“You walk down the street, you get shot.”

My native neighborhood in Philadelphia is defined by its churches, specifically three towering structures that puncture the sky. The German church has the deep, blue steeple and clock. The Orthodox church has the twin green steeples. And the Irish church has the mint green dome stately watching over its property.

From the highway you can see the three churches all in a row along the main avenue. Beyond them, close to the horizon, is a railroad bridge. As a child I had rein to walk, bike and run around my neighborhood, but I was warned never to go near that railroad bridge. On the other side of that bridge was the next neighborhood, which had a much higher black and Latino population than my neighborhood.

I attended junior high school on the other side of the railroad bridge, and when I was old enough, was allowed to walk to school. But I always had to stay on the main two-lane street. No side streets. Don’t look at people. Keep your head up. Don’t pull out any money.

My grandmother left us considerable money in her will, allowing us to move into a bigger house in a neighborhood with grass lawns and driveways. On more than one occasion, while discussing our move, neighbors would say this:

“You’re lucky that you’re getting out.” “It’s getting bad here. They’re starting to move in.”

If someone who didn’t live in the neighborhood asked what “they” meant, the neighbor’s answer would almost always be “criminals.” “Bad people.”

And yet it was common to hear the very same people lower their voices to a whisper when talking about black people, as if there were spies on every corner. It was common to hear the very same people, when comfortable, use racial slurs to describe blacks and Latinos.

And it was common to hear the very same people warn me and every child in the neighborhood never to step foot in that black and Latino community.

And why? “You’ll get shot.”

After living in the Hudson Valley long enough, I started hearing the same things about Newburgh. “It’s bad,” one person would tell me. “You don’t want to go there,” someone else would say. “You’ll get shot.”

People have been shot in Newburgh. Three people were shot outside the Eight-Four-Five Lounge in May. In 2015, an estimated 55 people in the city were injured by firearms.

You can’t play dumb with this: Newburgh has a serious problem with violent crime. But that doesn’t mean we avoid the city. Newburgh needs assistance. It needs second-chance programs. It needs alternative pathways for youth. It needs involvement from invested people. And some people are assisting.

But the problem with “You walk down the street, you get shot,” which we heard from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump Monday at the first presidential debate, is it scares people from ever wanting to approach neighborhoods known for violent crime, and moreover, neighborhoods that they assume must have violent crime.

For example, growing up, I equated violent crime with solely black and Latino populations, because the adults in my life made darn sure to equate those things to me. They scared me enough to ensure I wouldn’t approach.

If we are constantly in fear, we stay within ourselves, and we never begin to understand what’s really happening in our neighboring communities.
