I’ve been in construction since I was a kid so I’ve worked with people from all walks of life. One thing I’ve learned is that people are all the same. Some are smart some are dumb. Some are hard working some are lazy. Some are good some are bad. Race has nothing to do with it anyone who tells you that it does is lying or just doesn’t know any better. At the end of the day we are all just trying to make a living so we can feed ourselves and our family and maybe get a piece of ass every now and again.

 

It’s an interesting story about the meadows. Anyone interested in that may want to look up Malaga island.

 

I'll have to check that out.

What's really interesting about places like The Neck, The Meadows, and especially Horntown is how nobody who didn't grow up there will talk about it. Especially Horntown. No white people will ever talk about it. They've completely swept it under the rug.

And to me this is a big reason why these myths persist.

 

It's incredibly ironic that msman comes from a small farming community yet looks down on a place with a similar origin as being a ghetto. Literally the only difference between where you're from and these places I describe (other than them probably having a stronger community) is they were either within the city limits or just outside of them, and on what was wanted land. Because of that, people were FORCED to go from being land-owners or house owners to being renters fighting over industrial jobs. Because that was "civilized" and "the future", etc.

 

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His name is Jethro, he's my favorite bumpkin. He raised cows and picked out pumpkins. My favorite bumpkin.

In all seriousness, literally everything msman ever says flies in the face of history and reality.

He clearly isn't worth anybody engaging him. He just spouts nonsense about literally everything while throwing sneak disses like a coward.

 

Yeah but Spruce Hill and other places like it are diverse with money, sort of. The only diverse places without money for the most part are say West Philly closer to the city limits, Elmwood, parts of South Philly and increasingly parts of the Northeast. North Philly too if you consider black people and Dominicans/Puerto Ricans diversity. Really the Northeast is the only part that comes anywhere close to the diversity The Meadows had. There and Upper Darby are by far the most diverse parts of the entire metro, and in both cases it's because white people fled in droves as the industrial jobs left.

The destruction of places like The Meadows is exactly why this is. That was the last place in the entire area that was diverse and integrated by choice. After that, racial tensions started spiraling out of control in many parts of the city and metro, as they did all over the country.

That's what I grew up with, and it wasn't until very recently that I learned it had ever been different anywhere around here.

 

Well it's not entirely related but had I been here on the 30th anniversary I'm sure I would have.

What's always stung people most about that I think is the fact that it was a black mayor in charge at that time. But I think many feel the white police chief basically "sonned" him. The establishment was still very much white back then.

But I've always felt that destroying that block or so of stable middle class black homeowners is what led to the decline of all of the formerly stable areas surrounding it. Like Yeadon, for example. And don't get me started on them closing what were considered hjghly-regarded majority black public schools like Germantown. The SRC has done irreparable harm to communities for over a decade now.

 

Well that really didn't have anything to do with the city's decline. The decline was entirely due to loss of jobs, businesses, and even entire industries. It really didn't end until I was out of high school, maybe a tiny bit earlier. All throughout the late 90s and early 2000s jobs were leaving in droves, causing people to flee to any neighborhood that was even so much as perceived as being a rung or more above on the socioeconomic ladder.

But it definitely didn't help relations between people. At the same time though, this area is very isolated. You might hear about what happened to so and so in another part but your world most of the time is your neighborhood. That's what shapes your views more than anything. It's part of why there is such a lack of cohesion and unity across different parts but it's also what makes these diverse working/middle class neighborhoods possible in the first place. You take the good with the bad. That's how it's always been with the East Coast.

 

Well I can tell you for a fact that prior to say a decade or two ago, transplants didn't really move to this area except for work or to go to college. Sure there were some but it really wasn't a destination city until the late 2000s at the earliest.

Cobbs Creek is a world away from Center City. In fact, most of my family worked downtown at one point or another, and I doubt they lived their lives any differently after that. That's probably part of the problem but it's the case with every really major city.

 

I would beg to differ. After all, the US class system was imported from Europe.

And a very similar one has existed in the cities of the Middle East and Asia since ancient times.