Why We Stay
“Our neighborhood is a quiet act of resistance to the way society divides people.”
As white middle class people in a country where society is increasingly stratified and segregated, living in a low income, diverse neighborhood has allowed us to connect with people we wouldn’t otherwise cross paths with—people we care about and want to support. This has been an intentional countercultural choice. And it’s one that continues to shape us.
Living in our neighborhood also helps us to be a small part of changing an unjust system. Instead of investing in a neighborhood that has been designed for maximum safety and escape from people of color, we live in and love a neighborhood that most white people left behind during the “white flight” of the seventies and eighties.
We know some of these people, the “white flight-ers.” We have had conversations about our city and our neighborhood with them. I lived there, and my parents lived there (in our neighborhood), when we were growing up. Now they live in the suburbs or outlying communities. The population of our small city is comprised of 85% people of color and only 15% white people who are not Hispanic.
When we tell some people, other white people who are educated, and may even espouse the same values of racial and social justice, they are surprised that we would make this choice. Conversations with these friends
We have learned by experience that black folks, Hispanic folks, Muslims, immigrants, and poor folks are good neighbors, hard workers, scholars, poets, artists, and professionals. Our personal experience has been intentionally expanded beyond what we could have known without making a similar investment.
True wealth is found in these experiences and relationships—leaving cans in the recycling for the man who comes with the cart to collect the cans and return them for cash; calling to our neighbor as we shovel snow together in the winter; going to the neighborhood block party and learning about community resources and local artisans; and listening to Spanish radio playing merengue on a hot summer afternoon while someone works on their car on the street behind our house.
Instead of worrying about protecting our own small space, we earnestly hope for better for our neighborhood and all of our neighbors. Our neighbors take the same posture. We invest our money in our home in this neighborhood and into the space where we live with our neighbors.
Instead of guarding our own, we guard each other.
Instead of competing for individual achievements, we rise together.
Instead of celebrating wins over other communities, we cheer each other on to make our community a better home for all of us.
We settle down and in rather than seek the newer and better.
We learn to love and learn instead of leave, to pull in and protect rather than police and push away.
We stay.