>H is the one I have to look out for- in an effort to be friendly he gets into conversations with scam artists- I’ve learned that you don’t even make eye contact unless you want them to start following you.</p>
<p>To get an idea of crime in various parts of a city, you can put “crime map [city]” into a search engine. For example, for San Francisco, one of the links that comes up is this:</p>
<p>Obviously, there are limitations, such as the web sites only showing crimes reported to the police (and police departments may vary somewhat in how data is made available to the public).</p>
<p>Tourists (anywhere) may be more vulnerable to crime, since they may not be familiar with local criminals’ methods or where the high crime areas are, and local criminals may target them due to being less able to report the crime to police in a timely fashion or be available to identify a suspect or whatever.</p>
<p>Well, people who look like you can be scary, too.</p>
<p>Some young women feel uncomfortable walking on their college campuses late at night because a lot of the other students walking around – who look like them – are drunk and may hassle them. </p>
<p>This can be a lot more frightening than having your bicycle or laptop stolen, which is a frustrating and expensive nuisance but not particularly scary.</p>
<p>Of course it’s more frightening, you’re facing someone and may be in actual danger.
Why is it assumed that you go to college with the same race as you? </p>
<p>I’ve personally never been more uncomfortable than while looking at a school where there was not a single black or hispanic person. But then again I am the type of person who has had this conversation face to face:
Friend: [something to do with black people in a class is mentioned]
Me: but I don’t know anyone in our class who’s black?
Friend:…I’m black
Me: Oh, I forgot.</p>
<p>There was a home invasion two blocks from our kids’ apartment and two were robbed and killed in 2009 or 2010. Would you consider this a safe area?</p>
<p>This past year as I was driving through the area, I saw a very large convoy of police cars and SWAT vehicles leaving our neighborhood. They had apprehended a father and son team that had an arsenal in their home (and some drugs). There had been a lot of muggings of students with some assaults on a bridge between to campuses despite the wide availability of shuttle buses. Since those muggings and assaults were reported (a few years ago), the university has installed cameras, lighting and call boxes on the bridge and I haven’t read about any problems lately. The bridge was owned by the city but I think that the university paid to considerably upgrade the security on the bridge.</p>
<p>As one who was a “college male” just over a year ago, I take umbrage at your nonchalant remarks against “us.” How exactly would you describe these on-campus rapes? Are we talking about “college males” climbing into female students’ rooms via the window at night? “College males” lockpicking doors at night?</p>
<p>Or are you talking about drunken hookups?</p>
<p>Rape is a heinous crime. I do not defend or condone it, and it is never the victim’s fault. But if “college males” were as immoral as you make us out to be, it’s a wonder why single-sex institutions aren’t more common.</p>
<p>Do you often walk alone at night in neighborhoods where “there are a lot of black people walking around”?</p>
<p>I personally don’t think there’s a difference between “scary / dangerous” and “run down / rough.” If you want to allege racism on the part of people who use these phrases to describe areas with “a lot of black[s] walking around,” I think it would apply to people who use “run down / rough” as well.</p>
<p>As for the idea that racism is involved, <em>sigh</em> I’m not going to pretend that “black male” wasn’t the most common vague description of suspects in reported on-campus crimes at Georgia Tech. (In no way am I even hinting that there is a racial predisposition to commit crime.) I’m also not going to pretend that the guy who tried to panhandle me as I walked back from class during lunchtime wasn’t black. Nor am I going to pretend that the guy who tried to swindle me of $20 by concoting a story that he lost his wallet wasn’t black. (A week after, a guy fitting the same description was reported in the campus newspaper as having swindled $80 from a student who was more trusting than I was.)</p>
<p>At the same time, I’m not going to pretend that whites haven’t tried to panhandle me or that whites haven’t tried to con me; no “race” has a monopoly on crime. But I see no contradiction between stating an obvious truth–no “race” is inherently predisposed toward crime–and refusing to ignore that most of the posted crime reports have “black male” as the suspect.</p>
<p>A lot of street crime is committed by the urban poor. A disproportionate share of the urban poor are black. These facts alone are enough to create a perception of “danger” in a poor, black neighborhood. It may be that in some areas of the country you could replace “black” with “Hispanic.” These perceptions can be exacerbated by racist views, of course.</p>
<p>"Rape is a heinous crime. I do not defend or condone it, and it is never the victim’s fault. But if “college males” were as immoral as you make us out to be, it’s a wonder why single-sex institutions aren’t more common. "</p>
<p>Rape is defined in the criminal codes of every state. You don’t need me to define it. </p>
<p>College campuses are the least safe place for college age women in America, and most of the crimes aren’t reported.</p>
<p>But, even taking the reports seriously - if Harvard reported 17 on-campus "forcible sexual assaults on campus (in 2004?) do you really believe there were that many “forcible sexual assaults” committed against students off-campus in Cambridge that year?</p>
<p>My son’s school city is an urban poor area where the black population is small. The large minorities are hispanic and asian. I would say that crime isn’t race-specific judging from my guesses on names in the police log. It’s a poor area, people are in tough times and there’s more crime.</p>
<p>“Do you often walk alone at night in neighborhoods where “there are a lot of black people walking around”?”</p>
<p>Yes. I live in a diverse neighborhood in downtown Chicago, and it’s a nightlife area, so it’s busy 24/7. The building next door to mine is public senior housing. But first, I didn’t exempt myself from the phenomenon in post #47 (we’re all susceptible to subconscious fears), and second, we were talking about perceptions, not behavior. I wouldn’t recommend that any 18-year-old girl walk alone at night anywhere, including Williamstown or Hanover. Yet they don’t get the safety concerns of USC or Penn.</p>
<p>“refusing to ignore that most of the posted crime reports have “black male” as the suspect.”</p>
<p>I never said that you should. I don’t. But I see some people correlating the mere presence of black people in a neighborhood in the daytime with danger. I refuse to ignore that racial fears play a role in many Americans’ perception of danger.</p>
<p>“Some young women feel uncomfortable walking on their college campuses late at night because a lot of the other students walking around – who look like them – are drunk and may hassle them.”</p>
<p>That is absolutely true. Yet parents typically don’t perceive those campuses as dangerous if they are in all-white suburban or rural communities. Our perception of danger often doesn’t match the real risks.</p>