I gave myself a “devastation tour” of New Orleans the other day as I was passing through. The Lake View neighborhood where I stayed is still pretty bad, but it's far better than the Lower Ninth Ward. Look, most of the city is still pretty bad, but the difference between the the white areas and the black ghetto is still quite stark. Both are at least one-third vacant, but the latter just hasn't even had it's “total loss” houses demolished yet. Almost all of them, occupied or vacant, still have the spray painted indicators of how many dead people and animals had been found inside.

I ventured out on foot to an area of the city known as "Treme", which borders the French Quarter. This is an especially rough neighborhood... though New Orleans is filled with them. A RIP mural on the side of a building informed me that Soulja Slim, a prominent rapper on the No Limit record label, had been murdered there recently. I used to listen to him a little bit when I was a kid... I had always thought that he had hailed from the Calliope, an uptown housing project notorious for producing Master P. I remember walking through Treme with my friend during Mardi Gras when I was 16, so I had a bit of nostalgia for it.

Then I realized it wasn't just nostalgia... this was just the the normal feeling I get when I walk through such places. I hadn't been in one for such a long time that I had forgotten what it was like. That's right.... believe it or not, poor neighborhoods just have a special allure for me. I know this will seem very strange to most readers and since I've cannot easily justify such feelings in a conversation, I'll attempt to do so below. Bear with me through, for there are so many potential reasons that it will take me quite a while to flesh them out and pick the most salient.

Is it because I find affluent (or just middle class) suburbs so distasteful and boring? In general, the less contrived (planned) something seems, the more I like it. Of course, this could be a simple case of rebelling against the place and people from which I came, although I don't find that too many other kids from the suburbs like hanging out in the ghetto. It is partially because they are afraid that I choose not – I take pride in not being terrified of poor people, whatever their color. They seem “realer” than most people... I guess mostly because they lack other options.

Is it because I've had adventures there? Maybe - they are just places where great stories seem to happen. When I was thirteen years old, I used to ride my bike to the poorer neighborhoods of Jacksonville Beach (back when there were still a lot of those) to get into trouble. In the process, I got the chance to hang out with a lot of street people and shady characters who seemed immediately more interesting that the other adults I knew. When I was eighteen, I was arrested for trespassing in Chicago's most notorious public housing project, the Robert Taylor Homes. Both it and Cabrini Green have now been demolished. I still contend that if one isn't trying to procure drugs and doesn't carry too much bling, there is very little threat from residents... the police are a different matter altogether.

Is it a question of race? I don't think so, but the people being different from myself surely helps. So, would I feel the same way about a holler in Appalachia? Maybe not if the houses were far apart. I need dense poverty. A seriously bad trailer park full of hillbillies would does the trick. Would I feel the same way in a black ghetto as I would an Indian villiage – either ours (Rosebud/Pineridge) or those in the subcontinent? Having spent some time in both, I can say yes. However, neither feel quite as dangerous and hostile as an urban ghetto. So, yes, it is exoticism, but with some additional factors.

Is it the feeling of not being safe?
I find that occasionally feeling unsafe makes life more exciting. Most people like me have underused fear mechanisms in their brain that our ancestors relied on heavily. I encourage you to put your evolutionary adaptations to use! This doesn't necessarily mean driving recklessly or getting into adventure sports Being an affluent outsider in a poor neighborhood produces a really unique sort of heightened alertness. We're so conditioned by our parents, peers, and the media to be afraid of such places that most people won't even drive through them with the windows up and the doors locked. How are you supposed to feel alive like that?

Is this it a behaviorally conditioned attitude?
Yes, I admit that I've worked myself into feeling this way. I was not born different... duh. My studies in sociology and history have taught me a lot about what makes these places the way they are. Rationalization does make them seem less unpredictable. Yes, I do have an abstract liberal allegiance to the downtrodden? Yes, by choosing to live in a poor black neighborhood for a few years of my life, I began the process of making such places feel like home.

Am I just part of that subculture of white boys embracing hip hop? I would contend that the media has not much helped me get to this point. I did not choose “wigger” as my oppositional identity growing up in the suburbs. I use very little street slang. Sure, I listened to gangster rap when I was a kid, but it was more about the musical style than the people who produced it. I am drawn to poverty, regardless of its color.

Do I like the individuals who live there? In general, not really. Of course, some of them are great people and some have great isolated qualities. However, I still find some parts of the “culture of poverty hypothesis” compelling. These places produce disproportionate numbers of amoral people – those who hurt themselves and others at a greater than average rate, controlling for socioeconomic status. I find many aspects of the indigenous culture and belief systems to be ignorant and counterproductive to the goal of “progress”... though I must admit that is exactly what makes them interesting.

Is it because I believe life is more exciting there? I will admit that the media has made me think this way... but so have the autobiographies I've read. I do have fantasies about young urban warriors... along the lines of a gang leader turned revolutionary. Still, I have few illusions about the attendant hardships for people living in these places... especially for mothers and the men who die young. However, I still can't shake this idea. There are actually people on the street... it isn't sterile... crazy things happen... many of which become spectator events. There is a tighter sense of community. Would I feel the same way if I were interred there without consent... probably not. Would they leave if they could? Probably, but that's a very flawed thought experiment.

I know I'm not alone in this. The first wave of gentrification is always led by people with a similar mindset. They don't just want cheap housing, they want

Excitement
Exoticism
Irony
Reality
Spectatorship
Travesty

If this sounds like film, that's probably because this is partly where such desires were cultivated. Chasing after such feelings has become a major part of bohemian/indie culture in America today. To put such ideas it in greater analytic and intellectual perspective, I'd recommend this essay. It is ostensibly about gentrification, though as approached in the unique literary flavor consistent of The Believer. In my short life, I have already had the pleasure of being a gentrifier (like the author), though here I'm equating my renter complicity with her more permanent encroachment in terms of purchasing real estate. This is to say that I am a part of those white, educated, Bohemia-oriented twenty-somethings who like living in minority neighborhoods for the affordable housing and entertaining street life. We're everywhere, part of the consequences of "urban revitalization", rising real estate costs, and the continued economic stagflagtion in minority neighborhoods. I would venture to say that in such circles, one can't be considered much of an worldly person unless they've lived somewhere more mainstream, suburban, middle class whites consider "dangerous".

I don't think its going too far to say that it's fun to be white in these areas. It's important to realize that being an outsider, even one of dubious out-group status, has its privileges. All the sudden you're the center of attention. People want to meet you, show you around, show you off. You're a guest in their world, remember. Yes, I've been called a few nasty names, my house got broken into once, and I even got hit in the face during a traffic altercation. Yet, the kind of people I hang with might consider these experiences to be badges of honor. They're a small price to pay (literally) for the stories, and more importantly, the understanding of how social worlds so foreign to me really feel, not to mention function. And as the author makes clear, it's far more dangerous for the "real" residents, those whose social worlds are actually grounded in such places. They are largely stuck there, while we are tourists.

Honestly, I very much enjoyed being among the very first white people in that neighborhood, being a "pioneer". This is the word the author takes so much issue with in her essay. I liked that feeling. Once more white folks started to move in and establish a more vibrant punk paradise, I tired of the place and moved on. Prices had begun to rise by that time anyway. Even though I was not a home owner there, I made efforts to try and "lift the neighborhood up", just as pioneers are expected to, in both the historical and modern sense of the term. We don't like the term, of course. It is a hostile fantasy based on a violent past.

She ties it into the Native American/White relations in Little House on the Prairie. I think this is a flawed comparison, but an instructive one nonetheless. Some white gentrifiers treat the natives as a foreign, hostile populace, but most probably don't. She equates the African Americans who ask her for change in her neighborhood as tax collectors, recipients of racial reparations even. Natives in Little House also asked for alms and tribute, even before they were dispossessed and exterminated. This may be an alarmist allusion for today's processes of gentrification, but at least it is colorful. Far more at least than the cheerful notions that supposedly surround our quite debased notion of diversity. I'd rather be a fake pioneer in my little house in the ghetto anytime than try to rely on such excuses.