Why I go on about white fright in the Oakland Hills. I live in the Dimond district, in Oakland California, which was recently upgraded to “hills-like” status by realtors and San Francisco transplants.
My husband and I are raising two children. My son is black, my daughter is mixed, my husband is black, I’m white and the dog’s a Schnoodle. In my children’s lives we’ve had about 4 -6 episodes of high crime followed by high hate on the neighborhood emails lists.
Neighbors have suggested that my husband and son should be stopped and frisked because “black people commit more crime,” another neighborhood kid was described as a prostitute for wearing short pants in front of her own home. I could go on but you get my point.
Most recently there was a sad and tragic assault on a young mother on my block. A gripping description of assault was posted to multiple neighborhood email lists. The assailants were described as two black teenagers, a male about 16 years old and a girl about 14 years old. So now my kids can’t walk safely around the block, because the description is so vague as to be next to useless but specific enough to get my kids arrested.
The Oakmore, Monclair and Dimond neighborhoods are highly surveilled, privately patrolled and they have the ear and the personal attention of the Oakland Police and politicians, and yet they remain righteously uninhibited when publicly expressing their theories about crime and race.
They are confident that they stand with Mayor Schaaf and OPD and that only political outsiders and the unimportant care about profiling and sensitivity to children and families of color.
Crime reports and emails about crime in the Dimond and Oakmore neighborhoods have historically emboldened some community members to make generalizations about race and say hurtful and bias things. For example, a description of young African American men as “monkeys” or Oscar Grant (unarmed man shot by police) as a “thug”.
A recent email from a Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council Steering Committee member was very upsetting he said, “Not to start a race war, but what skin color was he? “ This remark was both hurtful and unnecessary. Weaved in many personal accounts of crimes are people’s personal feelings and bias about the criminals, this can escalate to very mean and bias statements.
The race war email came at a time of increased and escalating permissiveness about expressing bias and saying dehumanizing things about people neighbors believed to be criminals. The neighborhood email list had a photo of an African American teenager with a UPS package, who, as the author said, “appeared” to be stealing the package. I saw a discussion of creating wanted signs, and a post that boldly proclaimed “do not feel intimidated, and keep posting” in response to articulated concerns about profiling.
Many neighbors cheered and applauded several statements made by other neighbors about anyone they perceived to be a criminal or a threat. Neighbors posting to the email list righteously demanded that race be included in all and any descriptions of suspicious persons, while deleting emails which criticized bias and profiling.
It is not in the best interest of our children or Oakland at large to have neighbors editorializing their personal feelings or bias about race when discussing neighborhood crime and safety. Crime creates daily tragedy and suffering in Oakland, our discussion of such painful experiences should not blame whole communities, “start race wars” or result in the profiling of minority youth who live in our neighborhoods.
Also, let’s not be misdirected or delayed by those who can’t see this problem and insist that it does not exist. Because, as we all know, just because some people can’t see something, does not mean it doesn’t exist.
Oakland clearly needs some basic guidelines about courtesy, decency and respecting the rights and privacy of children and youth when we discuss crime.