posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mouseworks at 08:05am on 22/01/2011
mouseworks at 08:05am on 22/01/2011One of the things I've come away from the recent robbery and various discussions on line about Nicaraguan crime is that any of us is as safe as our neighbors want us to be and as safe as we're able to read the cultures we're in. I knew that I should have gotten the keys back from my friend, that her boy friend had robbed in the past and was under stress now. Didn't, got robbed of what I hadn't thought to move to friends. He robbed me rather selectively: one pair of commodity boots, but not the handmade boots; the flashlights, but not the kitchen pan worth far more than the flashlights; the parka but no other clothes, and the propane tank (for quick money) but none of the other furniture. I could imagine his excuses for what he was doing.
The other thing I realized is that all my life I'd traded time for the usual middle class comforts, and that most people could barely read one culture, much less several. The easy way is to blackbox all other cultures and classes as dangerous, thus the gated communities, the people who make blanket statements about "the element," who think the Sierra Foothills were ruined by the Hispanics, and all that.
Theft cross cultural or class lines isn't as common as stealing within a culture or class, but it's perhaps easier if the person being robbed sees all of "them" as looking alike.
I've lived most of my life in dodgy neighborhoods and that decision has cost me less than the alternative of living in places that cost ten times what my rent here is, or my rent on Mott Street was. And I'm finding that I don't regret that decision.
And I sympathize with the cultures who have no completely evil humans in their myths rather than the ones who demonize other humans. The Stone Man in the Cherokee myth had to be killed, but in his dying, he gave humans corn.
My thief has given me the makings of a character.
The other thing I realized is that all my life I'd traded time for the usual middle class comforts, and that most people could barely read one culture, much less several. The easy way is to blackbox all other cultures and classes as dangerous, thus the gated communities, the people who make blanket statements about "the element," who think the Sierra Foothills were ruined by the Hispanics, and all that.
Theft cross cultural or class lines isn't as common as stealing within a culture or class, but it's perhaps easier if the person being robbed sees all of "them" as looking alike.
I've lived most of my life in dodgy neighborhoods and that decision has cost me less than the alternative of living in places that cost ten times what my rent here is, or my rent on Mott Street was. And I'm finding that I don't regret that decision.
And I sympathize with the cultures who have no completely evil humans in their myths rather than the ones who demonize other humans. The Stone Man in the Cherokee myth had to be killed, but in his dying, he gave humans corn.
My thief has given me the makings of a character.