You see, I know a lot of people who live outside the city of Milwaukee — family, friends, coworkers — and, when I tell them where my husband and I bought our house, it's obvious what they are thinking.
Aren't you afraid?
Some people actually ask the question, in one form or another: Don't you worry about break-ins? Aren't you concerned about your daughter walking to school? What if your car is stolen?
Crime, apparently, was supposed to scare us away from Riverwest. (For those of you who aren't familiar with the neighborhood, we're located southwest of the intersection of Capitol Drive and Humboldt Boulevard. For those of you who do know the neighborhood, we're at Keefe Avenue and Bremen Street.)
But there's often a deeper meaning behind the questions, revealed in my personal favorite: Who will your girls date?
I've been in Milwaukee long enough to know what many people really want to ask: Aren't you afraid of the blacks (and/or the Latinos)?
In a word, the answer is "no."
Pricks come in all shapes, sizes and colors
I fear very little, not even "the criminal element," whatever its skin color. I suspect my lack of fear stems from growing up with my old man.
My father was a prick. He was an alcoholic who failed at court-ordered rehab more than once. He was a wife beater and whore. He drove drunk. He refused to pay taxes. After my mom divorced him, he was a deadbeat dad. He stole. He was lewd. He lied. He kicked our dog.
In short, he was a bully and a criminal.
And he was as white as white comes, living in the predominantly white rural Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
I remember him once telling me to stay away from "the injuns." (In the U.P., the largest minority is Native.) When he told me why, with alcoholism topping the list, it occurred to me that he was really describing himself. I have yet to meet a Native — the term preferred by the Natives I've met, when tribe isn't known — as big a prick as my father was, drunk or sober.
In fact, the person I feared most as a child was my father.
Desperate people do desperate things
As I grew, I started putting the pieces of my father together. His formative years were pretty rough on him, I learned, and he did his best with the tools he was given by his family.
Alcohol was his therapy. Anger was his release.
Living in the U.P. didn't help. Jobs are scarce in the U.P., with high-paying jobs rare, and men who cannot provide adequately for their families often feel useless and frustrated. Alcohol is the preferred way to self-medicate in the U.P., and frustrated men make for violent drunks. (Obviously, this can apply to women, as well; I happen to know more men who suffer the affliction.)
It can become a vicious cycle, when children are involved. My brothers both started out down the wrong path when they were young; they both have juvenile records, thankfully for nonviolent offenses.
It's a cycle I recognize in Milwaukee, concentrated because there are so many more people living here.
I checked out the 2003 study titled "The Two Milwaukees: Separate and Unequal," by Marc V. Levine, professor and director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Economic Development. Levine found that unemployment among blacks in Milwaukee was 16 percent in 2000 — 17.9 among black men. Ouch.
The U.P. is no stranger to double-digit unemployment rates, either. Three of the rural counties in Michigan finished 1999 with unemployment rates of more than 10 percent for the year. Monthly unemployment rates were nearly 20 percent in winter months, when farming, logging and mining operations came to a halt.
That means, speaking in terribly simplistic terms, that roughly one of every 10 working adults I knew growing up was unemployed at any point of the year — two of every 10 in wintertime. And that's just those who filed for unemployment benefits. Many adults I knew in the U.P. didn't bother; they worked under the table or went into an illegal trade.
My old man had a reason for being a prick. Not an excuse, but a reason.
Home bittersweet home
I know what you're thinking: If life is miserable because of unemployment to the point that you're self-medicating, why not move?
I know that answer, too, although I don't necessarily agree with it. Again being overly simplistic: Home is where the heart is.
My father knew that he could survive in the U.P., no matter how tough the going got. He knew how to lie, cheat and steal his way through lean times and, more importantly, how to stay one step ahead of the authorities. And he had friends and family in the U.P. who enabled him.
Milwaukee has neighborhoods with very similar vibes to them. Even with all hope gone of good factory jobs returning to the city, Milwaukee is still home to those who once worked in the city's factories.
And I will not discount the fact that, like Michigan, Wisconsin does provide for its poor with relatively generous social welfare programs. I am, after all, a welfare child, with six years of Aid to Families with Dependent Children benefits on my resume.
I couldn't have survived my father without it.
Survive my father I did, as did my brothers. And, despite the facts and figures that tell us we, too, should be pricks, we are not. (One of us has his moments, but he's still falling short of our father's standards.)
In summary: My father, someone I least expected to be a prick, was indeed a prick. My brothers, who statistically speaking should be pricks, are not pricks. Hmmm ...
I have to give credit where credit is due. My father taught me that it's wise to judge everyone individually. If you don't, the pricks will blindside you — you could wind up married to one! — and you'll miss the chance to get to know the genuinely good people all around you.
Think about it: I could have decided early in life to write off (white) men because of my father's behavior, but then I would have missed out on 19 years of marriage to my wonderful hubby. And who knows what might have happened to my brothers ...
You have nothing to fear but fear itself
Once I shed the fear of my father by getting to know him, I had no fear of people left in me. Fear has been replaced by curiosity and an insatiable sense of adventure.
Instead of waiting to be attacked by the pricks of the world, I make it a practice to seek out the good people — including those who, statistically speaking, should be pricks but are not. I enjoy finding gems in the rough, so to speak :)
Yes, someone has broken into our garage here in Riverwest. But our neighbor interrupted the thief, and our daughter was able to recover half the stolen stuff a ways down the alley. If we had never moved to Riverwest, we would still own a men's mountain bike, but we wouldn't know our neighbor is utterly trustworthy, either.
Yes, my daughter was once accosted walking home from school, back when we lived on the East Side. But a group of complete strangers came to her aid, defending her from a man easily twice her size. Had we never moved to Milwaukee, she wouldn't have gone through the trauma, but she wouldn't know the kindness of strangers, either.
And, yes, my daughter has dated the son of a confessed Latin King with a felony criminal record. But no harm has come to her; in fact, I suspect she is safer in his house than in ours! If we hadn't enrolled her in Milwaukee Public Schools, she never would have met the boy, but she wouldn't have seen first-hand how far an apple can fall from its tree, either.
If, in the course of my adventures in our new neighborhood, I do run into more genuine pricks, I'm not going to give them any ground in my life. There isn't room; there are too many good people hanging out around me :)
Oh, and no, our cars have not been stolen. Sorry to disappoint!
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