Feeling safe in your environment is relative.
My new neighborhood (The Bronx, NY) has a little bit more than 2x the rate of violent crime compared to the rest of the country. Yet in some ways, I feel safer here than in my former suburban paradise of Beaverton, Oregon.
Why?
The BX is loud and raucous like the afterparty to a 24/7 concert you never asked to attend. It smells like weed, exhaust, sweat, empanadas and fresh fruit when you hit the block. But in that organized chaos, I blend in as just one of a thousand other brown-skinned papisitos streaming off the train at the 231st street station. I’m effectively invisible here. Anonymous, even. Most of these pedestrians probably aren’t even following me on Instagram.
Can you imagine? The nerve!
While it’s technically more “dangerous” in The Bronx than in Beaverton…the environment gives me a certain amount of security to be myself because since there are many others who look like me, I know I will not be singled out in the same way.
Walking down the placid, pine-laced sidewalk in Beaverton, I did not feel invisible — I felt quite visible, since I was one of just a small handful of black or brown people in our neighborhood of $800,000 McMansions and electric cars. Feeling visible as a black man means playing stupid mental games, like thinking about what others are thinking about you as a safety mechanism.
It means thinking twice before wearing a durag or hoodie when I’m outside walking my dog at night because I know that look is associated with being a “thug” on the news…when in reality, the purpose is just to protect my frikkin braids from getting messed up.
(Side note: the issue of head coverings is fascinating. Wear a yarmulke or Yankees cap in most environments and nobody bats an eye. Wear a hijab or durag in the same space, you might feel like an outsider…or a terrorist.)
There were a few times when I’d locked myself out of my house in Beaverton and had to wait for my wife to come home to let me in. I was sitting on the porch for an uncomfortable amount of time and people would slow down to ask if I lived there or needed directions — even though I’d lived in this neighborhood for 4 years and had two very large dogs that everybody saw me walk multiple times per day in the same loop.
I specifically remember not wanting to look like I was trying to break into my own house, given that its easy to get the police called on you…and they’re sometimes known to shoot first. I know I’m not special.
“Don’t shoot…I’m a bestselling author!”
All of this to say: yes…the news did report a decapitation in the South Bronx earlier this year…but I’m not worried. I comfort myself by thinking this was a probably a crime of passion between two people who knew each other.
Plus: you’ll never be able to decapitate me because I’m swimming anonymously in a sea of Puerto Ricans. Just when you think you’ve spotted me, I’ve crossed the intersection and merged back into the crowd.
“Mama, who was handsome that man with the braids?”
“I think he used to be an influencer, baby. But I can’t remember his name.”
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