Just once (only once we promise you) let us get on the soapbox with some observations of our community.
We have here in the limited confines of Delmar, Parkview, Skinker and DeBaliviere all the maladies and potential salvations of the chaotic urban environment.
We have an integrated yet polarized community. We have racists on both sides — black militants and whites who are unable to see beyond the color of a person’s skin. We have other black residents who, while suspicious of whitey, have adopted a wait-and-see attitude and others who believe that we are all in the same boat and to make the boat move we are going to have to work together. We have whites who look on the black brothers as a plague destroying “their” nieghborhood, and some do-gooder types who want to save the “backward black race”. Yet we have the majority (we hope it’s a majority) who believe that your skin only makes a difference when it blocks communication.
We have youth — as seen in our teenage column who hope to get us all together and beleaguered middle-age adults who are just trying to get themselves together (see our middle-age column). We have an older Catholic community suspected of trying to control things by the younger members and visa-versa. We have older residents who cast a wary but hopeful eye on the younger adults moving in. We have a small, but so far inarticulate poor community — still being “done unto” instead of “listened to”. Our communication problems are as much economic as racial. We have a large black and white middle class community with unlimited potential and energy to tackle the economic and racial barriers that seem to hang-up our city and indeed our nation.
We also have some unusually good tools — THE PAPER for communication, the Council as the central coordinating and fundseeking organization, the Day Care Center, an outlet for adults and teenagers who care for the children, the residential service and West End Town Houses to attack the enormous housing problems in our densely populated area, and the community school which, if started, would become the meeting place for this diverse and exciting mix of people.
Whether we, as a community, use these tools to close the gaps between ourselves, could well answer the question of whether it is possible to rebuild cohesive neighborhoods of racially and economically mixed people in the city. Our failure or success will only be measured by our openness to each other’s ideas and goals and our willingness to work and work hard for them.
We commit THE PAPER as one means of mobilizing this community’s people power.
Originally published in The Paper, September 1970.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1970_09.pdf, printed page(s) 2.
