When I was young, I could walk or bike up to five or six miles away from home. I sometimes told my parents where I was going, but often did not. I didn’t call them when I made it to the spot. I didn’t call them when I was on my way back.A couple of times I remember getting into scrapes. Probably took a loss or two. But it enhanced my appreciation for the world around me.Fast forward some 26 years.My kids barely play outside without supervision. My oldest daughter is 12. By her age I think i’d done most of the travelling I talk about above.(“But it’s dangerous!”)I’m not so sure. I don’t have the time to pull the stats out, but I’m thinking the odds of being a victim of random crime hasn’t increased as much as we THINK it has.What do we lose?
How far could YOU travel when you were a kid?
by admin | Jun 15, 2007 | Black Family, Urban Politics | 21 comments
21 Comments
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- Creating safe spaces in urban communities : Dr. Lester K. Spence - [...] A number of people have answered my simple question. How far could you travel when you were a kid?…
- Crime crisis in Detroit; myth or mayhem? « The “D” Spot - [...] The following transcript originated with an extremely interesting piece posted by my good friend Dr. Lester Spence on his blog site…
interesting Doc when the grandkids visit recently I was more protective than I was with my own,possibly old age .Is there increase danger?Is the quest for knowledge enhance by exploration;as a youngster I traveled miles away from home,once riding my bike to Bell Isle 8 or 10 miles away.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it’s more likely that your child will be assaulted, abducted or molested by an adult these days. But ultimately it all depends on the neighborhood you live in. When I was a kid growing up in East B’more, I generally couldn’t go more than a couple of blocks in any direction, and I had to stay off of a street that was right around the corner, because it was pretty rough. By contrast, when I moved to South Carolina, I could go anywhere my feet would take me, as long as I was back when I was expected. I’m the same way with my kids. If I trust the neighborhood, they can go anywhere they please. My only rule is that they are never to go in anyone’s house or car under any circumstances without permission.
P.S. Happy Father’s Day.
at my daughter’s age, my mother would often press a couple of dollars in my palm and send me several blocks to the store to purchase a gallon of milk or a 5 lb. bag of Aunt Jemima’s Self-Rising Flour! my 5-year-old daughter never sets foot outside the house without either my wife or i on constant watch (she’s not allowed to be out of our sight)! we’ve definitely lost a lot (i hate being so damn paranoid… i feel like a prisoner to society).
oh yeah… happy father’s day!
Yeah, as a 10 year old kid, I used to go off alone or with a friend and play outside for hours, in our neighborhood or wandering down an old dirt road from our house or around the nearby woods. If my parents worried about it, I don’t remember hearing so. My sister did much the same as a kid. Now we were in a small town in the midwest–maybe people still do that there. Where we are now, I’m pretty worried about letting my kids play unattended (but they’re younger–2 and 6). Some of this is fear of bad people, but a lot is traffic–around here, people drive like they’ll get points for each kill or something, and we’re pretty close to a couple of busy roads. (I live in Montgomery County, MD.)
Hey Lester.
Nope, it’s not an illusion. It’s much worse out here now than when we were kids. I agree that screaming headlines can make the problem loom even larger, but that doesn’t mean the headlines are completely off-base. Why is it worse? I’m not sure, and I might as well admit that. But there’s no questioning how mucb worse it has become.
Prove it.
Know what I’m saying? I’m not disagreeing with you necessarily…but if you aren’t sure why it’s different. If you can’t put your finger on it…then how do you know you haven’t just taken the wrong pill?
My mom did not care where I was back in the day as long as I was home before the street lights come on.
Like you I have all of these safety concerns etc. My wife & I have loosened up a bit & let them travel up 2 blocks to the local park in our sub.
I wonder what it will be like for their kids.
Bygbaby
i think you’re on to something. as a parallel, think of how much we make kids dress up to ride their bikes or go skateboarding. do kids get hurt? absolutely. significantly more than they did before? probably not so much. sometimes i think we think we can insulate our kids (and ourselves) into the good life; meanwhile, we’re so busy insulating that we don’t actualy take the opportunity to live.
Hey Lester.
If you mean prove ‘why’ it’s worse, I’m not sure how to go about that. But if you want me to prove it’s worse all you need to do is look at the statistics in Detroit. The murders, the robberies, the assaults. All those numbers are way out of control. It’s always been rough here, but even when you talk to the folks who were here when it was the “Murder Capital of the World” will tell you that the more random natuire of the violence in this city is worse now than it was then. Undoubtedly the economic crisis feeds into the rage and desperation which, in turn, fuels some of the criminal activity. Fuels a lot of it probably. Folks are just mad because of the way life is around here for now. Plus the cops are demoralized as hell. And on and on.
But if you need proof that it’s worse than years ago, it’s all in the numbers.
When you say “way out of control” what do you mean? When I lived there Detroit was the murder capital of the US. And looking over the last thirty years Detroit has arguably always been in the top five.
So are the numbers five times worse? Ten times worse?
Better question. Of those crimes, how often have they involved random strangers?
If it’s in the numbers…it should be in the numbers. But I don’t think they are. There is a sense that crime is ‘random’ but I don’t think that sense is born out by the numbers. It may well be random, but not more random that it was before.
Cool post.
As a young fella of about 12 or so, I was able to travel, by subway from Harlem to Brownsville or to the South Bronx or Queens to visit relatives all over the city. My father told me to ride in the conductor’s car and to take a book to read…
The conductor’s car was no place for knife wielders or “stick up kids.” They rode in the back and in the front of the train where it was easier to snatch and grab at certain stations. New York, if you don’t know, has certain stations where the exits are at the ends of the platform, instead of the middle – so, back in the day, it was the little things that made a difference.
As far as walking goes, I could go just about anywhere as long as my peeps knew my DESTINATION and I returned home when expected. My juvenile excursion to Coney Island (the other end of the planet for a kid from Harlem) didn’t meet either of these criteria and was met with a hearty boom bash! Ouch.
With my children, I can’t see allowing them to go beyond a radius to which they can protect themselves (within reason). And I fully intend to provide them with the skills and resources to protect themselves. None of us are promised tomorrow, so it’s good to enjoy today – even as we surely must prepare for that which is not promised.
I hopped on the MTA 19 bus and went all over town.
The 19 into downtown, further west, north west. Hopped off, walked around, maybe transfered to get elsewhere.
Hopped the 15, 51, 13, whatever. From Walbrook Junction, I could get anywhere I wanted to go.
My friends and I took our bikes for rides across Baltimore, literally. We went from The Junction to the cemetary at the other end of North Ave. Went downtown. Went to North Baltimore. South Baltimore.
We had one incident where we wandered into the wrong white neighborhood and was shouted at and had a gun pointed our way out of a window.
I grew up in Wichita and could basically go wherever I could get to under my own power or by bus. So I’d go downtown to the library or ride my bike way out on a creek etc…, no limits.
KC is a much bigger city than Wichita. My kids are allowed to do as I did when I was a kid. My 13 year old has a cell and goes pretty much where she pleases. My 7 year old ventures out about a mile at the most with one of his little cronies.
Be back before dark is rather strictly enforced, and we (I) constantly reinforce that old Hansel and Gretel shyte to let them know that things haven’t changed that much over the passage of time. There are monsters in the world and they look jes like everybody else – so watch each others backs and handle your business.
I’m not about take the time to dig up the stats and references now, but you can wade through stats at the Bureau of Justice Statistics for a decade or three or four back, and when you do you will see that violent crime rates in the US have remained essentially level for about that long.
Of course the US is now locking up six or seven times as many people as it did back in the early 1970s. Are you seven times as safe? No? Then maybe there is sort of a justifying connection between the propaganda that makes you feel less safe and the dramatic increase of longer sentences, two and three strikes, no parole, no probations, the elevation of vengeance or “victim’s rights” as a consideration in criminal prosecution. Maybe.
I’m like you. Growing up in Chicago I went pretty much where I wanted as long as I got back home by dark, and as a teen, stayed out later than that, and traveled from my south side neighborhood as far as I could walk or wherever the buses and trains ran. While there were cheap trains to Milwaukee and Gary and I or friends had the cash, we went there, and didn’t tell the folks that either.
My own kids grew up in the 70s and 80s and 90s, and by the time they were teens they ranged pretty far too. So they’ve told me — after being safely grown.
So offline, Keith Owens told me that members of Detroit’s police department have informed him that crime appears to be more random than it used to be.
And on one level I can see that. I’m not sure this will show up in the BOJ data, and like Bruce I’m not necessarily trying to dig into that thicket unless I’m writing a paper on it. But again how much more random?
If the odds of being a victim of a violent crime are 1 in 50,000….and all of a sudden something happens (increase in drug consumption, increase in unemployment, decrease in parks and rec funds, increase in hypersegregation, etc.) that makes this number ten times worse, what happens? Instead of 1 in 50,000, that number becomes 1 in 5,000.
which is STILL very very very small.
The increase in crime narratives, in dramatic television, in radio and music videos, and on the local news creates a climate of fear. The increase in surveillance technology (here I include cell phones though they weren’t designed for this particular purpose) increases our perceived ability to control and surveil our kids. The increased suburbanization of living–kids don’t play frozen tag outside anymore because all play has been privatized (ymca, nintendo and the like).
That combination along with other things makes it very difficult for us to let our children out of our sight.
Fear is the mindkiller…,
From where I sit, my chirrens world is going to require a baseline of novelty-seeking and personal initiative far in excess of what I was able to muster – and though I’ve slowed down a little bit – I’m by no means finished with my own adventures. The common and indispensable thread running throughout these is audacity.
When I reflect back on the Dickensian combination of adventure and privation that my father went through as a child – that he was willing to relate to me – and on the intentionally laissez-faire attitude he took toward my own license to self-govern – I realize how profoundly blessed I was to have him as a parent. Though far quieter than I’ve ever been, he was an astonishingly audacious man. He helped me in every possible way to become audacious.
As challenging as it may seem, can we afford to do any less for our own chirrens?
Audacity. This is a good point. I asked the question what do we lose?. And it is this. Instead of The Audacity of Hope what we’re talking about is The Hope of Audacity.
As a pre-teen kid, the furthest I was allowed was the couple miles down the road to soccer practice. I walked it, there and back. Otherwise, my range was limited to as far as my parents’ eyes could see (they hadda be able to easily spot me from the window). So I was in the front yard a lot. I wasn’t always mindful of the lineosight rule, but as long as I was home in time for supper or sundown — whichever came first — I remained in good standing.
Relative to some of you, it might seem a little strict, but for much of those years, we were the only Black folk for miles (immigrants, to boot) so my parents exercised caution even tho I never really got into uncomfortable situations (well, there were a couple, but they were minor).
I live in a mixed neighborhood now. Tho I don’t have kids, I’d prolly keep the same rules my parents had for me unless I knew more of the parents and kids around me.
Hmmmm. Perhaps it is of no relevence to many folks on this site but how many of you REALLY live or even LIVED in Detroit? We know more than 90% of the residents now are of African descent. What do you know about life here and in Highland Park during the last 40 years?
These winsome “gotta help our city” conversations based on some no longer extant notion of what makes a city ANYWHERE on the planet really burn my biscuit, as Lonnie Bates has been heard to say.
Detroit Synergy and let’s “save the ‘D’ types appear, for the most part, ignorant, of any serious appreciation of the social, political, economic, culture and spiritual trails of Detroit or of the nation.
Do any of the the following mean anything to you?
“Message to the Grassroots”
“The Ballot or the Bullet”
The Shrine of the Black Madonna
New Bethel Baptist Church
STRESS
The Nation of Islam Mosque, number 1
King Solomon Baptist Church
DRUM
The Inner City Subcenter
police corruption
African-Centered education
Algiers Motel
Black theatre movement
Conscious artists and intellectuals who never left or even those who had to.
What about the role of white supremacy in the fate of this city? What about the economic blockade established against the Black populace with a mayor (Young) who seemed alien and threatening to “outsiders?”
And from whence – do you think – comes the commonly held notion that “the white folks are taking the city/cities back?”
Hmmm New Orleans anybody?
Why do you assume that? It’s of tremendous relevance to most of the folks who post here – especially the host who is intimately familiar with all you’ve mentioned. I only lived in Michigan for four years and am familiar (more or less) with each of the items on your list. Your post is poignant – and you don’t need to sell low when you deliver such valuable insights.