6

BLACK FLIGHT

Consequences of Neighborhood Cultural Conflict

The neighbor that lived here before [a pioneer] was a woman. She told me she was moving because she felt uncomfortable that the neighborhood was going down.

—Lara Bianco, second wave, aged thirty-seven

I have to say that within the last two or three years, there have been at least five to six families who have moved out and new people have moved in. So it’s definitely a revolving door.

—Linda Hopewell, second wave, aged thirty-nine

Before, you really didn’t have to go outside your home and sweep up trash. You just had to go and do your leaves and a little litter, but now it’s McDonald’s papers. It’s cups. It’s whatever. Now, we have Popeye’s coming.

—Clarice Nellis, pioneer, aged thirty-seven

Race, gender, social class, and neighborhood are all social structural factors that shape the complex web that sociologists refer to as “culture.” Culture can be seen as a collective-level construct that describes a group’s shared set of values, norms, and attitudes toward life. These values and norms are codified, whether formally or informally, into rules and sets of behaviors that group members use to meet their goals.1 Such cultural codes can include rules that pertain to relatively mundane, everyday topics (e.g., how a family should maintain their property), as well as deeply held convictions (e.g., what constitutes a moral life).2 Further complicating matters, people may or may not be conscious of their collective values and codes of behavior. In addition, a group’s codes may be highly complex and multilayered, or they may be very simple and binary, or what some call “black and white.”3 Historically, social scientists and black intellectuals have embraced cultural explanations of racial differences as a welcome alternative to biological essentialism.4 Indeed, ethnographic research provides evidence that cultural hierarchies are a characteristic of many communities.5 Yet the topic of cultural hierarchies, especially as they pertain to nonwhites, remains a taboo subject. Researchers often prefer to avoid, or even to rename, culture, arguing that the very concept has been contaminated beyond utility by researchers and theorists who have failed to balance discussions of culture with adequate analyses of structural or macro-level causal mechanisms.6

People make decisions about where to live, how to spend their time, whether to maintain their homes, how loud to play their music, and what their responsibilities as neighbors are. Social structures and constraints (e.g., factors related to racial disparities in opportunities for wealth building, desirable housing, and access to quality schools) influence these decisions, but so too does culture. A neighborhood’s culture is shaped by who it attracts, who stays, and who leaves. In other words, “the people make the place.”7 Parkmont’s pioneers frequently pointed specifically to intraracial cultural differences as a main cause of their dissatisfaction with their community.8

Pioneers strongly believe that intraracial differences in residents’ values and behaviors have become fatal to their neighborhood satisfaction and quality of life and are causing Parkmont to experience what one pioneer called a “downward trend.” On the streets where black pioneers first found white families with long-standing ties to the community, there now lives a distinct and later arriving group of blacks: the second wave of blacks who are replacing the population of pioneers who have been moving out. This group has come to represent Parkmont’s first episode of black flight and its second recent demographic shift. Black flight is a less recognized concept than white flight and is easy to overlook when scanning demographic data, but the process of black flight has been described in this way:

At the “tipping point” the nonwhite pioneers join their earlier antagonists in contemplating, or actualizing, flight from the area…. The delayed flight process from contested areas is one of the complicated social and psychological phenomena that are likely to be obscured by urban studies based on decennial census data.9

An analysis of Parkmont’s black flight sheds light on this complicated and hidden phenomenon. On many conventionally studied characteristics and outcomes, pioneers and second wave residents appear to have a great deal in common. Both groups are black and are able to afford homes in Parkmont. Both have families that reside in nearby low-income black neighborhoods, and in general they both have moved to Parkmont from far worse communities. Both groups, to various degrees, but especially in terms of occupational prestige, are in the working class. However, pioneers and second wave residents each perceive differences between themselves and the other group. These differences are related to structural factors such as the timing of arrival in Parkmont and subtle compositional differences in the two groups’ economic standing and family structures. The contrast between the two also extends to cultural factors, such as values and behaviors related to child-rearing and community.

In many ways a cultural study of Parkmont is consistent with an increasingly visible stream of research that provides evidence of significant intraracial differences within black neighborhoods. However, Parkmont is also a unique context in that it is a newly settled black area filled with working-class families who are striving for better lives. This is important because, even though blacks are more likely than whites to be members of the working class, researchers have called working-class blacks “the forgotten category” in contemporary race and class research.10 Yet Parkmont’s divisions in the aftermath of white flight are not about severe social class separations and fundamental commitments to different ways of life; nor are they about local politics or the rise of gangs. Parkmont’s cultural clashes are over values and behaviors related to home and family life, and they show how changes in neighborhood population have consequences, both structural and cultural, that lead to black flight. These changes have splintered Parkmont’s population, creating a quiet milieu of resentment and a continuing period of black population churning.

Structural Factors: Timing of Arrival and Compositional Differences

Effects of Timing of Arrival on Experiences with Housing and Neighbors

Timing is everything when it comes to one’s experience of a neighborhood. People often have divergent experiences of places, and these differences are frequently determined by when they first arrived.11 Even in racially homogenous communities, population “churning” or turnover can significantly shape the character of a neighborhood. In Parkmont, whites continued to trickle out of the community when they would die or move into assisted living facilities. Pioneers continued to depart in search of neighborhoods that were similar to the one that Parkmont had once represented to them. When the second wave of blacks arrived, they were filling these housing vacancies and keeping the population churning long after most whites were gone.

Timing has had important implications for both the housing market and the socialization process of Parkmont residents. Parkmont’s white flight began before the housing boom of the early 2000s, but the fallout from subprime mortgages and predatory lending has shaped subsequent patterns of neighborhood change. Data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) show that patterns of lending changed at the very same time that large numbers of second wave residents began moving into Parkmont. The city released a report using HUD data that shows that 25 percent to 49.99 percent of all mortgages made between 2004 and 2006 were “high cost” subprime mortgages (with interest rates that were more than 3% above standard rates), a status that is a strong predictor of foreclosure. The city also reported that Parkmont had a predicted foreclosure rate of 7 percent to 9.99 percent for the eighteen months following November 2008. Furthermore, the zip code in which Parkmont is located is one of twelve in the city that had more than 250 pre-foreclosure actions filed in the year 2007 and the first nine months of 2008. The city concluded in the report that Parkmont deserves a relatively high “foreclosure abandonment and risk score” (a score of seven to eight with ten being the highest), an especially troubling fact given that the community had a relatively low vacancy rate. Parkmont’s foreclosure risk scores are especially convincing because they have not been inflated by the long history of vacancy and abandonment (caused by the loss of manufacturing and population) that is typical of many neighborhoods with high-risk scores. Indeed, Parkmont has seen many foreclosures, and many houses there have been turned into rentals. Subprime mortgages and programs aimed toward assisting financially vulnerable groups, such as first-time and low-income homeowners, were attractive to many black buyers because they required very small down payments, but eventually some Parkmont families could not afford their housing expenses and were forced to give up their homes.

Timing of arrival also differently affected blacks’ experiences in Parkmont in that affordable housing was more widely available for second wave residents than for pioneers. It was often the case that when elderly white stayers died or became too ill to live alone, their adult children felt burdened by their parents’ homes, and they were eager to unload these outdated properties. Many preferred to expedite the process and sell low rather than take the time and incur the costs of making home improvements or waiting for better offers. Thus, less expensive homes in Parkmont were easier to find for second wave residents, as were rentals, since it was not uncommon for stayers’ children to sell their parents’ homes to real estate agents who soon began to rent them out.

Pioneers’ and second wave residents’ relationships to stayers were also different from each other because of timing of arrival effects. The pioneers were engaged in episodes of intense community socialization by their white neighbors, but the second wave blacks arrived in Parkmont when opportunities to interact with stayers were scarce. At the time of the second wave’s arrival, elderly white stayers were in far worse health. In addition, the idea of having a black neighbor was less of a novelty to these white residents who had already grown accustomed to black neighbors after experiencing the initial period of integration and were now well acquainted with the pioneers.

The character of Parkmont’s intraracial relationships was also shaped by the timing of arrival of the two waves of black residents. As might be expected because of their conspicuousness in a white neighborhood or their status as outsiders when white flight first took hold, many pioneers formed positive, if not close, relationships with other pioneers. However, for a variety of reasons, the second wave residents’ interactions with the pioneers have been minimal at best and strained at worst. Another factor making it difficult to form bonds across cohorts of black residents is that many pioneers had grown to identify with white stayers, while simultaneously taking on an air of cautiousness and apprehension about the incoming second wave blacks. Exacerbating the social distance between the two groups of blacks was the fact that with busy schedules and shorter lengths of residence in Parkmont, many pioneers did not feel entitled or inclined to play an explicit, active socializing role in the community. Thus, many pioneers were poor candidates to take on a leadership role with other young black families because of the fear that they would be perceived as pushy or snobby to newcomers whom they neither knew, identified with, nor trusted.

Intraracial Compositional Differences

In white-flight neighborhoods, black pioneers often do not differ much from long-term white residents in terms of socioeconomic status, but they are soon followed by less affluent blacks.12 Still, it is important to note that pioneer and second wave residents do share many of the same characteristics. With the exception of retirees and single, childless women, the members of both groups often juggle several jobs with irregular and long hours, busily coordinate their children’s lives and schooling, tend to their romantic relationships, and deal with their obligations to their extended family members who live nearby. In general, both groups have very little free time, and their lives are focused on family, work, and the struggle for balance in day-to-day life. However, Parkmont’s second wave residents appear to be less economically stable than the pioneers. Residents repeatedly mentioned that they perceive this subtle difference in the degree of economic strain. One pioneer expressed a typical opinion about the second wave residents’ inferior financial status:

I don’t think they’re as economically stable as we were when we moved in. Because we’ve heard—and I don’t have any research or documentation—some of these houses have been made into Section 8 houses. And I have a problem with that because they’re not buying it, so they have no stake in this community like we do. Our stake in the community is that we’re buying, and we’re not getting any government funding or anybody helping us to take care of our home, where[as] they are.

Though pioneers expressed the sentiment that Parkmont’s second wave black residents are culturally distinct from them on several dimensions, the main compositional difference between the two groups seems to be that many newcomers are barely making it in Parkmont. Pioneer Sonya McCall reported that she is concerned that second wave residents have only been able to gain access to Parkmont through low-income rentals and homeownership programs, which she thinks have negatively affected the community. Sonya is now eager to leave Parkmont: “I heard some of them are Section 8. I’m sure there have been a lot of foreclosures. I can’t really say how long I’ll be here, ’cause I really don’t know.”

Billy Gordon is a nineteen-year-old second wave resident who lives in a rented row house in Parkmont. His mother, an ex-con and recovering addict, resides in a halfway house, so he stays with his father, stepmother, sister, and his father and stepmother’s shared biological child. He told me that as teens he and his sister moved to Parkmont to live with their father, and that in the near future his family plans to purchase the home in which they currently reside. In Billy’s view, Parkmont is a very good neighborhood, but it’s at risk of decline. Though he is a member of the second wave, Billy thinks the pioneers seem better off financially than the residents in his cohort:

They were the first blacks, and the whites were probably selling their cribs for a lot of money. If they had enough money to afford it, then they probably did have a couple of dollars. But now that most of the white people left town and other blacks came in? It’s probably going down, slowly but surely. This neighborhood compared to other neighborhoods, it’s pretty good. It’s still fixable, and the people who were raised here and were born here care about where they’re from and should put forth the effort into getting it fixed. I think it’s fixable. I think it’s a good neighborhood. It’s a beautiful neighborhood.

Mary Smith, a seventy-six-year-old second wave resident, raised her six children in public housing projects as a single mother. She once worked as a telephone operator but has been retired for almost ten years. Mary began her tenure in Parkmont as a renter, but her son-in-law recently purchased her home for her. She told me about her dire financial situation when she was younger and how she has continued to struggle with money problems throughout her life. Mary explained how impossible it was for her to locate affordable housing in a safe community and said that this dilemma was the driving force in her move to Parkmont:

I knew this neighborhood ’cause we used to come out here. There used to be a Jewish bakery up here. It was wonderful. We would come out and get stuff to eat on Sunday. That was a big treat ’cause we were poor. I didn’t know anything about it other than that it was predominantly white and Jewish. It didn’t bother me. Nobody approached me or acted like, “What are you doing up here?” I never had those kind of dealings here…. I wanted to relocate, and I wanted to move into an apartment, which I did. I lived there for years. Then the owner sold the place, and they wanted everyone out. I couldn’t find an apartment that I could afford. Well, I could afford it, but it was in the bad neighborhoods. All the apartments I really loved, you would be able to pay the rent for a year until they upped the rent. ’Cause that happened to my sister twice. I don’t have the kind of income where if it goes up I can pay it. I can’t pay it. My kids said, “You gotta buy a house.” I said, “I don’t want a house.” Anyhow, that’s how I ended up here. I just started renting. My son-in-law, God bless him, just purchased it…. Everybody took care of their property. Now, you find a few houses that don’t keep up the property, but must of them do. Most of them do.

Several second wavers told me that they were able to afford a home in Parkmont only because of earlier foreclosures faced by some pioneer families. Lara DiBianco, a second wave resident, is a single woman who had been collecting disability payments, though she was recently employed as a conference organizer for a health insurance company. She purchased her home for only $59,000 from the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). Lara explained that government programs allowed her to purchase a home in Parkmont with almost no money down, but that the responsibilities of home ownership are beyond her financial capabilities:

I had enough to get the home with a loan and everything, but I didn’t have oodles of money. I was FHA. The house has problems, too. I’m in the process of getting an equity loan myself. The garage needs to be redone, and the dishwasher doesn’t work, and where the roof leaked, it’s gotta be replastered and painted.

Clarice Nellis, a pioneer, complained that second wave residents are unable to afford the expenses associated with homeownership and tend to place a low financial priority on home improvements:

I think that the people that are moving in now, this is like a stretch for them, so they’re barely here. They’re working, and the outside of their home is not their focus. They think, “I have to try to pay my mortgage to stay here.” I think they’re so one-track minded right now that that’s their primary focus.

Some second wave residents admitted that they prefer not to spend what little discretionary money they have on home improvements. Mary Smith told me that, many times, her lawn becomes overgrown because she opts not to pay someone to cut it. She explained that her pioneer neighbor often gets fed up with her and intervenes by cutting it when it gets too long for his liking. Mary reported that her home is in need of basic repairs and enhancements, but she cannot afford to make them:

I had an awning that just went in the trash after this season, so I need a new awning, but they cost a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars is a thousand dollars to me. I’m hoping I can squeeze in the funds to get it replaced, because you have to cook inside without an awning out there in the summertime. Well, that was the beginning of the deteriorating, too…. It’s not because you don’t want to. That’s just the way it is. ’Cause there’s a lot of things I want to do here, and they all call for money.

Second wave resident Shonda Suarez is a thirty-two-year-old single mother. Her thirteen-year-old son lives with her mother in the suburbs, but her two other younger children live with her in a rented row house in Parkmont. To help pay bills, her father sometimes lives with her, as well. Shonda’s life is very hectic: she works as a department store salesperson and owns and operates a small, fly-by-night daycare center located about fifteen minutes away from Parkmont in a very poor, segregated neighborhood. As an extra source of income, she rents chairs to barbers and hairstylists on the second floor of the daycare center. Shonda moved to Parkmont after getting divorced and hearing from friends that the neighborhood was populated with homeowners and working people. Though she once considered Parkmont to be a higher status black community, she now believes that its level of prestige has declined:

This is how you can tell if you’re in the working class. When you’re in the neighborhood, when you wake up in the morning, and every car on your street is gone. Then you know that everybody is getting up and going to work. If you wake up in the morning and everybody cars still parked there on a daily basis, then you know you not in a working-class neighborhood. It’s a lot of homeowners here. You can tell people take care of their homes. They’re taken care of, as far as the lawn, the outside. That’s mostly the homeowners. ’Cause renters, they don’t really—not saying all renters—but the majority, they don’t really take care of the property. How can I put this? They say Parkmont is more upscale. They say when people move out of Westside to move up, they go to Parkmont. It was considered moving not totally out of the ghetto, but you’re moving up to a higher-class neighborhood where the houses are getting more expensive, the income bracket goes up. That was years ago. Now, other areas are considered the nicerones.

Months ago, Ramell Worthy moved from a nearby low-income black neighborhood to join his fiancée, Aliya Sampson, in Parkmont. They are second wave residents who rely on a combination of disability payments and earned income to get by. Until recently, Ramell was employed as a teacher and social worker, but he is now on disability and is trying to break into the field of real estate. Aliya told me that she purchased their home from a pioneer family, the first black household on her block. Both said that neighborhood racial integration was not a factor in their decision to move to Parkmont since the community had already resegregated by the time of their arrival, but that they wanted to live in a neighborhood like Parkmont because they perceived it to be an improvement in terms of the social class composition of the residents and because they liked the general atmosphere. Ramell explained the unfortunate circumstances that enabled Aliya to afford to buy their home: “Aliya had an opportunity to get this house at a good price, and she jumped on it. It was about to go into foreclosure. It was a black woman here that lived with her mother, and her mother was kind of elderly. They was just trying to really cash out.”

Finances were also tight for second wave resident Linda Hopewell. She told me that she grew up just fifteen minutes from Parkmont, in a low-income black neighborhood. Because she was unable to afford a down payment in Parkmont with her savings, and was earning too much money to qualify for many housing programs, Linda cashed in her 401K retirement fund and accepted the associated penalties. She told me the story of her move to Parkmont, beginning with a description of her old neighborhood: “I enjoyed it, but I knew that once I moved out as a single person that I needed to be somewhere that was safe, somewhere that the block was homey, where there were more families and children.” I asked if she had felt safe in her former neighborhood, and she said, “Not really. It had gotten to a point where, of course, drugs and gunfire and things like that. I’m not saying that that’s not up here either. It is. It’s everywhere. But I’ve never felt unsafe in Parkmont as a single person.”

Linda’s move to Parkmont did not come at a prosperous time in her life. In a short period, someone had burglarized her former apartment, she had lost her job, and her father had died:

I was living in an apartment. The apartment had gotten broke into, and I found myself back at my mother’s house. Then, a couple months later, I got laid off. My father had just passed, and my mother was there by herself. She was really grieving, so that was really my reason for being there, spiritually.

Though she had not planned it, Linda continued to live with her mother for five more years after her father’s death before finally gathering her resources and moving. Linda explained how she had come to own a home in Parkmont at such a hard time in her life:

I wound up getting a job where I was a temp worker. And then, after like, three or four months, I became full-time. Then, I just stepped out on faith. I didn’t have any money saved. At least, I didn’t think I had any money saved. I just knew I wanted to move and he [Jesus] showed me my 401K, so I wind up taking money out of that and finding money for the house…. It was kind of hard in the beginning because I looked at twenty or thirty houses, and I got so frustrated. My brother lives about four blocks down from here, and I never thought about this part of the area, here. And then, through prayer, I got on the Internet, and the house was right there. I knew when I came here that this was the house, and I’ve enjoyed it ever since I’ve been up here. I’ve never had any problems.

Linda admitted that she was struggling with finances and was not in the ideal position to become a homeowner. However, her recent marriage has relieved some of the burden:

Once I signed the papers, then I started having doubts. Like, can I really do this? What’s gonna happen if I lose my job? You start thinking all these different things, and then you just come back to the reality that you just have to trust Jesus. I have to trust the Lord and knowing that he gave me the opportunity, and that’s what I do. And it was hard, but I was able to make it through. I know I was stretching a little bit here within the last two years. But once my husband moved in, we’re fine.

Linda’s story is emblematic of life as a homeowner for many second wavers. Single, with no cash savings, and only one income, Linda was unable to raise the funds for a down payment to buy a home. When she removed funds from her 401K as part of a “hardship withdrawal” to buy her first home, she had to pay penalties and taxes during the year of the withdrawal, and she also lost the earnings that she would have made from the investment.13 Like many second wave residents, Linda has continued to struggle with the costs of owning her own home. Yet despite this, she told me that she and her husband consider themselves to be savvy about real estate, and that they aspire to “flip houses,” including the one in which they currently reside: “My house has doubled in value, probably more than that. That’s one of the reasons why we’re trying to renovate the house. We can leave, sell it, and get the money back.”

Many second wave residents explicitly mentioned that financing a first home became far easier in the early part of the 2000s, and they believe that the relative ease of getting a mortgage has contributed to obvious housing turnover in Parkmont. Aliya Sampson, who works as a realtor, echoed the sentiment that Parkmont has become more affordable to blacks as financing options began to open up to families: “I think that a lot of the interest rates now are pretty good for first-time home buyers. If your credit is pretty good, you can get a nice first-time homebuyers program. You can get a good preapproval, which will get you in a better area.”

White city-to-suburb migration patterns tend to disturb the fragile compositions of urban neighborhoods, in terms of both social class and family structure.14 In the aftermath of white flight, Parkmont had far fewer married and two-parent families, more adults working long and irregular hours, and a higher proportion of households with children. With black flight taking hold and relations between pioneers and second wave black residents becoming strained, many pioneers started to scrutinize the comings and goings of people in the homes around them. In addition to noticing economic differences between themselves and the newcomers, pioneers observed that the second wave households often had more varied and unstable family structures.

As a pioneer, Sonya McCall’s neighborhood aspirations were not only about racial integration but included the image of stable households and conventional homes where vigilant parents watch over their children. She told me that Parkmont’s family structure had changed, and the streets had become overrun with unsupervised children and teens who do as they please during the day. She attributed the deterioration of the neighborhood’s social climate to Parkmont’s shifting household and family structures:

It’s horrible. I seen it over the years, how the neighborhood has changed. When I moved up here, it was real quiet. You didn’t see no boys on the corner. You didn’t have all this activity. I think the problem is that when people was moving in, they brought their sons, kids, and a lot of parents. They think, just as long as the kids don’t mess up the house, the kids can stay out. They out on the street. I believe it’s gonna get worse because the kids are growing up, and they come in, bringing more kids in. They have no control over them. The neighborhood’s going to go down.

Like Sonya, many pioneers moved to Parkmont with the expectation that they would live in an environment with a greater representation of nuclear families, or at least stable households. Their goal was not to achieve a minimal standard of safety from extreme violent crime and brazen disorder; for them, the desire for an improved atmosphere for their families included a neighborhood with a greater representation of conventional families and lifestyles. Pioneer Nina Jones said that she has noticed Parkmont’s homes are inhabited by fewer nuclear families and more extended or multigenerational families, which has altered the population composition of both the neighborhood and school:

I do see a change. I notice a lot of people are living with their parents who brought them up here. Their mom and dad might have bought the house, and maybe they’ve moved in, or their kids are still in the house. They bought it, because it’s like, “Oh I’m trying to move, get a better environment.” But now? I just think they are up here to live. Now, you have a situation where a cousin buys a house, and everybody just comes and stays, and then those kids—because they got the address—they go to Lombard.

In the short period of time since she first settled down in Parkmont, the concerns that Nina once had about her former neighborhood have appeared in Parkmont to such a degree that she would hesitate to recommend the community to others. As a teacher at Lombard, Nina believes that she possesses a more complete perspective on the types of families who are moving into the community and the unique sets of problems that they bring with them. Just eight years after arriving, her knowledge about the changes in the profile of residents has led her to decide that she is ready to move. Unfortunately for her, she does not know where to go:

Right now, we’re trying to move. One of my girlfriends wants to move up here, but she’s single. I don’t recommend it for people who want children or have children. I don’t recommend it because you want an area where, number one, the kids can be outside and play. You just never know what’s going to jump off here. The neighborhood is failing, and if it’s like this now, what’s it going to be ten years from now?

Although Nina recognizes that Parkmont is far better than many city neighborhoods, she has become disgusted with the changes in the type and quality of residents. Clearly, for Nina and many other pioneers, the second wave residents are not only different demographically but culturally. Although structural factors have created demographic changes in Parkmont, it is the pioneers’ perceptions of the cultural divide between the groups that are crucial to understanding why so many have chosen to leave.

Cultural Conflict as a Proximate Cause of Black Flight

It is hardly controversial to suggest that in order to get a “feel” for a community and understand its identity, one must gain an understanding of its culture. Tourists flock to urban enclaves to get a taste of the exotic culture of an unfamiliar community, neighbors engage in activism to retain aspects of community culture that they believe are threatened, and longtime residents often teach newcomers about the nuances of a community’s culture. Indeed, a neighborhood’s cultural dimensions are usually the most riveting parts of community studies. It is no wonder then that many urbanists would argue that culture is central to any holistic understanding of neighborhood change.

In addition to the value of cultural studies for making sense of neighborhood dynamics, investigations into neighborhood culture can provide richer data on ethnic relations within neighborhoods and help counter monolithic misrepresentations of racial and ethnic groups. The groundbreaking, though underappreciated, research of W. E. B. Dubois (1899) demonstrated that the black experience in the United States is diverse, arguing that researchers need to shift the discourse toward cultural understandings of race relations and away from biological ones.15 Recently, large-scale statistical analyses16 and in-depth community research have addressed oversimplified depictions of racial and ethnic groups’ experiences, with a number of studies breaking new ground by showing the specific ways that modern black communities are socially diverse.17 For instance, scholars have studied established middle-class black neighborhoods where residents share close bonds and deal with local problems in a cooperative way even though many residents’ backgrounds are peppered with criminal histories, addictions, and difficult life events.18 Additionally, important research on black neighborhoods has provided insights into the challenges and survival strategies of residents in poor, violent, drug-infested communities where “decent” and “street” blacks share residential space.19 Some have strongly argued that it is imperative for social research to reincorporate the concept of culture or the “sharing of outlooks and modes of behavior” as a causal factor in studies of African Americans, as culture may be the “black box” that is represented by unexplained variance in statistical studies of racial inequality.20

Culture is, of course, subject to change. The influential sociologist Ernest W. Burgess (1925) argued that urban neighborhoods have a cultural life that is largely shaped by the “sifting and sorting” of families who move into and out of them. Thus, it should not be surprising that the cultural changes that the pioneers have observed in Parkmont have contributed to their rising levels of dissatisfaction and their desire to move. With its densely packed row houses, Parkmont’s ecology forces residents to share their living spaces, opening up opportunities to easily observe and judge neighbors’ everyday behaviors. As a result, residents’ feelings about the cultural aspects of neighborhood change play a large role in perpetuating instability. This sifting and sorting was evident in Parkmont’s transition from a white neighborhood to a black neighborhood, and further evidence of cultural change is now apparent as second wave blacks have begun to outnumber pioneers.

Dimensions of Neighborhood Culture and Perceptions of a Divide

The cultural divide between pioneers and second wave residents is inextricably tied to Parkmont’s future reputation as a desirable neighborhood. It has been established that perceived differences between groups can translate into neighborhood dissatisfaction and mobility intentions, which are both associated with actual mobility.21 In his much-acclaimed book, Disorder and Decline: Crime and the Spiral of Decay in American Neighborhoods, Wesley G. Skogan (1990) described a process whereby neighborhoods experience physical and social disorder and then face the risk of population change and decline. He argued that when families have problems with neighbors, they often become anxious and dissatisfied. This prompts them to move, if possible, or else to withdraw from the community, isolating themselves from the people whom they find offensive or unsafe.

Culture is an essential part of conflict in Parkmont. Several dimensions of neighborhood culture divide the pioneers and the second wave, reflecting what residents perceive to be radically different worldviews. The cultural messages communicated by residents demonstrate the extent of their personal knowledge about how people should go about living their lives, raising their children, and participating in their community. Since so many pioneers contend with their own financial challenges, they view cultural differences rather than structural or socioeconomic disparities as the main source of neighborhood conflict. Though willing to acknowledge the structural origins of residents’ cultural disagreements, Parkmont’s pioneers believe that their new neighbors possess moral shortcomings and lack commonsense.

ASSIMILATIONIST ATTITUDES

The word assimilation often brings to mind the process whereby members of an ethnic minority group discard their traditions in favor of those of the dominant group.22 However, the concept may also be applied to neighborhoods to describe new residents’ efforts to conform to the cultural norms of long-time residents. In Parkmont, of course, race complicates this definition. Arguably, the pioneers’ decision to move to a white neighborhood reflects a more general desire to assimilate that goes beyond simple respect for the conventions of a new community. Additionally, the ease with which pioneers managed to fit in to Parkmont reflects a shared social understanding (or lack of social distance) between them and the host community of white stayers.

In contrast, second wave residents differ from most pioneers in that they did not move to Parkmont in search of integration. They knew the community was already predominantly black when they arrived, and some even knew that neighborhood was experiencing decline. Additionally, as new residents, the second wave appeared to be neither interested in nor able to merge into the pioneers’ cultural milieu, reflecting a more general lack of assimilationist values that goes beyond race. One second wave resident, Rashid Harris, summarized his lack of knowledge about Parkmont and his disinterest in meeting neighbors, saying that he mostly socializes with people from other neighborhoods and prefers to keep to himself: “All I know is since I’ve been here. I don’t really know what was going on beforehand. I never had any trouble. I mean, I know people in the neighborhood, but as far as interacting, I interact with people, but not to get to know anybody.”

The topic of assimilation was a major theme in interviews with Parkmont residents when describing their arrival in the neighborhood and efforts to adapt to the new environment. Pioneer Margaret Meadows explained that when she and her husband were first looking to escape the crime and social disorder of their old neighborhood, they were forced to limit their housing search to communities within the city boundaries because of the couple’s work-related residency requirements. Though a full-time school nurse, Margaret also holds down two other nursing jobs. What the Meadows family wanted seemed simple, a racially mixed neighborhood with good schools, but the couple soon became dissatisfied with the kinds of people who were moving in and attending Lombard. Like many pioneers, they had begun to contemplate a move to the suburbs. When I asked Margaret what she knew about Parkmont before moving there, she mentioned the racial composition of the neighborhood, its positive reputation, and her family’s desire to blend in:

That not many, or really, no blacks were up here. Italians and people that were Jewish were up here. It was a very good neighborhood. Lombard used to be a good school, but now everybody from all different communities come up here. I don’t know what neighborhoods they moved from, but they don’t have as much pride in this community as we do. Case in point, there was a house, and we suspected they were selling drugs in that house. I think the drug boys hang out in front. Now, I try not to be out that much.

In drawing cultural distinctions between the pioneers and the second wave residents, pioneer Anne Jackson expressed assimilationist values when she referenced her desire to live in an integrated neighborhood and her attempts to learn about the stayers. She pointed out that when she first moved to Parkmont, many pioneers sensed that the stayers were imposing social pressure about neighborhood norms, but she said the pioneers respected them. Anne emphasized that pioneers were not simply deferring to the neighbors because they were white but were expressing their general respect for the elderly and long-time residents by making an effort to understand them. For pioneers, the transition was not difficult because their values about community life overlapped with those of the stayers. Anne said that the second wave residents seem to be unconcerned about gaining the approval of the pioneers and conforming to the community standards that were already in place when they arrived:

We came here and wanted to be accepted. It was mostly a white neighborhood. We came in and had no problems. We didn’t want to cause any problems. We just wanted to work, take care of the home, fix it up, live, and be happy. The new people that came up here didn’t care as much. The first group that came up here, we tried to fit in. We did as everybody else did. We didn’t throw stuff around when we came in. We would get out and sweep up the front of our house and clean up. To keep it the way it was.

Pioneer Sonya McCall’s father, George, lives with her. Recovering from cancer treatments, he spends most days at home, taking care of his granddaughter after school. Like many pioneers, George identifies more strongly with the white stayers than with the second wave residents. He believes that the second wave residents require extra enforcement of social control by pioneers, an indicator of their rejection of community norms. George admitted that he thinks pioneers are less effective at maintaining order than the stayers were and suggested that the loss of long-term elderly whites on his block has caused a breakdown in social control. As an example, he told me about a second wave neighbor of whom he disapproves and how he wishes more stayers were still around to help enforce Parkmont’s social norms: “Now, when Joanne [white stayer] and them was over there, we didn’t have too much of a problem, ’cause they stayed on top of it. Mr. Henry, he stayed on them. He’d be knocking on the door, ‘You get that abandoned car off the block.’ He’d call somebody to get it off the street.” I suggested to George that some black residents might resent such interventions from white stayers, taking offense at comments that could be perceived as racist, insulting, or judgmental. I said that I thought it might rub black neighbors the wrong way. However, George adamantly rejected this insinuation: “No. They was rubbing us the right way. The right way. As soon as they left, you got all this trash back here, and nothing but abandoned cars in the drive way.”

African Americans, like all ethnic groups, construct and recognize socioeconomic divisions, often integrating aspects of culture into their constructions.23 Parkmont’s working-class pioneers were often so perplexed, frustrated, and offended by the way second wave residents handled themselves in the neighborhood that they specifically utilized their observations about residents’ community values and behaviors to construct universal judgments representing cultural differentiation. In order to assimilate to the Parkmont culture that the stayers and pioneers desire, new residents would have to discontinue their identification with lower-class culture, which includes allegiance to their former neighborhoods, and shift their identities and cultural values to match those of their new neighborhood. However, many pioneers pessimistically expressed the idea that second wave residents seem to have brought “the hood” with them when they relocated to Parkmont and are unable or unwilling to change. Pioneer Sonya McCall put it this way: “I think people just don’t care. I don’t know where they came from. Some of them may have come from the projects, and they think this is their suburb. See? That’s from where they come from. If they came from a rough neighborhood or grew up rough, then that’s what they’re used to.”

Pioneers Lamar and Clarice Nellis are at the end of their rope with their second wave next-door neighbor, whose values and behaviors interfere with their neighborhood quality of life, motivating the Nellis family to contemplate a move. As far as Lamar and Clarice are concerned, the woman who lives next to them represents an increasingly typical profile of Parkmont residents. The couple shared several stories with me about what they consider to be their neighbor’s “ghetto” or disrespectful behaviors and attitudes, which they see as major character flaws rooted in lower-class culture and community life rather than minor transgressions. These include defensive and hostile interactions about property maintenance, the failure to share outdoor chores in common areas, a poor sense of priorities, and general ignorance about the basics of how to live on one’s own, take care of a home, and be a good neighbor:

Clarice: I had a conversation with her about the steps. I said, “We may have to get the steps done because your concrete is cracking, which means eventually, it’s going to come over to our side.” She said, “No. I’m a single parent trying to do this on my own.”

Lamar: I said, “If you’re going to live somewhere, there is ways to do things.” Little things. They’re not in line with me. I’m not going to fuss and argue over it, but unfortunately we’re in row homes. I think it’s the baggage they bring from the environment where they come from. Certain things you are taught, you grow up with. It’s evident to other people that you choose not to do it, or you haven’t been taught the etiquette of homeownership or what to do with the home. For those of us that have lived in homes with our parents, you have to mow the lawn. It’s a chore. You have to rake. It’s a chore. Your mother or father made you do it, no matter if you wanted to do it or not.

On a winter evening, second wave resident Ramell Worthy pointed to two teenaged boys standing in front of his house, laughing and cursing loudly. Despite the fact that it was dusk, the teens wore sunglasses, and the hoods of their sweatshirts covered their heads. Ramell was mocking and dismissive of them: “Those guys? They’re pretending. They’re acting like they’re selling drugs. They’re standing around with their pants hanging down, with their hoods, just hanging.” Though he insisted that many teens in Parkmont whom residents find intimidating are just “fronting,” Ramell admitted that he is concerned about the future of the neighborhood. He asserted that Parkmont is “not bad yet,” but his projection is similar to that of many pioneers: pessimistic. He blamed the decline on the cultural characteristics of new residents and the norms they learned in their old neighborhoods:

I think it’s going to be worse because you’re getting a lot of people that are coming in that don’t appreciate the property of the neighborhood. They think they can have the same mentality coming from a worse neighborhood than this. This is a step up, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a step up in your personal class, but a step up in a geographical social class. But if it’s not a step up in a personal class, it’s not going to happen. I can see it by the type of adolescents around, the kids, the teenagers, the young adults. They have this need to look like they’re from a worse neighborhood. They have a need to be rougher instead of realizing, “This is an okay neighborhood. We should get clean instead of hanging on the corner.” It’s their need to identify with this ’hood culture. They don’t realize they’re in a position to do much better. When their parents get older and when they give their house to them, this is what we’ll be left with—those guys that are on the corner. I’ve seen people selling drugs. I know people selling drugs.

Even though she is a second wave resident who moved from a poor community through the use of a first-time homeowners program, Ramell’s fiancée, Aliya, also reported that she has mixed feelings about the cultural impact that second wave residents are having on Parkmont. She blamed the second wave’s apparent lack of pride and investment in their homes on the intractable lower-class socialization that is typical of their former communities:

I think a lot of times people come from a lower-income area, but they may—not to say that people in a lower-income area don’t necessarily appreciate their property—but there are some that come from an area where they don’t appreciate their property. So then it’s the same mind-set. You’re moving into a different area, but you still have the same mind-set. I’ve noticed that here.

When pioneers blame the second wave’s lower-class socialization and values for the deterioration of Parkmont, they frequently express disapproval of the way the new residents seem to spend their money. The main complaint is that families should improve the appearance of their homes before buying items or purchasing services that are unnecessary or frivolous. Pioneer Clarice Nellis said:

My mother always said, “People see the outside of your home first. If you have to choose between straightening up the outside or inside, choose the outside first, and work your way in. Then do the inside of your home.” She said, “Your home is a reflection of you. Make sure you make your bed, but other things you can let go ’til you can get to it.” And their clothes? I see them getting in brand new jeeps, but they don’t have a screen door on the front, the blinds raggedy, falling down. I’m looking at the basics. I don’t want to see sheets up in the window. How dare you? When you can go to the value store and buy curtains.

Although she is a second wave resident, Shonda Suarez also attributed the decline in Parkmont’s appearance to the way that newer residents with lower-class values prioritize their spending. Confounding class with race and gender, she claimed that single women and blacks are especially less likely than whites and married families to invest adequately in theirhomes:

I noticed that at my age—I’m not saying all white people, but a lot of white people—take care of their property more. I think that it has a lot to do with their income bracket. People are out at the mall trying to look good. ’Cause women love to look good, especially African Americans. Our thing is clothes and hair and nails and fashion, jewelry, so the extra money that she [her neighbor with a broken front door] do have? Instead of fixing the door, she’s out at the mall. I think the values are a lot different between whites and blacks, also. When I first started college, the black guys would walk around with all the name brands, like the Sean John, the Roca Wear, True Religion. Then, you got the white people in college. They’re walking around in an old pair of sneakers and jeans they had four years ago. Black people, you would never see them in that. They got to have the latest fashion. They put they money there. That’s why they always broke.

Residents’ beliefs about the importation of lower- class culture to Parkmont even extended to the quality and appearance of businesses on the strip, with many people pointing out that when neighborhood populations change, the businesses change. Carla Jackson, a social worker and young mother who resides with her parents in Parkmont, is a pioneer. She said that Parkmont’s social class decline is especially apparent when walking along the strip, where the newer businesses that have opened largely cater to people without much money to spend. She admitted that some of the service-oriented businesses have responded to common patterns of black consumption preferences. However, she also asserted that “cheap” business owners locate in Parkmont because they perceive that the profile of residents is increasingly lower income and desirous of cheap goods that they would otherwise purchase after traveling to the nearby poor neighborhoods:

It’s not too bad like some of the other neighborhoods, but I think it’s gonna get worse because of the things that be going on now. The different stores and the different hangout spots. We have a lot of Chinese stores in here now. We have hair stores. We have stores that have come into the neighborhood because of the culture that is in the neighborhood. Would you put that hair store in your neighborhood? You wouldn’t put it there because there’s no need for it. But with the black community, hair is important, nails is important. So they’re gonna come, and then the Chinese stores. I think they’re accommodating the blacks because the blacks are the ones that spend the money. So why not accommodate them with what they like? But some of the stuff is not positive.

Most second wave residents were not troubled by the appearance of the strip, but Mary Smith, an elderly second wave resident, insisted that the decline in the neighborhood’s business climate sends a message to passersby that the residents are mainly low income. Mary disapproves of the stores on the strip that fail to match her memories of the Parkmont that she visited when she was young. In this passage, Mary stopped herself before making a comment about the new “Chinese” stores, a feature of the strip that pioneer residents repeatedly identified to be problem:

They have businesses up here that are so rinky-dink. I understand if you’re in business, and you’re trying to make money from the public but…. I don’t want to use any racial comments, but they don’t keep the glasses in their stores clean. If your business isn’t so good that you can’t hire anyone, get out there, and do it yourself. And it just could at least look nicer. More cleaner. Where you don’t find trash on the ground…. It’s a minor thing to get out there and clean the windows for a business when you are trying to entice people to come in. That’s about the only thing, but I would say that it doesn’t have a nice look.

SENSE OF OWNERSHIP

This dimension of community culture simply distinguishes between residents who seem to care about the community and those who do not. A culture of ownership may be seen as a reflection of the difference between residents with long-term versus short-term orientations toward the community. Residents who intend to live in a neighborhood for years to come are more likely to have a stake in community life and be invested in its future. Pioneers such as Margaret Meadows believe that differences in this cultural dimension represent a major distinction between the two groups of black residents: “It’s changing. I still like it for right now because all the people are older people around here, which I consider myself an older person around here. I’m a ‘long-term.’”

Unlike the pioneers who moved into a white or integrated community hoping to stay indefinitely, many second wave residents reported that they had never intended to stay for the long term. Second wave residents tended to view Parkmont as a temporary or transitional housing plan, which may explain why building a sense of community has not been a priority for them. For many second wave residents, Parkmont is merely a convenient and safe city neighborhood located close to their extended families—nothing more. Parkmont is enough for them in the present, but many second wave residents expressed aspirations to live in large, detached homes in better communities and saw no need to form social ties or become further involved in the goings-on of the neighborhood.

Second wave resident Rashid Harris exemplifies the short-term orientation to Parkmont that so many pioneers find offensive. He rents a home in Parkmont with his wife, their son, and a child from one of his past relationships. Even though Rashid considers Parkmont to be safer than his old neighborhood, he told me that he had never planned to stay for the long-term: “It’s too cramped. If I had my choice, I wouldn’t move into the city at all. I don’t want to buy a house here. I don’t want neighbors. Well, I want neighbors, but I want space in between.”

Shonda Suarez also reported that her time in Parkmont is just a temporary living situation. She told me that, unlike the pioneers who moved to the neighborhood with the intention of planting roots, she considers Parkmont to be a stepping-stone until she can buy the house of her dreams. Even though Shonda began renting her home in Parkmont after white flight had largely been completed, she said that she would never be interested in living in the type of community from which so many people have opted to flee. Wanting to follow in the footsteps of the whites and pioneers who have already left Parkmont, her sights are set on a single-family house in the suburbs, but it remains unclear whether her plans are realistic given her limited economic means:

From what I’m doing, it should put me, in a couple years, to a nicer bracket to where I can afford something nicer to live. I’m looking now, actually. I like Parkmont, but the houses are too small. I have to be where the neighborhood is going up. If I start seeing the neighborhood going down, I’m moving out with the rest of the people that’s trying to get out. I’m not going to stay and watch it deteriorate. My grandmother, she been living in her house since 1958. She watched all the white people move out the neighborhood. She watched the neighborhood do a drastic change. If I was her, I might’ve stayed there, but when the white people left, I’m going. I’m following them. That’s the type of person I am. I like to live a certain way. If I feel as though it’s going down that much when everybody who was supposed to be in my class range move out, I’m moving too! I wanna go to a more upscale area.

Though Linda Hopewell is a second wave homeowner, she also demonstrated a short-term resident’s mind-set when she told me that she maintains a sense of detachment from Parkmont and “definitely” views her house as an investment “starter” home. In fact, she reported that she did not bother to investigate the quality of the local schools before moving to Parkmont because she never planned to stay for long: “I knew that once I would have a child that I would move to my second house. We do plan to move within a couple years. We’re thinking about starting flipping houses and things like that.”

SENSITIVITY TO PHYSICAL AND SOCIAL INCIVILITIES

The idea that persisting problems with neighbors cause residents to consider moving has been overlooked in discussions of the effects of broken windows or incivilities. Instead, urban policies have justified the policing of disorder by focusing on the theorized links between disorder and violent crime. However, disorder is not simply a factor that may lead to serious crime; it is a cultural symbol representing a shift in the values of new comers.

To pioneers, disorder is the antithesis of the decency, community citizenship, and aspirations toward upward mobility that Parkmont promised. From the pioneers’ point of view, the implications of disorder are that the neighborhood’s quality of life will visibly and morally decline, and, along with the loss, pioneers’ recently achieved residential status and neighborhood identity will also be threatened. Thus, pioneers are extremely sensitive to social and physical disorder in the community because of the ways disorder affects their property values and quality of life, and because it contrasts with the Parkmont they first knew and desired. Although the pioneers often acknowledged that second wave residents’ behaviors and values result from disadvantaged economic, family, and neighborhood backgrounds, pioneers were unwilling to excuse the newcomers or to relax their community standards. In this way, cultural clashes over disorder have caused black flight to continue because those who are most able to leave Parkmont often do so. This selective out-migration of residents who are more stable and community-oriented then causes further neighborhood decline.

Pioneers often stated that their major motivation for moving to the suburbs is that social disorder and continual problems with second wave neighbors have started to interfere with their way of life. In contrast, many second wave residents arrived with lower expectations for community conditions, obligations, and social life. With an absence of memories of Parkmont in better times, second wave residents often appeared to be more satisfied with the neighborhood than the pioneers. They seemed to take it for what it is and what they seek from it: a relatively safe and quiet black urban community.

Pioneers expressed a desire to maintain a relatively pristine community atmosphere, which includes keeping the standards high when it comes to the public image of the homes and residents, but many second wave residents disagreed with the pioneers’ emphasis on appearance and order and found their criticisms of other residents’ lifestyles to be extreme. Pioneer Margaret Meadows described the difference in opinion when it comes to peace and quiet:

A lot of neighbors share the same values, but the newer people don’t. I value my family and my property, even though I don’t think that I’m a materialistic person. But those are two things I do value. I value the environment of the neighborhood. I love quiet. It’s alright for the kids to run around and play, but after a certain time, I’m going to go outside, and if I can hear a pin drop, I like that. I don’t like a whole lot of activity. If I want to go to a party, I can go to aparty.

Inside his home, second wave resident Ramell Worthy considered what might, at first, seem to be an offensive question: whether the second wave blacks are different from the pioneers. But Ramell nodded his head in agreement: “Since I’ve been here, I’ve personally put more traffic on this block than anybody else, and I feel bad about that…. I’m not going to say I don’t care who I offend, but I’m just saying, until they [the pioneers] understand who I am, then I leave them to judge. Whatever.” By “traffic on the block” Ramell meant that he receives many visitors from outside of the neighborhood who come in and out of his home. He told me that the pioneers seem especially overprotective, fearing that the “wrong” people are getting too familiar with the neighborhood, and worrying that outsiders will start “hanging out,” or even worse, that such visitors are actually involved in drug deals. Though Ramell identified many differences between pioneer and second wave residents in terms of values (e.g., degree of concern about presentation of self to neighbors) and behaviors (e.g., number of cars on the block, number of visitors), he also perceived the pioneers to be easily offended and said that his infractions are fairly minor and harmless norm violations.

However, Sonya McCall, a pioneer and mother of a young daughter, specifically complained to me about Ramell and Aliya, who are her neighbors. Sonya was angry because the couple owns a van with a broken window that sits in the driveway next to her home. She told me that she had never even seen them drive the vehicle. More important, on several occasions Sonya had seen a group of boys sitting in the van, smoking marijuana. Although she had spoken to Aliya about the situation, the couple had not moved or repaired the van. What bothered Sonya most was that Aliya seemed to think Sonya’s complaints were trivial.

This type of neighbor conflict is emblematic of the simmering tension that has emerged between pioneers and second wave residents, each of whom has a very different perspective on what constitutes acceptable behavior in Parkmont and what they are willing to tolerate from neighbors. The pioneers insist that context matters, and when one moves to a row house community with the goal of escaping noise and chaos, the little things matter a lot. Clarice and Lamar Nellis explained how seemingly minor disputes with neighbors can have a cumulative effect:

Clarice: Our neighbor only shoveled her half and didn’t shovel our steps. It’s only a little walkway, and you mean to tell me you only did half ? I was hot. It took her longer to do her one little part than it would have to do everything. Now, I’m going to use my deck soon, so I’ll have to go over there and tell her nicely she cannot put her trash out there on the deck. She doesn’t use trash bags either, just little bags, supermarket bags. We couldn’t even use our deck last year.

Lamar: She has an attitude, too. As nice as you can be, she takes a defensive attitude. She was taking the trash out, and normally we’re accustomed to the trash being uniform. She had the trash bags all over the place, and when the wind blows, it blows the trash to the middle of the walkway or driveway. These little bags. So I told her, we use regular trash bags; put your little bags in normal trash bags. She was really annoyed with that.

Second wave resident Rashid Harris summarized what many people believe is typical of the second wave residents’ state of mind. When I arrived for our scheduled 10:00 a.m. interview, he asked me to come back later because he had just gotten off his night shift and was drinking beer and “hanging out with his boys.” When I returned after his friends left, Rashid reported that his evaluation of Parkmont is that he’s “fine with it” and feels safe. He does not perceive decline because he knows that the neighborhood is still far safer than where he used to live. Though Rashid is an adult, he echoed the sentiment of many of Parkmont’s children and teens who came from other neighborhoods when he told me that his friends from his old neighborhood think Parkmont is “wack” (i.e., boring, uncool, or lame). Rashid mocked the pioneers’ concerns about order, arguing that Parkmont’s problems are “just like a molehill” compared to those of his last neighborhood. This kind of trivialization of the pioneers’ concerns about social and physical disorder is shared by many second wave residents who patently dismiss the incivilities that the pioneers find so troubling.

In a more unusual case, one second wave resident mentioned that she has become acquainted with several pioneers and has taken the time to understand their strict attitudes about community behaviors. Linda Hopewell shared a story about the pioneers socializing her into neighborhood cultural norms about order that seem counter to those found in many urban neighborhoods. She explained what she has learned about the desirability of block parties from “them”:

We have a block captain who is very good. We don’t have any block parties because they don’t want a lot of people coming on the block and messing with our properties. A lot of people think that people will start coming to the neighborhood and start knowing where we are. People from other neighborhoods. Stuff just starts to happen. I mean, when they told me that, I was shocked. When they said, “Well, we don’t have block parties.” I’m thinking, “Really?” They said, “No. Because people start to come in. They start to mess up your property.” And I’m thinking, “I guess they’re thinking about the value of the property.” They don’t want [other] people to come in.

Linda reported that she has come to relate to the pioneers, mainly for financial reasons rather than some larger cultural affinity. Now, out of concern for the value of her home, she has adopted their more stringent attitude toward disorder. Like the pioneers, Linda has already considered moving because she is concerned that forms of physical and social disorder will cause a decline in property values:

I didn’t have a lawn, and I didn’t have a garage growing up, so those are things that I do value. The people next door had a dog and three cats, and they let their dog go to the bathroom on my lawn. They owned the house, but they just didn’t understand that people like to have a nice lawn. I was told that the people that lived there before them used to get an award for the best lawn within Parkmont. And the people that got it now? You wouldn’t think that. [Laughs] But they just didn’t understand the concept. Now, next door? I have to get that lawn cut myself. We split it, me and another neighbor. We both don’t want to have our lawns looking nice and then the one in the middle look bad. So we just got to the point where last year, every other week or whatever, we just take on the cost of it to keep up the value of the house. People have parties ’til wee hours of the morning. They have music playing. For me, I would just think that a person—once you bought a house—that you would want to keep the value of the house up. That’s just me, personally, but everybody’s not the same. We were really concerned because of being in the middle of two vacant houses. We really had to think about our property and think about what are we going to do. You know, if we’re ready to move. I know we have to do a lot of renovations, but how soon is it gonna be? We’ve had a lot of people move out within the last couple of years because some people don’t keep up their property. That’s probably the main thing. We have to think about the value of our property.

Unlike most second wave residents, Linda has come to identify with the pioneers in some ways and is already seeking to move after only a short tenure in Parkmont. Having spent her 401K on this home, she is distressed about its losing its value in the wake of the population change that has already contributed to Parkmont’s vacant homes, deteriorating properties, and disrespectful neighbors.

POOR PARENTING AS A FORM OF DISORDER

Though there is a diversity of parenting styles in the United States, when people think about cultural diversity as it relates to parenting, what comes to mind are the unfamiliar value systems and practices of people from different nationalities and religions. Yet, even within ethnically similar groups and communities, parenting values, norms, and practices can diverge and become a source of conflict. Although parenting can be seen as a private matter, it has consequences for communities. In Parkmont, children’s public behaviors serve as signifiers of their parents’ decency in the home and larger community.

Like many pioneers, Margaret Meadows disapproves of the parenting that she has witnessed among her neighbors. She reported that not only do the second wave residents lack community values and simple respectfulness but their children are out of control and create disorder in Parkmont. Insightfully, she attributed some of the conflict between the pioneers and second wave residents to generational differences in styles of child-rearing. Margaret said that she more closely identifies with the elderly white stayers than younger second wave black residents when it comes to parenting:

We made sure that our children did the right thing. We watched our children. If it was a neighbor’s child, we watched our neighbor’s children to see that everything was going okay. But I know people that are moving in now aren’t as disciplined. They aren’t disciplinarians like we were. The children are doing a lot of things that I wouldn’t let my kids do. They out late, walking the dog, and letting them do their business and not cleaning it up, and then somebody step in it. To me, it’s a little disrespectful at times. Not all the time. I really don’t have that kind of a problem, but I just think, times change and people change. But I think that it’s changing for the worse because the kids are a lot different, and they’re not as respectful of things as I feel they should be. Another thing, if they’re smoking marijuana outside. To me, that’s another part of being disrespected.

Pioneer George McCall, Sonya’s father, is friendly with many of the white stayers who like to sit outside on their patios, and he often joins them when he goes outside to smoke. George disapproves of the second wave children whom he believes run wild on the streets, creating a disorderly atmosphere. In addition, he is very unsympathetic toward their parents, whom he believes feign innocence: “Our neighbor—that woman—she’s got two boys that can’t do nothing right. They’re in and out. When she goes to work, it’s fifteen or twenty of them in the house. When something happens, she goes crying. I told her one day, I said, ‘Shut up. You know what’s going on in your house.’”

As a teacher, pioneer Nina Jones is especially observant of and sensitive to children’s behaviors and especially their respect for adults. She often makes universal judgments about residents’ parenting and family lifestyles based on her observations of neighborhood children. Despite the similarities in ethnic background between pioneers and second wavers, Nina believes that even minor indicators of poor parenting indicate that Parkmont’s incoming families are beneath her in the social hierarchy:

The kids walking up and down the street, cursing? I would never, as a child, have cursed in the presence of an adult, but they say “F this” and “F that.” Kids sit on your front steps, and you gotta ask them to move just so you can get up your own steps. One day, I had my son outside. I was blowing bubbles, and two girls across the street and some other kids came by. They’re teenagers. Then, a whole bunch of little kids came. One had never even seen bubbles. So, I’m out there with my bubble machine, and they’re busting the bubbles, and they’re “F this” and “MF that.” I’m like, “All these kids are around. If that’s how you talk, and that’s how your mom and them talk in your family, you take it there.” Oh no, they don’t like to see me coming. They do not like to see me coming. ’Cause I tell them it’s not going to happen here.

To Nina, second wave parents create a negative living environment for Parkmont families, and she finds the parents to be neglectful because their children lack basic manners and have missed out on the most simple and inexpensive childhood enrichment experiences. Like many pioneers, Nina was quite harsh in her assessment of the child-rearing practices exhibited by the second wave residents. As a teacher, Nina understands structural inequality and how it translates into differences in access to athletics, dance classes, and music lessons, but she still viewed the local children’s lack of familiarity with bubbles, especially combined with their foul language, as indicative of larger problems in their homes and the general moral failure of their parents.

Leanne Hanson is a second wave resident who lives across the street from Lombard with her mother, husband, and two daughters. On her lawn is a planting of faded silk flowers, and next to the flowers is an oversized white trellis with peeling paint leaning to one side. Leanne has heard pioneers complain about various forms of decline in the neighborhood. She is concerned about the behavior of children in the neighborhood and the school, but overall she is not nearly as troubled as her pioneer neighbors:

I heard a lot of good things about Parkmont, but I did hear that it wasn’t what it used to be. But it was still a good neighborhood. They said that years and years ago, Parkmont was like a melting pot. It was mostly Caucasian. They had Jewish and Korean, and still some mixtures, but it was very peaceful, meaning not a lot of violence, burglary is low, rape is low, not a lot of crime. So I took that as advice, and I wanted to believe that, but you can’t believe everything you hear. I did check Lombard, and I heard it was a great school, but it’s not how it used to be. That’s what I heard, too, but I think it’s a good school from what we are dealing with now in the city. I think they’re one of the good schools left. I think overall it’s a good school, but other parents that had children go there and they’re grown now will tell me, “Oh, it’s good, but it’s not like it used to be.” I can’t say it’s not good. I feel it’s in a state of decline because I heard so many great things, but I still think the neighborhood is good. I’m not happy with the children in the area from what I have seen. We have neighbors that are graduating from Lombard. They’re a little rowdy, and they’re getting a little out of hand. Compared to a lot of the areas in the city, I still think it’s a great place. I mean, you have to be careful with your children anywhere. I think it’s a good place to raise your children.

ATTITUDES ABOUT CRIME, SOCIAL CONTROL, AND COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Pioneers’ concerns about the culture of the second wave also extend to the issues of crime, social control, and community involvement. Many believe that crime has been increasing, and they think that the second wave families’ tolerance and participation in crime have contributed to the problem. Though Parkmont’s crime problems are not as severe as those in many urban neighborhoods, two banks (now converted to a church and a dollar store), several stores, a gas station, and a bar, all located on the strip, have been the sites of armed robberies in recent years. The civic association’s minutes have reported that burglaries are a problem, as are nuisance bars. Even at the library, the manager has complained of an “excessive” number of condoms, beer bottles, and drug bags littering the ground. The Laundromat is a site that is especially reviled by pioneers for numerous reasons. Pioneers do not want to give the impression to potential home buyers that Parkmont is a poor community, and symbolically, they view the Laundromat as a business that caters to and attracts renters and low-income people who cannot afford their own appliances. Also, based on their experiences in Parkmont as well as in their old neighborhoods, pioneers believe that these kinds of businesses breed disorder because they are poorly maintained, noisy, covered in litter, and they create parking problems. Worst of all, pioneers claim, Laundromats are dangerous, unmonitored places for the loitering of homeless people, teen gangs, drug dealers, and prostitutes, inviting robberies and brawling.

Many businesses have responded to disorder in Parkmont by either withdrawing from the community altogether or increasing security measures in a visible and unfriendly way, including the use of riot gates, surveillance cameras, and discourteous signs about loitering and rules of conduct for students who wish to enter stores. Pioneer Sonya McCall explained how the recent changes in some stores’ business hours have affected her:

The CVS used to be open 24 hours ’cause my daughter used to get sick really bad, and I had to take her to the doctor. I would go there at 3:00in the morning, get my prescription filled, come home, give her medicine. Now it closes at 10:00, and the pharmacy closes at 9:00 because they been robbed. When they got robbed, that was it. No more. The neighborhood was starting to change then. You can see little things, the merchants closing up, and different things are coming in.

Like many pioneers, Nina Jones thinks Parkmont’s young residents now participate in far more dangerous behaviors than she remembers from her youth when she was a student at Lombard. She contrasted three Parkmonts: the old Parkmont of her school days, the one to which she first moved as a pioneer, and the one she lives in now. She made it clear that she does not identify with the second wave residents and seeks to separate herself from the cultural values of newer parents and their children:

When I was young, it was all about Parkmont. Everything was nice up here. I remember it well. When I moved here in the beginning, it was fine. I would say for the first two to three years I really enjoyed living here. Even up until after I had my son. Then, I was like, “Okay, it’s really time to go.” I guess my attitude has changed because I have a child. I can’t subject him to the things that are going on in this neighborhood. I just, I can’t do it. That day with the drug bust when I opened my door, and the people were standing there with guns? I was like, “I can’t raise him in this type of environment.”

Pioneer Carla Jackson grew up in Parkmont and thinks that, unlike her cohort, the second wave families seem to be desensitized to crime and their own children appear to be involved in it. She reported that she feels intimidated walking along the strip because drug-dealing teens brazenly stand around for hours on end, waiting for customers:

I go to stores, but I don’t like to go because the young ones are hanging outside selling drugs. Why would you stand in front? It’s not just the way you look, because the white boys look the same. So you can’t say that. But why would you stand on that corner for four hours or six hours? Just doin’ nothing. Why would you stand there?

Residents who accuse second wave parents of being nonchalant about neighborhood crime may have in mind people like Rashid Harris. Rashid reluctantly moved to Parkmont when his new wife became pregnant because she liked that the neighborhood was safe and near her family’s neighborhood. He admitted that his old neighborhood was plagued by disorder and serious crime but said that he had learned to think of that environment as normal:

I see why some people move, but I feel safe wherever I’m at so it wasn’t really about the neighborhood. I was having a son, so I just needed to move from where I was at. I had an apartment by myself. It’s a little quieter up here. The life, the style of it, is what my wife considers quieter. She’s the boss. Where I lived, it was just noisy, like “people hanging” noise. On my block now, kids go in the house at a certain time. There’s some things about my old neighborhood I didn’t like, but it wasn’t disturbing to me. Potheads and gangs and things like that. It was a bad lookin’ neighborhood. It’s not well mannered like it is here. Where I grew up at, I didn’t really think it was a bad neighborhood until I left it. I mean, my friends come here now, so it’s cool.

In contrast, pioneer Korrie Dawson remains deeply concerned about a rising tolerance of crime in Parkmont. During my interview with Korrie, we both learned that a man had recently tried to sell a gun to her eighteen-year-old grandson, Brian. Brian shocked Korrie when he interjected with this story about his experiences with crime victimization: “Last week I almost got robbed down the street. Some boy came up to me with a gun. He had a gun in his pocket. He wanted some money. I wasn’t having it. So I was talking to him or whatever, but he just walked away after a while and said, ‘Gonna get my money.’”

When asked if he felt afraid in Parkmont, Brian just said: “Only at night. People walk around in groups or whatever, like gangs. They’re always out here, but people are different at nighttime. Go to any corner store. If they see a weaker person comes up to them, they’ll go after them.”

Even so, as a newcomer and youth, Brian seemed to share the acceptance of crime that characterizes many second wave residents. He insisted that Parkmont is still a good neighborhood because “there’s not too many gunshots.” Echoing the comments of many young people who have recently moved from poorer neighborhoods, Brian told me that even though he feels safer in Parkmont, he finds the social scene to be “boring” compared to the high levels of street activity where he used to live. Brian also complained that he feels like an outsider because he has only lived in the neighborhood since his mother left for Iraq. He told me that he misses his old neighborhood friends and does not have friends in Parkmont because he goes to a magnet school located all the way across the city. As a result, Brian spends most of his time with staff members at the JCC, where he works out, and he often visits his girlfriend in his old neighborhood even though he feels afraid when riding public transportation there late at night.

Korrie objected to Brian’s blasé attitude about Parkmont’s problems, insisting that she knows many pioneer neighbors who are not jaded and who continue to take the incidence of local crimes to heart. To make her point, Korrie told me that her neighbor, an EMT who also sends her children to a magnet school, is so vigilant about the local crime problem that she uses the police radio at work to gather information about violence and shootings that occur in Parkmont. Stressing the importance of the cultural divide between pioneers and stayers, Korrie said that her pioneer neighbors have told her that they want to move out, “so it’s not necessarily about color.”

Cultural differences in views about crime also extend to attitudes about community involvement and strategies for maintaining social control, such as calling the police. When describing their efforts to deal with emerging problems in Parkmont, pioneers often reported that they try to be active, but many times they are too tired and busy to attend meetings. In contrast, second wave residents reported that the reason they are disengaged is that they view the local problems to be minor and subscribe to a “mind your own business” attitude toward neighborhood issues.24 This difference in values manifested itself in an interaction I had with pioneer Margaret Meadows:

Margaret: Case in point: it was a house that’s on that corner. We suspected they were selling drugs in that house, but we’ve reported it, so.

R. W.: You called the police?

Margaret: That’s right. Yeah. We call.

R. W.: You’re not hesitant to call the police?

Margaret: No.

R. W.: You’re not afraid of being a snitch?

Margaret: Naw. Nope. No. This is where I live, and this is where my kids live, and I want to be protected. So I don’t care.

Now consider the case of second wave resident Rashid Harris, who told me that, short of a public rape, he is not inclined to call the police when a crime takes place in Parkmont. His stance on corner drug dealers is in stark opposition to the position that most pioneers take:

Rashid: Where I grew up, we just grew up minding our business, so I never really pay attention. If it’s not bothering me, it’s not bothering me.

R. W.: So if you saw something you didn’t approve of, would you call the police? If you saw someone selling drugs on the corner, would you call the cops?

Rashid: I don’t know about that. Just like I said, it’s not my business. Because at the same time that people are selling it, people are buying it, too. So none of this really bothers me. Like I said, it’s not my business. It’s really not my business. Now, if I saw somebody raped on the corner? Yeah, I’m gonna call the police. That’s different because somebody’s being violated. That’s a big difference. I don’t actually think it’s the drugs doing something to the neighborhood. It’s a petty crime. ’Cause there are drugs in every neighborhood. White, black, whatever neighborhood.

R. W.: At least using drugs. There aren’t sales in every neighborhood.

Rashid: Using, yeah. There’s not corner sales in every neighborhood. That part of it is different. There’s drugs everywhere. But like I said, nobody’s being violated in that relationship.

Second wave resident Leanne Hanson agreed with Rashid’s sentiment that calling the police is only necessary for violent crimes, such as a physical attack or domestic violence. Her elderly mother said that she would not call the authorities even in those violent circumstances: “I would pretend like I don’t see it.” Leanne confided that she has not called police about incidents such as the teens who smoke marijuana in the car parked in front of her home. She explained how life in her old neighborhood has made her fearful of the repercussions of contacting the police, so she has learned to choose her battles and mind her own business:

My husband works a lot at night. We’re here, just women, by ourselves. Sometimes, when you call the police—and we seen it—the police come knocking, asking if we put in a report. Then people know it was you, and then they’re leaving you in the area to deal with these thugs. You never know if they’re going to break in or try to hurt you or mess with your children or mess with your car. So you got to be careful. So I wouldn’t say nothin’. As long as they ain’t bothering me.

The cynical culture of distrust that residents say has become pervasive in Parkmont seems to have originated from residents’ prior experiences with victimization in previous neighborhoods, as in the case of second wave resident Mary Smith, who expressed ambivalence about her safety in Parkmont. Even though Parkmont is not completely removed from violence, Mary considers the community to be an improvement over her last few neighborhoods. However, she has also been traumatized by violent victimization in her past, has few interactions with neighbors, and has personally witnessed signs of violent crime in Parkmont, all of which have tainted her feelings of relative safety. She told me about the crime and disorder in her old neighborhood, which she said are also present in Parkmont:

Kids, drugs, gunshots. You hear them around here, too. Not often, but you can’t escape them really. As far as I’m concerned, it’s no matter where you live. People think because they live in lovely neighborhoods, they say they safe. Maybe just a little bit safer. It’s everywhere. This is a nice neighborhood. It’s a quiet neighborhood, so it’s very nice living here. I’m very content here. I think there’s been three occasions when I’ve heard gunshots since I been here, four years. From the sound, one was up that way, one was down that way, and one was down this way. I didn’t really expect it, but if you sit down and think about it, guns are everywhere. Everybody is “packing.” That’s how we live. I mean, even I have a teargas gun…. I don’t really know anybody except just the neighbors over here. But one thing, ’cause I’m originally from [another neighborhood], where everybody knew everybody, everybody spoke, and if they didn’t, you said “Good morning, good afternoon.” I miss that. I’ve missed that for years ever since I came here…. It’s a mixed community with different nationalities. And basically, everybody gets along if you mind your own business.

Like some form of an urban village, black neighborhoods are often depicted in literature, films, and sociological studies as close-knit environments where residents are so close that they socialize, raise each other’s children, and even handle crime on their own.25 In cities with large African American populations, black neighborhoods have historically provided emotional and financial support to residents as they struggled for survival in the face of unemployment, poverty, Jim Crow in the South, and segregation and discrimination in the North.26 Yet this image may also be seen as a sentimentalized oversimplification of black community life27 since neighbor relationships are often strained by the circumstances that plague many segregated sections of the city, leaving residents divided over the range of problems that disproportionately plague such neighborhoods.28

Though Parkmont is now largely a segregated black neighborhood, it stands in contrast to popular depictions of black communities where residents share meaningful and interdependent relationships. Pioneer Anne Jackson explained the social distance that exists among the black residents in Parkmont as compared to her old neighborhood:

These are my neighbors; they’re not my friends. These are just neighbors. That’s it. This is altogether a different neighborhood from where I came. These neighbors you speak to, “Hi. How you doing?” But it’s not like you go outside and sit on the steps and talk and eat. I was actually more comfortable where I came from. Oh yeah. There was more violence, the guns. There was always something going on. But when something happened, people came to your rescue. We were like a big family. Like this lady up the street here, right up here. One night she had a real bad fire. She lost everything in her house. Everything. We came home, and I said that we need to do something, give something. My husband and I, we gave them some things, and I said, “Just take it.” But I don’t know them. They don’t know me.

Even though crime and disorder were very common in pioneers’ and second wave residents’ previous communities, there were also far more opportunities to socialize with other residents. Parkmont residents often complained about the lack of organizations and community centers in their new neighborhood. Most reported that even after moving to Parkmont, they continued to attend church in their old neighborhoods. In fact, through all of my fieldwork, I did not meet a single resident who attended a church in Parkmont. In addition, residents’ children continued to participate in sports and after-school events at local community centers found in other black neighborhoods within the urban core.

Pioneer Carla Jackson agreed that leaving her old neighborhood meant losing a close-knit community of neighbors. At the time of the move, Carla was already enrolled in a magnet school far from her home, but coming to Parkmont meant that she would transfer to Lombard. Carla described her initial resistance to the move and her eventual acceptance of it: “It was hard for me when I was young, because all my friends and family would round up at the neighborhood, but it was a good move.”

Joy Parker, a pioneer, admitted that while she has bonded with some white stayers, she barely knows the black residents and is too busy working to reach out to them. To illustrate the extent to which she feels isolated from her black neighbors, she offered this story about a recent violent crime in Parkmont that had been widely publicized because it involved a politician’s son:

I heard about it at my job. When I am around here, I don’t hear nothing. I didn’t even get the whole info. I have no clue to be honest because, as I was telling you, I’m always working. I leave for work early in the morning, and I come back late at night, so I don’t even know what’s going on. You lucky you seen me out here because I don’t normally come outside. I never hear nothing ’cause I don’t really talk with people around here. There is a lot of wrong things that happen here that I don’t hear about ’cause, like I said, I go to work, and I come in. I be so tired. I just wanna go to bed. I’m always working. I work two jobs.

Pioneer Erma Williams, aged sixty-seven, agreed: “I don’t know the neighbors very well because I always work, and a lot of them work. So I don’t know a lot of the neighbors.”

Rhonda Hamilton was one of several pioneers who also admitted that her long work hours interfere with her involvement in the civic association. She complained that the civic association meetings are not what they once were, and only draw between fourteen and twenty people now:

They have meetings that are scheduled once a month. It should be some more participation than it is. At first, I didn’t attend because I would also work at night, but the few times that I’ve gone, it’s just not a lot of participation because people work. They’re too tired to come out or they got children or it’s homework or something. I’ve been a couple of times, but it’s going to take a lot more.

Pioneers Anne Jackson and her husband attend the civic association meetings, but like other leaders, they are fed up with the lack of participation. Anne acknowledged that residents work long hours, but she also said that the newest residents do not have a sense of alarm about crime because they have been lulled into complacency by the relative safety of Parkmont compared to their former communities. Anne fears their apathy places the civic association at risk:

I don’t think that they have the backing and the support that they should because people don’t have time. Most people came from the same neighborhood I came from. So they think, “This is fine to me.” It’s nice. People keep their little houses up. There’s not trash in the street. There’s not a whole bunch of gun shootings or people just walking in the street, snatching from you. There’s not a lot of that. So they come here. They figure, “It’s fine.” They just say, “Let me stay in my house and mind my business.”

Margaret Meadows, a pioneer, is also pessimistic about Parkmont residents’ ability to organize when threats to the community arise. I asked her about the civic association because her husband regularly attends meetings, but she expressed the view that there is not enough participation to sustain the organization:

It will probably dwindle away. The people that go will still continue to go, and we’ll still encourage other people to try to go so it won’t just fade away. The only time people really come out is when something’s at stake. When there’s a crisis, everybody’s involved. But other than that, it’s just laissez-faire. Whatever. They have less of a stake in the community. Not keeping it up. Not as much pride as we had when we first moved in.

Pioneer Sonya McCall told me that the only Parkmont residents she knows are the elderly whites and the parents of her children’s friends. She explained why she is not more involved in the civic association or with neighbors:

I did go a couple of times to the civic association ’cause they wanted to put a “Stop and Go” in the neighborhood, and I definitely went to that, and I was like, “No.” They shot that down. They wanted a twenty-four-hour Laundromat. They shot that down. I was glad for that, and they wanted a check-cashing place up here, and they said “No.” I always sign up for my membership. I give them money, but a lot of times I am too tired…. Growing up, for me, everybody knew each other from one end to the other. Here, I just mind my business. I know the parents of the kids my children play with, but if I didn’t have kids, I wouldn’t know them. I got to know them by being outside. They were watching her when she was little, and they’d come out and talk. But as far as socializing? No. I don’t spend no time with them, I can tell you that. I couldn’t tell you half the people on this block. Most of the parents work, but they kids is what’s the problem. They know the kid is out doing wrong. They see them selling drugs and doing everything, and I guess, just as long as the kids bring the money home, it’s fine for them.

But even Sonya has given up. Now, when she sees people dealing drugs on her block, she refrains from calling the police because she fears that the dealers will know it was her: “No. I just didn’t want to get involved. They start harassing people if you call the police so they would know. They would know. Somehow, they know…. I’m hoping I hit the Super Powerball [lottery] so I can get out of here.”

In a departure from most pioneers’ views, Nina took the fairly extreme position that Parkmont’s decline has been so severe that it is now as poor in quality as her previous neighborhood. Nina said that she misses the sense of order that once characterized Parkmont, the loss of which she attributes to white flight, the influx of a younger generation, and an increase in the percentage of renters. She believes that all of these factors have led to a critical mass of new residents with inferior values about family and community:

Now, to me, the two neighborhoods are both the same. This was an older community, a very quiet, calm community. It was not a lot of kids outside. Not a lot of running around and stuff like that. I saw a six-year-old at that corner store at 8:00 at night, by herself, buying chicken wings. A six-year-old? It’s that type of mentality. So they don’t care about their kids. They don’t care about their property. You never saw trash like it is out here now. Back at home, where my mom lived, it was just starting to kinda go down. You’d see trash, kids outside all the time, a lot of stuff going on, so I was happy to get away from that. Then, it would be funny, ’cause my mom and them would come up here for it to be peaceful. “We’re going up to see Nina. It’s calm up there.” But now it’s just the same. Younger people have moved in. It’s more blacks up here now. A lot of people rent up here. I didn’t even realize it. If only I had! It really changed. You have a lot of Section 8 homes up here now, which there weren’t before.

Conclusion

The flight of the pioneers and more recent arrival of their replacements, the second wave, mark a second population shift in Parkmont. This chapter highlights the existence and character of intraracial neighborhood cultural hierarchies, identifies dimensions of neighborhood culture that have the potential to cause cultural clashes, and suggests that there are serious consequences to such conflict. Shared racial identity aside, pioneers and second wave residents diverge in their adherence to codes that form five dimensions of neighborhood culture: (1) assimilationist attitudes; (2) sense of ownership; (3) sensitivity to physical and social incivilities; (4) parenting; and (5) attitudes toward crime, social control, and civic involvement.

In densely packed urban communities such as Parkmont, conflict over these dimensions of neighborhood culture cannot be dismissed as common “border skirmishes.” These culture clashes are so all encompassing to residents that the most invested members of the community become dissatisfied and seek to move away. Beyond the study of Parkmont, the dimensions of neighborhood culture uncovered here may be more generally important for understanding other types of changing neighborhoods, including those with high population turnover, populations that are heterogeneous on one or more characteristics, or those experiencing the in-migration of a population that is lower on the social status hierarchy in some way.

There are both similarities and differences between the pioneers who first moved into Parkmont when it was integrating and the second wave of blacks who arrived after it had become predominantly black. Pioneers have more financial and family stability, and their timing of arrival meant that they expected to live in a white or integrated community with a good school. Despite their investment in the community, many pioneers are now interested in moving away, often citing cultural clashes as a main reason for their decreased neighborhood satisfaction. In contrast, the second wave residents feel relatively detached from Parkmont, in terms of both its history and future, and find its problems to be relatively inconsequential. With no memory of another Parkmont, a lack of socialization from long-term elderly white neighbors, and strained relations with pioneers, second wave residents not only tolerate but actually contribute to disorder and crime. With white stayers diminishing in number and pioneers fleeing, Parkmont’s future is uncertain.

Outwardly, Parkmont still maintains a pleasant appearance and is relatively peaceful, quiet, and safe. Additionally, in the aftermath of a major U.S. mortgage crisis, homes here cost enough to “price out” many of the city’s low-income families. However, pioneers continue to leave in search of greener pastures. Some of the suburbs to which they have moved contain large black populations (some over 70%), but many others are more integrated (10% to 15% black), consistent with the fact that this city’s suburbs experienced a significant increase in black population in the 1990s, while retaining high levels of black-white racial separation.

For the foreseeable future, many of Parkmont’s pioneers who are municipal workers will continue to search for relatively safe communities within the city’s very segregated boundaries, while other pioneers with more freedom to move will continue to search for homes in integrating, affordable suburbs surrounding the city or in nearby states that are within commuting distance to their jobs. Thus, there is cause for hope that Parkmont’s social class composition will remain predominantly working class and will never provide a substantial market for serious drug dealing and the violent crime associated with it.

However, as years pass and Parkmont becomes increasingly distanced from its glory days as a desirable “minisuburb,” the problems with physical and social disorder and community values may come to matter even more. The cultural divides and lack of involvement that now characterize the community may overpower its ability to stave off undesirable residents, businesses, nuisance properties, and crime. Chapter 7 introduces the narrative of Billy, a young second wave resident whose troubled life epitomizes the social world from which many pioneers believed they were distancing themselves when they moved to Parkmont. Billy explains the difficult journey to Parkmont that many second wave teens have faced, including family crises, neighborhood and school adjustment problems, conflict with peers, involvement in crime, and struggles with letting go of attachments to old neighborhoods and friends. Though on the surface, many second wave families make for unsympathetic figures, Billy’s story offers a means to understand them better and sheds light on how and why they are different from the pioneers.