COLUMN: The Center City-is-safer myth

From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '99 From Ronald Kim's, "The Wretched of the Earth," Fall '99One day last July, my mother decided to let me down. I had called her that weekend to report that a friend living several blocks to the west of Penn's campus had invited me to move from my Rittenhouse Square studio into a vacancy in her house. My mother was stunned. Fast forward to the second Friday in September and a front page headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Police: Weekend rape tied to Schieber death." The serial rapist who'd strangled Wharton student Shannon Schieber had struck for the fourth time in two years. He was still on the loose. All we had were the roughest of sketches and warnings to young women to take "extra precautions." And one other thing: the rapist was apparently confining his activities to the Rittenhouse Square area. Sure makes me glad I moved to West Philadelphia. To judge from a disturbingly wide spectrum of people I've talked to in the past two months -- friends, Penn students, neighbors -- I might as well have been off to guerrilla combat, voluntarily giving up a cushy apartment in an upscale neighborhood to wander off into the crime-infested jungles west of 41st Street. Am I exaggerating? Consider a few of the responses I received from supposedly well-educated, enlightened individuals: "West Philly?! Why would you ever want to move out there?" "Are you sure it's safe? Do you leave your house at night?" "21st Street? That's, like, Rittenhouse Square! Why would you want to leave?" Thinly disguised beneath the surface of these gut reactions are some of the most pernicious and persistent attitudes continuing to plague our cities. From the point of view of too many downtown residents, West Philadelphia is someplace "out there," removed from and barely a part of the city itself, a 'hood of decaying, grand old houses by day and shootings and muggings galore by night. And these Center City folks -- and their wannabe University City counterparts -- would like to pretend that crime simply doesn't affect everyday life downtown. Such fantasies seemed justified only three years ago, when an unparalleled spate of armed muggings and robberies, plus the death of Penn medical researcher Vladimir Sled, resulted in a true climate of fear on campus. It was this "time of troubles" that led Penn to undertake numerous construction projects, from Sansom Common to the new movie theater and supermarket at 40th and Walnut. Whether as a result or because of increased police activity, reported crimes have dropped significantly, both east and west of 41st Street. But individual acts of violence against Penn students or young professionals, though rare, are hardly less frequent in Center City. Only months before I arrived at Penn, a professional woman in her mid-20s was raped while jogging in a quiet residential neighborhood near Rittenhouse Square. Her body was later found at the bottom of a stairwell. And Schieber's death just last year is still fresh in our minds. Virtually ignored, however, are the day-to-day transgressions on particular blocks or neighborhoods between Market and South streets. My old neighborhood was known for its nightly drug dealing and male prostitution; there was even a suspected prostitution ring in my apartment building that spring. I like to walk around South Street or hang out at Dirty Frank's or the Last Drop at 13th and Pine, but you'll have a tough time convincing me that the atmosphere there is much "safer" than on the 4500 block of Baltimore. And from my own experience, I can attest to uncomfortably aggressive cases of racial harassment from carfuls of high school boys while walking around on Friday or Saturday nights. I repeat these facts not to scare anyone but to dispel the stereotypes -- and they are nothing more -- of a wealthy, crime- and criminal-free Center City. Just as I don't assume that everyone dawdling on 17th and Pine for more than 10 seconds is a pimp or dealer, so too I draw no conclusions about every white teenager from Northeast Philly based on a few stupid punks with nothing better to do than roam around and call me names. Yet still the myth remains, grounded less in statistics or real-life experience than in old-fashioned fear and forgetfulness. Why do so many Penn students continue to believe in the contrast between a kinder, gentler downtown and the mean, dangerous streets off campus? There must be another, more deeply rooted reason for this fear, and I think I know what it is. Since moving to West Philly, I've noticed only a few only obvious and inescapable differences from downtown. My new neighborhood is less prosperous and it has more run-down buildings and vacant areas, more unemployment, more immigrants and a whole hell of a lot more African Americans. Surely it couldn't be that we fear West Philadelphia because, before we ever set our eyes on its charms, walk its streets or ever get to know its people, we've already condemned its "other" inhabitants as potential criminals. But can you think of a better explanation?