My Harlem

I was one of a few white people living in south Harlem in the early 1990s. I stayed for 20 years and fell in love with it.

My X husband lived there. I moved in with him in 1992. Our block was lined with abandoned apartment buildings. They were completely unoccupied, only two buildings had tenants. The rest were run-down tired old, abused dogs left on the side of the road to struggle for survival.

Broken windows, a front entrance door hanging from its hinges, crushed crack vials all over the stoops, dirty sheets and bits of paper covering windows from the inside where squatters were hiding out hoping not to be found by the police.

This was the Harlem I moved into.

We were at the southern end of the neighborhood just one block away from Central Park. There was a line on the street that divided the park from Harlem.

Once I crossed 110th street from the untouched woods of North Central Park, I was back in the mix. I would puff up my chest and stroll to my apartment building.

I had something to prove to the rest of the city.

I was a white woman, living with a black man in his neighborhood. I wanted to prove to myself, my neighbors, my parents I fit in and felt safe.

I got along well with my neighbors. Even the drug dealer downstairs. I wouldn’t say we were friends.

There were 3 generations of one family living in the drug dealer’s apartment. The oldest turned a blind eye while the middle sold, I think, crack and meth and groomed the youngest for the future.

We acknowledged each other when we passed on the street or in the building with a head nod or a quiet, “hey”.

None of the guys coming around working for the dealer wanted to do me any harm. I was no threat to their business. I never felt unsafe around them.

I became an observer and started to really watch the life of the streets, the inner workings of my neighborhood.

One of the first things I had to get used to was repetitive gunshots. The sound…the pop or pop pop pop pop pop.

It would catch me off guard while cooking dinner or brushing my teeth preparing for bed. Mostly these shots were calling cards or warning shots fired from a rooftop skyward. Like Batman’s Bat-signal, maybe they were warning dealers and gang members about police presence. Their purpose surely was to intimidate and scare law enforcement and competing gangs and dealers to send a clear message that they were not to be messed with.

Some days other dealers would try to stake a claim at one end of the block.

While The feds would be at the other end of the block.

It was a silent standoff between two cowboys in the middle of some dusty western town in the 1800s.

The feds would sit in their black window-tinted Ford Escalade at the east end of my block. I imagined their stakeout routine including binoculars, cameras with zoom lenses, and coffee.

I was living in the middle of a real live crack/meth turf war and nobody wanted to go to prison.

Whenever I saw that black Escalade, I knew everyone would be on their best behavior.

Except for the time they came and detonated the dealer’s apartment door, shot the dog, and raided the apartment. I slept through the whole thing.

The dealer was not there, they found nothing, and my neighbor was gone for a while.

Apparently, he got a tip in advance and was able to disappear.

I lived amidst dealers and their customers, teenage girls pushing screaming children in strollers yelling into their cell phones, gunshots any time of day and night, Midnight dogfights out back across the empty lot in the schoolyard, and federal agents waiting to go into action.

I was wearing my own badge of honor fueled by a strong sense of rebellion to live there with my black husband who was looked at as somewhat of a weirdo being a vegan artist.

I mean, he happens to be vegan and an artist.

My parents were petrified for my safety at times. My dad wanted to give me his guns for protection.

I didn’t accept his offer. Not my style. Now if he offered his compound bow and arrows, that I would have gladly taken.

People were cordial for the most part. I found Harlem to be a friendly place compared to some other Manhattan neighborhoods.

You know, the neighborhoods that instead of glancing your way with a welcoming smile, you get a snarled look that says, “why are you here?” The neighborhoods where people had lots and lots and lots of money. Oh, and white…where all of your neighbors are white.

I walked around Harlem with my head up high because I felt I belonged there. My husband had invited me to live in his apartment, so I was invited into the neighborhood.

I didn’t crash the party.

Once my son was a toddler, my neighbors were more interested. He was pretty for a boy, and a magnet when it came to people. My immediate neighbors seemed to care. At least they gave me that impression when we would catch each other in the hallway and engage in that obligatory 5-minute neighborly chat. It made me feel more secure.

I was in the minority when I first got to Harlem. I liked it. I liked how I stood out, a novelty of some sort.

White woman, brown son, black dad, they divorce, and she raises son there alone for 8 years.

I felt so attached to my neighborhood I began to resent the other white people moving in after I had already been there for 10 years. I had the place to myself for that whole decade.

once the demographic started to rapidly shift, I felt just like everyone else, the flavor, Harlem’s essence was about to die off and be replaced with something nobody living there really wanted.

Yes, there have been much-needed jobs created in Harlem and a lot of cleaning up. Blocks like my old block now have community gardens and trees that kids don’t tear down.

But you do understand that a lot of people got pushed out, right?

All that affluence really just attracts more affluence and a lot of tourists. It’s a whole different culture than it was 30 years ago.

It’s been 8 years since I lived there but I still think about Make My Cake bakery on the corner of Adam Clayton and 116th St. or the attendants at the gas station on our corner who were like the neighborhood watch, keeping my son safe.

Or Darrel who lived downstairs and was always on the front stoop.

Darrel was a member of the drug-dealing family in my building. He was in the middle but not the top guy. More of a lookout.

Darrel fought in Vietnam and came back with a bad case of PTSD.

He was a teacher before he shipped off and a crack head after he came back. Darrel had a brilliant mind and a kind heart and was always good to my son. He would look out for him when my son started taking himself to school. I trusted Darrell regardless of his situation.

He was always offering to help with anything I needed like carrying my groceries up 5 flights of stairs to my apartment.

I don’t know if he’s still alive, he had been in and out of rehab and jail so many times.

I was falling in love with the Harlem that nobody wanted to pay attention to. The older buildings in disrepair, the bodegas with label faded laundry detergent bottles, and a sleepy grey cat in the front windows, the 50-year-old shops with a confusing variety of products that somehow managed to stay in business and the architecture.

I also began to understand how we perpetuate this racial divide and the myth that white people need to fear black people living in Harlem, that it’s all drugs and gangstas.

I believe what you put out is what you get. Walking in Harlem in fear will be scary because the environment will respond to that fear.

I never walked in fear and I didn’t have a problem.

I was curious and watching, always feeling for the pulse of what was going on around me. Nobody bothered me and I was comfortable going about my business.

In fact the few times any black people said anything was when my X and I would be together. The comments would be directed at him for being with a white woman.

There were a couple of scary instances, I realized later that helped me understand why there is so much anger and rage inside people of color sometimes.

I think my perspective is kind of unique.

It’s very different than a white couple adopting a black baby and raising them in a predominantly white area or a mixed couple having children and living In a more mixed or white neighborhood.

My son loved Harlem as a kid. I think he might say he got great exposure as a kid to lots of different people.

I have extreme empathy for people of color.

It’s a deep feeling that isn’t attached to any personal experience in my lifetime. There is nothing that happened to me that I can tell you about to justify this intense feeling. I can say, I had it before moving to Harlem. It grew while I lived there.

We’ve created an environment that we have ignored.

We’ve perpetuated the myth that all black people are violent and not worthy of our empathy and compassion.

This doesn’t happen overnight.

This comes from generations and generations of abuse and lies. White people tell each other that what they see and hear is bad but what they see and hear is being told to them by other white people.

I don’t condone any violent behavior and I witnessed some in Harlem. Scenes that I had to shield my son from. It’s sickening no matter what.

I’m just saying if your family has lived below the poverty level for decades and you get pushed down every time you try to make some headway and advance your life, how well adjusted will you be?

Hurt people, hurt people.

And a lot of times it is themselves they are hurting.

I don’t know how to describe my perspective except to say, I have an attachment to African culture that I can’t explain.

I have a love for Harlem. There was a depth of life, the air smelled of pride without arrogance, a pure heart without selfishness, a fire that burned for freedom.

I will never be able to understand how it feels to be black. I can only listen, learn, and change.