4

CROSS-RACIAL CAREGIVING

Pioneers Helping Stayers to Age in Place

My neighbors are black on both sides. The ones on one side have two cars. They’re very nice, and she is pregnant. He shovels for me and always asks if I need anything. He even gave me his phone number and told me to call him in case I need anything…. On my street, people get up, go to work, get dressed, and their cars aren’t there all day.

—Rena Grubman, stayer, aged ninety-two

They’re wonderful people. They’re somebody you can talk to and listen to. When I met this guy, they could tell me that the guy was crazy before I even knew. Sometimes, older people can give you something that you can’t see. They could see he wasn’t right for me, and they was right.

—Joy Parker, pioneer, aged forty-two

Laws do not require us to reach out to, befriend, or help our neighbors. We have the option of subscribing to the philosophy underlying Robert Frost’s famous quotation, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Many people choose to remain distant from their neighbors for various reasons, and one might imagine that those who lived through Parkmont’s rapid population change would have been especially loath to build new relationships with incoming black residents.1 Neighborhoods that experience white flight are vulnerable to their longtime residents feeling threatened, fearful of the unknown, resentful of unstoppable change, and prejudiced toward newcomers. Or perhaps more benignly, residents of such communities may simply anticipate a lack of common interests when it comes to fitting in and socializing with people who are different in terms of life-cycle stage and culture. Thus, in a neighborhood such as Parkmont, where elderly whites are increasingly outnumbered by younger blacks and where change has come about rather quickly, it might be expected that “birds of a feather will flock together” or that residents would tend to limit their relationships to people who are similar to them and with whom they would be more likely to feel a true connection.2 Yet Parkmont’s stayers and pioneers have built meaningful and useful relationships and have done so for a variety of unexpected reasons.

On a sunny afternoon in early 2007, a most exceptional story of such cross-racial relationships came from Linda Hopewell, a black Parkmont resident who purchased her home from an elderly Jewish man she called “Mr. Morris.” Linda said that after careful searching, she chose Parkmont because she believed that it was a safe community where property values would continue to appreciate. After placing a bid on Mr. Morris’s home, Linda had an unexpected encounter with him:

After I accepted the bid, Mr. Morris called me a couple days later, and he asked me if I could help him pack. He said that he would leave me some things to help me. I said, “Well, you don’t have to leave me anything.” He’s like ninety-one at the time. I said, “I will just come and help you.” So, my mother and I, we came over. We helped him pack for about three weeks, and he told me that he was gonna leave me all this [gestures to the dining room]. He left me this cabinet. He left me the dishes. Actually, I’m trying to sell those dishes. I got it appraised, and it’s something like $1,200. He got those dishes as a wedding gift. He left me his whole hope chest that they had for their wedding. He left me three TVs. Yeah, but I wasn’t expecting anything. He was a Jewish man, and his wife died in March, I think. And he sold his house in May. They had been together for years, and he was so heartbroken. I still keep in contact with him. I still call him and talk to him. He lives in a home, a retirement home. He was very lonely because he was the only owner of this house, and they been around here for like forty-three years. He was the original owner.

One might think that it would be hard to conjure a more unique story of Parkmont’s emerging cross-racial social interactions than Linda’s. However, this was not the first time I had heard black residents tell me about the ways in which they had helped the elderly whites who were scattered on their block. In fact, both white stayers and black pioneers shared accounts of younger black residents coming to the aid of elderly whites. For instance, stayer Joanne Newcombe was sitting outside on the patio with me when she greeted her next-door neighbor, Talia, a young black woman. As I chatted with Joanne, I watched Talia’s sister carry a basket of clothing from her car into Talia’s house to do laundry there. Talia said hello to us, followed her sister into the house, and closed the door. Then, Joanne leaned over to me and whispered, “See how nice they are? They’ll do anything for you.”

In Parkmont, cross-racial neighboring encounters take two major forms. The first is helping tasks, both routine and more intimate. Most commonly, blacks are helping whites, sometimes in basic, instrumental ways, and at other times in very personal and intensive ways, almost as if they are family members. A second form of cross-racial neighboring can be seen in the exchange of social support and companionship, which is more symmetrical in the sense that blacks also receive some tangible benefits. Using interviews from both blacks (mostly pioneers) and whites, this chapter explores the nature of these two types of cross-racial neighboring interactions to better understand their range, character, and origins.

Help and Neighboring

My neighbors are black on both sides and very lovely people. I have no complaints. They are very congenial and helpful. They shovel [snow] for me. I have a neighbor two doors away. She called me and said, “Miss Muffy, take my name and phone number, and call if you need help. Any time of night.”

—Muffy Nussbaum, aged eighty

Routine Help

Meaningful neighboring is not as common as it once was in many U.S. communities,3 but in Parkmont, whites’ positive evaluations of black neighbors were significantly rooted in their personal experiences of cross-racial neighboring. Stayers are frequently on the receiving end of a core dimension of neighboring: routine help. Almost every stayer and pioneer in Parkmont eagerly shared a story about cross-racial helping behaviors, demonstrating that instrumental support can be an extremely common and important dimension of the culture of racially changing neighborhoods. This is especially true in the beginning stages of white flight, when relations are just starting to form between white stayers and black pioneers.

Research has shown that “routine neighboring” is an important component of neighborhood attachment.4 Routine forms of neighboring can be defined as ordinary, civil behaviors toward neighbors that represent tangible forms of aid.5 Neighbors who know each others’ names, greet each other frequently, have long talks, borrow small items, and “help out” may be seen as engaging in routine neighboring. I was curious about the extent of routine neighboring between whites and blacks in Parkmont.

In general, I suspected that the elderly whites were poor candidates for rolling out the red carpet to young blacks with whom they appeared to have little in common. However, the pervasiveness and the range of cross-racial neighboring in Parkmont violated my expectations that white stayers would be afraid of, or at least guarded toward, black newcomers. In fact, many elderly whites told me that they were quick to reach out and welcome their new black neighbors. When I asked about their cross-racial interactions, many whites recalled stories about the memorable period of time when their very first black next-door neighbor moved in. For instance, Rena Grubman said: “When my neighbor, who is black, moved in, I brought her a Jewish apple cake. You know what she said? She said, ‘When are you moving?’ It wasn’t meant in a mean way. She really wanted to know. I told her, ‘I have no intention of moving.’” Rena’s interpretation of the early connections between stayers and pioneers was that some black pioneers treaded lightly when they first moved in, anticipating that whites might not be welcoming and suspecting that all whites were eager to depart from the rapidly integrating community.

After the excitement of moving settles down, it is common for new residents to experience a period of adjustment to a community, during which time newcomers may feel disconnected, disoriented, or uncomfortable. One might expect these feelings to be even more exaggerated for blacks moving into a white neighborhood, anticipating the watchful “white gaze” of elderly residents.6 But many of the pioneers, though hesitant at first, decided that they wanted to be the first to initiate contact with the stayers and make a good impression. For instance, stayer Gerri Holtzman told me about the time that she received a gift from Dana, her new pioneer neighbor:

Dana came. She was a single woman. Now, her mother lives with her. Her mother’s not well. But one day she brought a cake over and said, “I didn’t know if I should bring it or not—whether you would eat this or not—but my mother said it’s the thought that counts.” She said, “Your husband was so nice to me and treated me so nice when I moved in.”

Elderly women were not the only ones receiving help from pioneers. Male stayers also formed useful neighbor relationships with pioneers. When I interviewed Morris Barsky, he had just moved into a retirement home after losing his wife. At the time that he moved out, his neighbors on both sides were black. Morris told me that when it came to relying on neighbors for help, the pioneers were model citizens.

The other neighbor was a very nice man, and he took care of my car. He took the snow off of it. One time, he said, “Morris, you need a tune-up.” I says, “Okay, Stanley.” And he took it apart, and he left everything on the cement in the back of the garage. And I said to myself, “Morris, you fouled up. That man will never put it together again.” And he did. And he did such a wonderful job. I never had a tune-up like it. He wasn’t even an automobile mechanic. He was a medic in the fire department.

By far, the most common form of cross-racial neighboring in Parkmont consisted of black households providing routine forms of instrumental help with the stayers’ household chores. A typical example of this was explained in Leo and Gladys Katz’s account of their pioneer neighbor watching out for them as they struggled to attend to basic home upkeep:

Leo: The guy across the street, his name is Gervis. He came over one day and changed my light bulb.

Gladys: He ran across the street. He’s a real nice guy.

Leo: I had Gladys standing on a ladder out there to change a lightbulb, and he came across the street, and he said, “Get down off there.” And he got her off of there, and he changed the lightbulb. It’s somebody, you know, you wave to. There’s a guy in the back. We frequently walk out, and he waves. [Laughs] I’m not too pleased he calls me “Pop.”

On the patio at the home of Dolores Duskin, I could hear the sound of the loud bass thumping from speakers at a nearby block party. Dolores told me that she stays inside to avoid the noise, most of which she attributes to the second wave of newer blacks who are now coming into Parkmont. Dolores told me about her pioneer neighbor, Ken Wilkinson (see profile in chapter 5), who strongly disapproves of the recent spate of block parties near his home. Ken handles all of Dolores’s lawn maintenance and much more:

Ken, he’s all over the place. He works for the city. Ken cannot stand dirt, and he walks up and down this street picking up pieces of paper. You probably could eat off of our street, and he’s training his sons how to run a business. He’s gotten this lawn business, and he’s got quite a few customers in the area. And he’s just, sometimes, if you need something done, you can call Ken. I had a problem with the door, and he came over and fixed the door lock…. And his sons are very bright. His wife has her master’s degree in education, and they’re just a wonderful family.

Stayers report that since the whites fled from Parkmont, their casual contacts with black neighbors have become more regular. Sybil Cutler, a widowed stayer who moved to Parkmont in 1948, described this new dynamic:

I have wonderful neighbors. As my husband used to say, “My neighbors now are better than the ones that were here before.” I can’t reach anything. I’m not allowed to get up on a ladder. If I need the batteries changed in the smoke alarms, I call somebody. Anybody. Oh sure, I have their phone numbers. They gave them to me. They asked me to call, and they gave me their phone number in case I needed them at night. Yeah, one lives behind me. I gave him all of my husband’s weightlifting equipment…. My next-door neighbors here—her nephew came to live with her from Jamaica, and he’s a doll. If I need a lightbulb, he’ll get up there and change it…. I needed a new window shade, and when I got it, I called Ronnie [a pioneer], and he put it up for me. Upstairs, I don’t have drapes; I have mini-blinds. I noticed that one wasn’t working too good, and Ronnie came up. I knew what was wrong with it, and I knew how to do it, but I couldn’t do it myself because I am not allowed to get up on even a step stool.

For many stayers, the fact that the pioneers can be counted on is crucial to their independence in Parkmont. Included among the benefits of helpful pioneer neighbors is the fact that they mitigate the need to move. When I asked Gerri Holtzman whether her children are comfortable with the fact that she wants to continue to live in Parkmont, she told me about her daughter, who lives in Indiana but who briefly returned to Parkmont after Gerri’s husband died. “My daughter says, ‘I was always worried about you there until I met the very nice woman next door.’ In fact, my neighbor and I call each other every morning to make sure we’re all right.” Clearly, Gerri thinks that her neighbor’s support helped to convince her daughter that her mother is well cared for in Parkmont. As will be discussed later in the chapter, it is also notable that Gerri believes that this relationship is reciprocal, and that her neighbor also benefits from their connection. For Gerri and others, living next to pioneer families has allowed them to prolong an independent lifestyle in their own homes.

For older residents, the freedom to live independently is so valuable that many stayers are afraid to ask for help from their adult children. In some cases, the fear of being sent away to a retirement home translates into stayers becoming more guarded and secretive about problems they are having, which further places them at risk. Vera Goffman, an eighty-year-old widow, talked with me as we waited for her son to visit from out of state. With no relatives nearby to help her, Vera often feels helpless to deal on her own with household problems that have compromised her safety. She confided to me about the much-needed routine help that she receives from pioneers such as her neighbor, Douglas, a divorced father of three who works as a city bus driver:

I’ve got one next door here, and he’ll do whatever I want. Well, of course, I pay him for it, but he’s very nice. One day, I couldn’t open up my backdoor. I finally opened it, and then I couldn’t close it. So I put a lot of things against the door so no one would know that it was not locked. So he knocked on my door, and he said, “Vera, did you know your door was open?” I said, “Yes. I couldn’t close it.” He says, “Well, why didn’t you let me know?” So he fixed it for me. So we became friends. I needed the bathroom painted, and he says, “Anytime you want anything, please let me know.” So, he didn’t want money, and I said, “I insist.” And he shovels my walk when it snows and all that. And that’s worth more than anything really…. I think they’re wonderful. They’re very respectful…. It’s just that they always say, “Hello. How are you?” Which is all I want. Look, I wasn’t a busybody before. I certainly am not one now, so I always say, “Hello. How are you? How are the children?”

Because many of the neighborhood’s black families must be away at work all day and the elderly whites spend most of their time at home, stayers who are able to sometimes reciprocate in providing help to black families. Margaret Meadows, a pioneer and nurse, told me that at first she helped the elderly whites more than they helped her. However, she soon began to call on them to help her manage her own house hold:

My neighbor next door, she passed away but my son used to go to the store for her because she couldn’t get out. Just to the regular store. Rite Aid. Milk and ice cream and things like that. Then, she moved with her daughter. She was getting sick anyway. We would always come out and talk…. When we got our sewer done, the guy—I think he’s Greek or Italian—was a retired plumber. He stayed right here, even though me and my husband had to go to work. He watched them to make sure they did what they were supposed to do.

Thus, for a time the social world of Parkmont became a far more racially diverse place than ever before; it was not just a neighborhood for exchanging pleasantries and welcomes, but it was also for extending real help to people in need on a regular basis. While becoming established in their new homes and community, the pioneers often found themselves reaching out and coming to the aid of their elderly neighbors. However, in many cases the relationships extended beyond the expected small, polite gestures or the routine forms of household help. Over time, neighbor relationships between stayers and pioneers in Parkmont evolved, matured, and deepened to become far more.

Intimate and Intense Social Neighboring: Anything but Routine

The stayers’ needs for more intense forms of support have grown with age. In response, Parkmont’s blacks have increasingly helped in ways that are more intimate and expressive, as well as more labor-intensive and crisis-oriented. Many stayers who have become sick do not have the benefit of a healthy spouse or adult children who live nearby to help them. In particular, many Jewish stayers have children who are successful professionals who have left the region in pursuit of better job opportunities. Some stayers never had children and only have infrequent visits from extended family members. Pioneers often fill these voids for stayers, as revealed by residents’ own stories about their surprisingly intense levels of neighboring. These cross-racial encounters between neighbors involve forms of support such as caregiving during an emergency or illness. Typically, in black families these more private matters are reserved for family members and friends. In providing this special kind of help, the pioneers have taken the role of neighbor far beyond what most people would consider “routine,” obligatory, or expected.

Parkmont’s cross-racial neighbor relationships often transcend routine helping in times of emergency. Joe Cassidy explained how one of his pioneer neighbors greatly surpassed his rather low initial expectations:

I have a black on each side. One side talks to me, and the other doesn’t. This one time, one [pioneer] neighbor lost her power. Her name’s Lisa Williams. She calls me “Mr. Joe.” Anyway, she asked me if I had any candles. Then, guess what? She gave them to me. And I used them. I thought she was asking, but she was really offering.

Similarly, Sadie Underwood, a widow with no children, gushed with praise when I asked about her black neighbors. She elaborated on how much she has missed Jodi, a pioneer from across the street who was like a daughter to her when she became ill:

She was a policewoman. She was the first one to move in here. She came with one child. Her mother lived with her, too. Her name was Rosa. Very nice. Light-skinned. And the kids were great. She moved away. See, she didn’t send her kids to Lombard. She had two more children here. They were the nicest kids. If it snowed, they would come over and shovel the pavement. They were great. And then, I had come home from the hospital. I had a stint implant, and the little girl came over, and she says, “I’ll do your laundry. I’ll do your cleaning. You tell me, and I’ll do anything for you.” They were great. They were wonderful, wonderful children.

Joe’s comment about his suspicion that the pioneers were going to be needy or pestering and Sadie’s fixation on skin tone reveal that some stayers had less than enlightened views of black people. However, like so many stayers, both Joe and Sadie developed strong feelings of fondness, appreciation, and respect for their pioneer neighbors who have provided so much support during difficult times.

For some elderly stayers, pioneers’ involvement and interest in their lives can mean the difference between life and death. Although stayers could, in theory, contact professional human services workers, they are often hesitant to do so, especially when dealing with relatively minor concerns. Additionally, professionals do not offer the more natural, sincere, and preventative support of close neighbors who are familiar with their elderly neighbors and are watching and checking in on a regular basis. When the pioneers opt to intervene in the lives of stayers, what they give in terms of comfort, support, and a sense of security is profound. Leo Katz spoke of the extraordinary bond that he and his wife, Gladys, have formed with Joy Parker, a Jamaican hospital worker who is a pioneer neighbor:

I met Joy. She was buying the house next door. She’s not always easy to understand; she’s got this Jamaican accent that when she talks fast, it’s tough…. She moved in. We went to see her, to welcome her. She appreciated the way we made her feel so much at home, and so we became friendly. Anyway, I had an incident one night. I wound up going to the hospital at 12:00 at night. Joy took me—with Gladys. Joy had been sleeping and [had] gotten out of bed. We get to the hospital, and I thanked her. And I told her, “We’ll take a cab home when they’re finished with me.” And she looks at me, and she said, “You think I’m gonna let Gladys sit here by herself?” Joy sat there until 2:00in the morning and brought us home…. Just a few months ago Gladys had an incident and was in the hospital for a couple of nights…. Later, I came home and we left Gladys there, still in the ER. Joy heard this, and she took me back to the hospital just to make sure that she would see Gladys, and nothing was gonna happen to her. And then Joy brought me back. So, she’s there, you know, if we need her.

When eighty-six-year-old Edda DeLuca’s pioneer neighbors moved away from Parkmont, she felt an acute sense of loss that epitomizes the bond that some stayers feel with pioneers. A widow with no children, Edda is originally from Italy, and she spoke to me with a thick accent. Even in the heat of summer, she wore heavy support stockings, and her head was covered with a blue lace scarf. I noticed that a wheeled walker was parked in the corner of the living room, and the mail on her coffee table included literature about retirement homes along with an English language magazine titled Catholic Digest. In her broken and heavily accented English, she excitedly told me about how close she had been with the black pioneer family who once lived next door. They were the first blacks on the block, but a couple of years ago they decided to move to the suburbs in an adjacent state:

They shoveled. When they were moving, the sign stayed up a long time. I wanted them to stay, but they left. They used to put salt down and clean the street and the sidewalk. When he did his lawn, he did my lawn. He said, “I have to do like someone else would do for my mother.” When I lost my husband, my neighbor gave me a lot of encouragement. He said, “In case you’re afraid or see something or hear something, knock on the wall. If you just notice some noise or thing that make you upset, just you knock on the wall. You no have to call us on the telephone.”

Edda went on to tell me that her neighbor insisted that they exchange phone numbers, and when his family moved away, he gave her their new address and told her to stay in touch. Edda proudly said that the family still sends her Christmas and Easter cards every year. To emphasize the continued strength of their bond, she told me that they come to her home every year to bring her a poinsettia at Christmas. Then, with a sigh, Edda lamented that her new black neighbors do not seem interested in having a more familiar relationship with her. She said the new people often shovel the snow for her, but then she shook her head and said, “But, that’ sit.”

The Reasons That Black Neighbors Support the Stayers

Black Caregiving Culture

Many cultures treat older people with heightened levels of respect, but reverence for the elderly is especially pronounced in African American culture. Though blacks are a heterogeneous group, research has shown that there is a distinct black caregiving culture grounded in core religious and spiritual beliefs, family orientation, and a distrust of the health care system. Some Afrocentric theorists have highlighted the topic of respect for the elderly in their efforts to tell a more balanced story of the U.S. black family,7 arguing that many dimensions of black Americans’ cultural respect for the elderly originate from or share similarities to African values.

Thus, African Americans’ reverence for the elderly stems, in part, from the intergenerational transmission of cultural values from ancestors who also passed on other cultural values that are seen in U.S. black culture such as “collectivity, sharing, affiliation, obedience to authority, belief in spirituality, the importance of the past.”8 In Parkmont, I observed that black residents rarely called elderly people by their first names, and even with permission to do so they preferred to use the word “Miss” or “Mr.” before addressing them by their first names. One pioneer explained her almost unconditional reverence for Parkmont’s elderly in this way:

I think it’s because of the way you’re raised. I wouldn’t dare disrespect an old person. I was raised that you don’t disrespect old people. Because they’re old. And out of bad, comes good, you know? Like the neighbor that used to live here. She was all right, but you know, she was strange. We still did for her, though. I would rake her leaves up. And she would come out and say “hi” when she was there.

Because the relationships between stayers and pioneers seemed to benefit the whites so much, I wanted to get a sense of whether black residents felt used or taken advantage of by the older whites or whether the stayers seemed like a burden in any way. In general, the pioneers did not report feelings of resentment or bother, but rather a sense of duty. When asked if the stayers had ever done anything to help them out, one pioneer seemed to think that I was missing the point, saying that for blacks, respect for the elderly takes primacy over reciprocity or a shared cultural background:

Nah. They never did anything for us. They really don’t bother us that much, I don’t think. Actually, they really never asked us to do anything for them. We just did it. If it needs to be done, we’ll do it. You know, black people aren’t as prejudiced as whites, I don’t think.

Blacks are more likely to be the main caregivers for their aging family members or “to take care of their own people” than to place them in assisted living, and often take great pride in this aspect of black culture.9 Many blacks are distrustful and even disapproving of the practice of placing elderly kin in nursing homes and hospital-like settings.10 Frequently, black families work together to care for elderly parents and grandparents by taking them into their own homes or taking on specialized roles (e.g., finances, transportation, shopping, meals). In Parkmont, some pioneers expressed moral indignation about the way that they believe white elderly people are treated by their families. In general, many pioneers felt sorry for their elderly white neighbors because they have noticed that many stayers’ families live far away and visit infrequently, leaving the elderly in need of help and companionship. Part of this opinion stemmed from pioneers’ experiences in Parkmont, but part was based on what they have witnessed at their jobs in helping professions.

Occupational Socialization

Reflecting national trends among African American workers,11 Parkmont’s black residents primarily held human services and city jobs with most working as nurses, social workers, police officers, corrections officers, street cleaners, EMTs, loan officers, postal workers, teachers, public transit workers, and “direct care” hospital workers. Following the housing frenzy of the times, many were also breaking into real estate. In general, Parkmont’s black women were more likely than the men to be professionals or employed in private industry, but the relatively generous pay scales and benefits associated with city jobs and the human service professions have enabled working-class families to afford the move to Parkmont. These jobs have also provided black residents with the socialization, experience, and sensitivity that are conducive to helping elderly neighbors. Furthermore, though few residents were regular churchgoers, spirituality is likely to have played a role in pioneers’ neighborliness as many mentioned being “with god” and strongly identified as Christians (with the exception of one newly converted Muslim family).

White stayers Jerry and Sally Dubrow strongly preferred their black neighbors, whom they viewed as compassionate and nonjudgmental, to their old white neighbors. They believed that they had been treated as outcasts by Parkmont’s whites because Jerry worked the night shift as a janitor and because Sally is obese and physically disabled. Jerry reported that they regularly receive help from black neighbors and this kind of aid increased greatly when Sally’s disability forced her to rely on a wheel chair:

The neighbors, there’s a gentleman across the street—there’s two brothers and two sisters, they work for 9–1–1. All four of them. They would run out—even in the middle of the night—they would run out and pick her up if she fell. One time she fell, and she sprained her bad foot. She had to go to the hospital. They called the other shift workers to take her over to the hospital. That’s why I say we got wonderful neighbors now.

Anne Jackson, a pioneer who works as a nurse, elaborated on her special relationships with stayers and her family’s significant efforts to support them when times got tough. She said that she and her husband, an EMT, continue to offer stayers plenty of unsolicited help, always refusing payments that are offered. Anne and her husband, perhaps due their lines of work, keep on top of the health status of their elderly neighbors. They also seemed protective of the stayers’ reputations, as Anne made a point of telling me that when her next-door neighbors had to move away recently, it was due to health reasons and not because of racial antipathy or discomfort. She emphasized that she and her family have fostered special relationships with many stayers that go beyond simple helping gestures, often having them over to socialize and share celebrations:

My next-door neighbor, she was older. She had a heart attack, a triple bypass. She couldn’t cut her grass. She couldn’t keep her yard up. So, my husband would cut her grass, and I would mess with [tend] her flowers, even in the back. I would just do it. If it was snow, my husband would shovel…. And the Jewish couple? They were really old. She went to the senior hangout here all the time, the Jewish, what do you call it? [JCC?] Yeah. She went there all the time, and they were nice. They’d talk, play with the grandkids. We swept up for them. We just helped out. They were nice. Really sweet. They would come over at Christmastime. They loved my husband ’cause he did all the work. [Laughs.] He got the Jewish cookies. He got presents because he did a lot for them. The Jewish couple had to move because they were getting old, and Al was on dialysis, and he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do the stairs anymore. They honestly moved because of a health reason.

The intensive support from pioneers became more important as stayers’ family members and friends moved away from Parkmont. In general, elderly stayers cannot turn to one another for support because the remaining elderly whites are burdened by their own problems. Additionally, as the neighborhood turned over, fewer stayers lived directly next door to each other. Thus, when in need, stayers turn to those who are accessible and offer them help. White stayers consistently made it a point to relate to me that pioneers usually offered support to them without even being asked.

Symmetrical Social Support: What Blacks Get Out of It

Reciprocity is an important component of neighboring. A shared feeling of reward can strengthen the bonds between residents and build a sense of community morale. Many of the examples of cross-racial neighboring mentioned so far could be seen as asymmetrical or nonreciprocal exchanges between elderly white stayers and younger black pioneers. However, those who provide support to older people often reap rewards that are less obvious or tangible. One can infer that, as with all altruistic behaviors, one incentive for helping other people is that it adds meaning and satisfaction to our own lives. Parkmont’s residents explicitly stated that cross-racial neighboring in the form of asymmetrical helping often flourished into deeper relationships that the residents viewed as mutually beneficial.

Emotional Support and Companionship

Heterogeneous groups are often seen as having little in common, whereas people of a similar race, culture, age, and family structure are assumed to feel more comfortable with one another, and thus are likely to be more social. Social similarities are thought to increase individuals’ motivation to spend time together and heighten the potential for meaningful interactions. Yet in Parkmont, residents reported intimate cross-racial relationships that seemed to transcend rigid social categories. Both groups reported that these kinds of relationships involved an exchange of support and friendship, rather than a mere one-sided civic duty to help the aged.

The relationship between Leo and Gladys Katz and Joy Parker provided some insight into the multidimensional and mutually beneficial nature of Parkmont’s cross-racial neighboring. The couple told me that Joy loves to go to their house to chat with Gladys and they even have the keys to each other’s home. They explained that Joy makes them feel as though they “have somebody,” which gives them great comfort in a neighborhood where longtime friends are no longer easy to find. At the same time, Leo and Gladys stressed that they have also “been there for her” when “she has her problems.” They specifically mentioned that they have been a shoulder for Joy to cry on when she has been hurt by past boyfriends, some of whom they described as “disasters.” Leo and Gladys also emphasized that their relationship with Joy has not been based on her pity for them as elderly shut-ins. Joy corroborated this, and went so far as to say that she actually envies the old couple’s social life:

I never felt sorry for Gladys and Leo ’cause there ain’t nothin’ wrong with them. They go out more often than me. And they’ll have to ask me, “Come on, let’s go out to dinner.” And I’ll be like, “Look, I’m too tired.” They go out New Year’s! They be coming in late that night. I be in bed sleeping, sound asleep, and they be gone. After ten, they be coming in, and I be sleeping. They be havin’ more fun than me. They go to shows. They go to the movies. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with them to be sorry for them. They can do stuff. They can go shopping. I wanted them to stay here forever.

But after many health problems, Leo and Gladys had recently moved into a retirement community in a high-rise apartment building. A few weeks after the move, I visited them; they seemed sad and regretful. They no longer own their car and told me that they long for their old life. They were especially depressed about being surrounded by elderly people in extremely poor health. After my visit, I stopped by Joy’s house. She asked me all about her former neighbors and told me how much she misses them. She confided that she had a hard time sleeping on the first night that her “best friends” were gone:

They’re wonderful people. They’re my best friends. We call each other every night and make sure each other is okay. They came over here and ate my food. They enjoyed it. Jerk chicken, salad. They ate dessert. They eat everything. They had a good time. They be my good friends of eight years. When I just came here, they welcomed me with cake…. The first night they moved, they called just to make sure that I was okay…. Anyone can call first. Sometimes they call and leave me a message when I’m not here. I’ll call Gladys right back. We talk on the phone. And if she ain’t got nothin’ to talk about, then she just callin’ to make sure I’m okay. They make good friends.

Skeptics might consider the cross-racial relationships in Parkmont to be parasitic in that one party seems to benefit far more than the other. However, when I proposed that some might find it hard to believe that a healthy woman of her age gets very much out of a relationship with older people who have been in poor health, Joy became annoyed. She quickly responded with disbelief and outrage, saying people who believe that are “crazy” and stressed to me that her life has been greatly improved because of the bonds she has formed with some of the stayers:

Older people’s far more important to me right now. I don’t have many young friends. I talk to people, but I try not to get close to them. That’s the same thing the pastor preached in church today. The people you laugh and talk with? They’re not your friends, but Gladys is my friend. I can tell Gladys anything, and I’m okay. ’Cause my younger friends tell me I’m too secretive. Things I tell Gladys and Leo, I’m not gonna tell them. The older people and the younger people are friends. No, I could never lose them. We talk every night. There is not a night we go to bed and not talk. Just call and say “hi.” They call me and tell me how was their dinner. I went up there to make sure they was serving them good dinner. They gonna be my friends forever. I’m just a normal person. I’m young and talking to old people as friends.

Rena Grubman told me a story that revealed the more intimate and balanced nature of her relationship with her pioneer neighbors. When I ran into her on her block one day, Rena told me that her neighbors, Nina and Daryl Jones, had a small kitchen fire. Nina and their newborn stayed in Rena’s spare room until the fumes dissipated. Later, Nina told me more about the mutual exchange that characterizes her family’s relationship with Rena and with Joe Cassidy, another stayer on the block. Like many pioneers, Nina told me that as Parkmont has continued to change and the population of blacks has continued to churn, the only neighbors to whom she feels close are the stayers:

Miss Rena’s really nice; she’s older, so we look out for her. But other than that? That’s really all that I talk to on the block. Mr. Joe, we look out for him. If I don’t see him in a couple days, I’ll ring the bell ’cause I know he’s alone, too. So, we look out for those two. You ring the bell. “You okay, Mr. Joe? Haven’t seen you in a couple days. Need anything?” My husband doesn’t even ask Miss Rena if she need him to shovel; he just shovels. If we see her going out, like she walks on a cane, so we’ll go over help her walk down to whoever’s picking her up, things like that. If I’m going to the store, I’ll ask her if she need anything. I’ll call her. We talk. She called me to ask me if my husband and I had shoveled for her. I said, “Yeah.” She said, “Oh, I’m coming over.” And she came over; she said, “I would bake you a cake, but I bought you one.” She comes over on my son’s birthday. When I had him, she came over and during the summertime when I was home with him on maternity leave. We would sit outside and talk and stuff. She was just over here the week before last—brought him an Easter present. A duck. She’s Jewish, so it touched me that she bought him an Easter present, and she doesn’t celebrate Easter. She gives us gifts at Christmastime. Mr. Joe gives us cookies every Christmas.

Morris Barsky also provided examples of the ways in which he and his black neighbors both reaped benefits from their relationship, whether it was watching over each other or celebrating important milestones in their families’ lives:

My neighbors were black and very, very nice. Oh, I knew them well. I knew them enough to go to birthday parties, graduation parties, and all that. I always gave a check and card. They were very nice to me. They did my lawn, you know. Reciprocated. We were nice to each other. And they made calls. If they didn’t see me in a day or two: “Mr. Barsky, are you okay?” They had my phone number, and I had theirs. And when they went away and left the house, they gave me the key to the house. I liked them as neighbors. Best neighbors I ever had.

Sense of Stability and Institutional Memory

When a neighborhood rapidly loses long-term residents, the incoming residents are also deprived of something important: an institutional memory of the community. Parkmont’s institutional memory takes the form of the collective memory of long-time residents who have a body of knowledge gained through various resources and experiences that they can share and pass on to future generations of residents. In order for stayers to effectively pass on their historical wisdom about all they have witnessed and learned, they need opportunities to connect with an audience who cares. Though the elderly stayers have faith in the pioneers, they also know that the pioneers are being replaced by a second wave of black residents who seem less invested in neighborhood leadership and participation, making it unlikely that the stayers’ collective memories of Parkmont will be retained. This new group, the second wave, is different from the pioneers in that its members have no memory of Parkmont in better times, have minimal contact with the white old-timers, and only rarely do they have positive, meaningful interactions with pioneers.

Residents’ acquisition of and socialization into community norms are ecological in that they are a response to the population and environmental conditions that are specific to Parkmont at a point in time. Because of their long tenure in Parkmont, stayers believed that they have the power, authority, and institutional memory to serve as “sponsors” and teach new residents the norms of life in Parkmont.12 In general, this was true in the past when new white people would move in to Parkmont, and it was especially true when integration began to take hold. One stayer described her husband’s longtime habit of reaching out to socialize all newcomers into neighborhood norms, emphasizing that her husband did not discriminate by race in this practice: “My husband was very outgoing. The first black people, my husband taught all of them. He would get out the first snow and clear the whole path and both pavements. He taught them and the white ones that moved in after the ‘originals.’” Like many communities, Parkmont’s social structure placed the older residents at the top of the hierarchy. At the start of integration, stayers could still effectively perform this role because they remained relatively healthy and active, but they were eager to pass the baton to Parkmont’s pioneers, who had young families and who seemed eager to fit in to the social fabric of the community.

In general, the pioneers were not only accepting but enthusiastic about the stayers’ sense of ownership over the community; it demonstrated to them that they had made a good decision in choosing Parkmont and had entered a neighborhood where residents remained invested in quality of life even after the onset of integration. Though the stayers’ desire to spend time with pioneers sometimes felt overwhelming to the newcomers, pioneer Korrie Dawson appreciated their proactive efforts to maintain the neighborhood. She asserted that the stayers made genuine efforts to get to know her and share with her their love of Parkmont:

Mr. Goldberg would walk up and down the street and pick up the trash. You would never have believed his age. Wonderful man. And he loved my daughter, the one in the military. He always came over to ask how she’s doing. And when he just saw her car parked, he’d see her, and come running out. Oh, I really, really hated to see him leave. The funny thing is that all of the Jewish couples that lived here, it was a ritual for them in the evening to sit out. I’m not a sitter-outer, and sometimes I used to feel bad, like I might be offending. Because they would say, “Oh, if you’re not doin’ anything, come and sit out with me.” I’m like, “I don’t really have that kind of time”…. When I came here nine years ago, my neighbors on both sides were Jewish and older. The one on this side, really nice lady, would come out and talk to us all the time, bring little things over for us. Her daughter took her to the nursing home. And on this side, they were a really nice couple, always together, and when he passed, the kids, you know, took her away [from her home and the neighborhood].

Parkmont presented an unusual opportunity for younger black and older white residents to have intimate social contact, which in such a segregated city, seemed almost exotic.

Perhaps because interacting with older people often involves listening to their stories and recollections of memories, many pioneers found themselves fascinated by stayers’ cultural backgrounds. Anne Jackson was awed when she learned about the details of her elderly neighbors’ early lives: “We had a Jewish couple, and they were in the Holocaust. They were Holocaust survivors. You could see the numbers. They were sweet. They were really good.” Anne credited the fact that she chose to move to an integrated neighborhood with exposing her family to a group of older people who have unique knowledge and valuable lessons to share. Similarly, Sam Wilson, a pioneer who was serving as the first black president of the Parkmont civic association at the time of my fieldwork, told me that he made it a priority to know the names and life histories of all of the white stayers on his block. He urged me to interview some of the stayers on his street so I could appreciate their community knowledge and hear the interesting stories of long-time residents as well as better understand the bonds that stayers had formed with pioneers in the midst of racial change: “You’d like to talk to my next door neighbor, too. She’s Russian. She’s lived there since the ’60s and ’70s. Another guy on my block’s been living here since the ’60s, and he’s Italian, and I mean, he speaks Italian. He’s from Italy, and he’s seen the neighborhood grow and all.”

Stayer Sybil Cutler believed that pioneers may actually prefer to have the elderly whites as neighbors because they are informed, predictable, and quiet. She told me this anecdote about her neighbor, a pioneer whose family took the time to visit with Sybil after her husband died:

He had only lived here maybe not quite a year, and him and his wife came in to give their condolences. The first thing he said to me was, “Are you going to move?” I said, “No, Sir. I’m not going to move. Don’t worry about it.” He says, “We were worried.” In other words, they don’t want it. They don’t know who they’ll get as a neighbor. They’re black people. They’re not new; they’ve been here about six years. Yeah, that’s the first thing he said to me. “Are you going to move?” I said, “No, Sir.”

Ken Wilkinson’s family fondly remembers the two elderly Jewish sisters who were their next-door neighbors when they first moved to Parkmont. He and his sons, Ken Jr. and Marc, told me about how distraught they were when one of the sisters died. Marc, the fifteen-year-old, shared the following story about his relationship with them:

If we were to get locked out after school, we would usually go over their house ’cause they were usually home after school. When we’d get our report cards, we’d go over there and show them. And they’d give us candy and stuff like that for our birthdays. And we’d go over there for dinner or something like that. That’s what we did with them.

Ken Jr., the sixteen-year-old who plans to become an engineer, shared similar stories about the good times he shared with these elderly sisters. In fact, he choked up during his interview with me while confiding that he felt especially “emotional” when his neighbor died:

In the morning, my mom and dad would leave early and they would take care of us. I was upset when she passed. Also, for forty-five minutes between school and when my parents would come home, we stayed with them. We liked the Steelers and they liked the Cowboys. Recently, we had a “Cowboys versus Steelers” game. You could hear us cheering in our house, and then you could hear them cheering in their house. They came up to the window when they scored! When I would be there, they would ask me how school was going. You have a nice conversation. When she passed, I was really upset. I was crying.

While it may seem that elderly whites would have very little to offer young black residents, both pioneers and stayers told stories about the ways in which they find cross-racial relationships in Parkmont to be mutually fulfilling. The pioneers’ gifts are routine as well as intense forms of instrumental help and social support that allow stayers to age in place for a longer period of time. Stayers provide what little they have to give at their advanced age: emotional support and companionship, as well as a sense of community stability and institutional memory that is needed to foster an attachment to Parkmont.

Conclusion

In the process of investigating the cross-racial neighboring context of white flight, I uncovered a surprising story. Many pioneers and stayers have made a special connection. This happened even though the pioneers had not known the stayers for long, had every reason to suspect that these elderly whites would hold racist attitudes toward them, and even though pioneers had very little in common with stayers in terms of age, family structure, and cultural background. It is ironic that so many of the whites who left Parkmont were threatened by the idea of blacks moving in, when in fact, the pioneers’ arrival turned out to be fortuitous for those who stayed and benefited from the support of younger black neighbors. Many stayers rest better at night knowing that they can call their pioneer neighbors in case of an emergency, and their families have peace of mind because they know that their elderly loved ones have people who watch over them. Much of the pioneers’ willingness to help stayers stems from their cultural values about the elderly and their socialization in helping professions, but they are also on the receiving end of social benefits from their access to older, long-term neighbors.

In navigating Parkmont’s interracial relationships, the importance of the cultural intersections of race and class emerged as an important theme. I had expected that stayers would have great difficulty adjusting to the rapid influx of blacks. After all, Parkmont’s elderly whites reported minimal meaningful exposure to black families in the past. In addition, stayers’ openness to integration was likely to be contaminated by the unanimous fears expressed by stayers’ friends, family members, and former neighbors, who ominously warned them about the supposedly inevitable decline and danger that would follow the arrival of black residents. Yet many stayers kept an open mind, whether because of their unique religious or cultural backgrounds, more tolerant individual personalities, or simply because of their resolve to stay in their homes. Most stayers reported that they were relieved to see that the pioneers “belonged” in Parkmont. In other words, they were pleased that the new black residents were homeowners, held working-class occupations in helping professions, and held respectable cultural orientations toward family and community. The stayers especially did not anticipate the extraordinary efforts of so many pioneers to reach out to them and make their remaining years in Parkmont feel so much easier and more secure. To many stayers, the pioneers’ respect for the elderly represented a commitment to a personal morality code that seemed to extend to the community as a whole.

From the perspective of the pioneers, the elderly stayers were allies in their aspiration to maintain the status of their neighborhood as a safe and calm place, despite the reality that their hopes for stable integration were fading away. Overall, the pioneers reported positive feelings toward the elderly whites. Despite their advanced age and limited ability to offer equivalent types of help, stayers’ life experience, knowledge of Parkmont, and sense of community ownership was a welcome change for pioneers seeking a better quality of life. In many ways, pioneers considered their own values about family and community to be more similar to those of the stayers than to the people they had left behind in their old neighborhoods. Despite differences in race and age, both pioneers and stayers share a value system that places their home and community as a top priority. In part, this can be seen as part of a shared working-class value system. But social class similarities alone are an insufficient explanation for the cross-racial bond. As I discuss in chapters 5 and 6, pioneers differ from the incoming second wave of black residents in their assimilationist cultural orientation, timing of arrival, and family structures.

Although the topic of neighboring is not new, this chapter shows that in white-flight communities, pioneering black residents can play an important role in the lives of those who remain. In places like Parkmont, what starts as cross-racial intergenerational neighboring based on asymmetrical forms of support can develop into something more symbiotic and satisfying for both stayers and pioneers. The next chapter’s vignette is about Ken Wilkinson, a pioneer who took a leadership role in maintaining community values in the midst of Parkmont’s rapid population change. His story represents the aspirational journey that many pioneers made when they integrated Parkmont, and it demonstrates how the community has transformed now that the era of white flight is over and the new phase of black flight has been set in motion.