How dangerous were places like Harlem, the bronx and compton in the eighties?

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KweenieQ@reddit

I took the subway to the South Bronx for an internship interview in 1975. I was 15. Lots of open-air drugs and creepy people in the station (which had no lighting, so I had to get off the train and walk toward the daylight exit - ew), but no one messed with me.

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thestereo300@reddit

I took a train that traveled over the South Bronx in like 1988.

It looked like WW2 Germany in there. I swear there were buildings that were like half on the ground and I swear I saw a car or two just randomly on fire.

I remember asking my dad....why don't the people that live in there just get up one day and walk until they are out of that hellhole.

I'm sure it wasn't all like that but the part I saw was....

This video gives an idea of what I saw...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjYIuZNV0uA

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ParkingChampion2652@reddit (OP)

May I ask a sensitive question? Why is it that most of these areas were mostly inhabited by black people? Where I come from, even the poorest of areas aren’t nearly that dangerous.

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BullfrogPersonal@reddit

It is called the Great Migration. The largest movement of a people ever in the history of the US. It was Black people moving from the Delta region and South to industrial cities in the North, Midwest and West coast. They moved to work in factories.

This started in the late 1940's post-war boom era and lasted until perhaps the 60's or early 70's. There was an economic slowdown in the 60's and also labor was starting to be offshored. It was also the era of suburbanization and the ones that could afford to left cities and moved to the suburbs. This was usually white people that were lower middle class to upper middle class.

The people leftover in places like Compton or Gary Indiana were mostly Black. The nearby suburbs had racist clauses written into housing deeds called restricted covenants . This prevented non-whites from owning homes outside of the inner city areas like Compton and Watts. What happened then was the ghettoization of these places due to the factories closing down but the people couldn't leave,

There is a great explanation of this in the documentary Made in America (Crips and Bloods).

Some musicologists will also mention how the Blues went to Chicago.

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1singhnee@reddit

A lot of that is the result of redlining, segregation, and outright racism.

People used to refuse to rent or sell to minorities in “white” areas (Trump did this when he was younger). There was this idea that if someone black moved into your neighborhood your housing prices would go down. Banks would only approve loans for poor areas. And Black people in America have consistently earned less money in America (much of that is also because of racist employment policies).

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

There were a lot of government policy decisions starting in the 1940’s that led to massive disinvestment in neighborhoods where Black people lived. White people were incentivized to move out of cities to the suburbs, while Black people had very few options for moving elsewhere because of racist practices in mortgage lending and other segregation factors. Google “Redlining” for a start.

Property values plummeted so far by the 1970s that arson became a common way for property owners in many city neighborhoods to get rid of buildings that cost more to maintain than they were worth.

Cities and the federal government responded by ending many essential services in those neighborhoods. https://www.segregationbydesign.com/the-bronx/the-fires

There’s state of our cities in the 1980s was the result of 40 years of government decisions to make them that way.

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Hour-Watch8988@reddit

In NYC specifically, the problem of environmental pollution in certain neighborhoods was insane. The lead levels in some of those neighborhoods was astronomical and got cleaned up over several decades. When you take huge neighborhoods with little opportunity where the residents haven't been developing properly due to contamination, and then drop crack cocaine into the mix... it's easy to see why places like the Bronx got as bad as they did.

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

All of us who grew up in the 60s-80s were lead poisoned, which explains so much about why America Is the way it is 😂

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tkrr@reddit

There are definitely people out there who want to bring leaded gas back, too. They’ve been quiet for quite a while (I think most of them are old), but we’ll probably start hearing from them once Trump starts fucking with the environmental regs.

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TipsyBaker_@reddit

You laugh, but it seems to be a legit problem

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

“No duh,” as us 80s kids say.

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Cheap_Coffee@reddit

Damn I miss snacking on paint chips.

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Mysteryman64@reddit

The paint chips certainly didn't help, but the real damage was the leaded gasoline. Pretty much all the baby boomers grew up as children breathing air that had levels of lead it in that are known to cause behavioral issues that only get worse as you age.

Their parents did them dirty, it's not like lead toxicity wasn't a known issue at the time.

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

So sweet and crunchy.

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

What was the government policy decision in the 1940s?

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

As I suggested, look up “Redlining” to start. You can also look up the inequitable access to GI Bill benefits for Black soldiers returning from WW2, and the impacts on homeownership and wealth creation. Also look up the impacts of urban renewal and the federal highway program. Here’s one about policies that created shortages of healthy food in cities https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/12/food-deserts-robinson-patman/680765/

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

Redlinging was from 1933 and the gov made it illegal in 1968 for bankers to do that.

And the policies that created the "food deserts" were policies attempting to stop bad actors and help.

It's like blaming the government for Walmart not providing health care because of trying to help get people health care. Instead Walmart says fuck that and just stops having full time employees.

"It's the government's fault" is really government policies to try to stop rampant greed, created other problems because companies trying to maintain and increase profit found away around it.

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

Re- Redlining becoming illegal in 1968: Believe it or not, long-term policies have impacts longer than twelve years.

Yes, racism by entities other than the government was a tremendous contributing factor. But all these federal programs and policies could have been developed to counter & correct the impacts of racism. Instead they were developed in ways that magnified it. These were decisions, not coincidences.

https://www.history.com/news/gi-bill-black-wwii-veterans-benefits

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

Right. So racist Southern people caused it. I get it.

"When lawmakers began drafting the GI Bill in 1944, some Southern Democrats feared that returning Black veterans would use public sympathy for veterans to advocate against Jim Crow laws. To make sure the GI Bill largely benefited white people, the southern Democrats drew on tactics they had previously used to ensure that the New Deal helped as few Black people as possible. ... played hardball and insisted that the program be administered by individual states instead of the federal government."

So the federal gov tried to do a thing and "states rights" folks fucked it up again.

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

Those “Southern Democrats” were part of our federal government. Northern cities were/are also terribly segregated. Not everything is the fault of “Southern racists.” This thread is largely about New York.

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

And that really doesn't have to do with NYC at all. Most of those areas are only renters. Blacks should have been free to rent where ever.

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

Lack of investment in cities and Black families inability to buy property or improve the property they own doesn’t have anything to do with New York? That’s a weird call.

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

(Incidentally, the way our healthcare system works, and how that impacts businesses’ hiring decisions, is also a federal policy issue)

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Mysteryman64@reddit

It was made illegal to do it in 1968, but that doesn't mean that the practice just disappeared overnight. Don't forget Strom Thurmond only kicked it about 20 years ago.

Part of the issue of racial conflict in the 1970s and 1980s was specifically because of lax enforcement of the new Civil Rights laws and attempts by states to undermine them.

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EC_dwtn@reddit

I know it would never happen in this climate, but I wish schools dedicated much more time to having students learn and think critically about how the GI Bill was so instrumental in building the white middle class after WWII, and how the inability of Black veterans to take advantage of its benefits is a contributing factor to the inequities that still exist today.

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

And the GI bill? It was 100% race neutral - racism was the issue. When schools wont take you - and college educated jobs wont hire you? What good does a college degree do?

"The GI Bill was race-neutral in its statutory terms, but discrimination at the structural level limited its benefits to white men."

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Purple-Display-5233@reddit

Well said!

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tkrr@reddit

It’s a long story involving our fucked up race politics and the real estate business, especially a practice called “redlining”. I don’t know if it’s still commonly assigned, but when I was in high school the play “A Raisin In The Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry was required reading — it’s about a black family called the Youngers and the troubles they faced moving out of the ghetto to the suburbs.

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SonofBronet@reddit

where I come from

Where is that

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ParkingChampion2652@reddit (OP)

Egypt

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AuggieNorth@reddit

I visited both Harlem and Egypt in the 80's, and parts of Egypt were far worse than anything I ever saw in Harlem. When we were down in Luxor to see Karnak and the Valley of the Kings, there were hardly any cars around, just mostly donkey carts. Lots of garbage and bad smells everywhere. Every time the guide would extol about the "glory that was Egypt", we were wondering what happened since. Maybe it's improved, but Harlem was a much better place to live at that time.

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boldjoy0050@reddit

There are really run down places in other countries but most of them are safe from violent crime.

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bedbuffaloes@reddit

That's not true at all.

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boldjoy0050@reddit

Latin America doesn't follow this rule but if you go to a really dumpy area in India, let's say, you more than likely won't get robbed or shot.

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AuggieNorth@reddit

We weren't safe from violent crime in Egypt. On New Year's Eve '81 I was out celebrating with my brother and a couple of British girls in Alexandria, when this Egyptian guy started harassing the girls we were with, which sparked a reaction from the girls, and it was getting way out of hand so we tried to take the girls away, but while doing so the guy picked up a rock and hit my brother over the head with it. He was half knocked out and bleeding, but I had to carry him to our apartment, where my parents brought him to the hospital. The next day we had a huge contingent of American and British people including consulate staff going to the police station to demand action, which there was. Took less than an hour to bring the guy in. Unfortunately everything was in Arabic so I didn't understand what was being said, but we hear lots of shouting and then some whipping a little later. Next we spent days in various govt offices telling our story. I went home a month later, and missed the trial, but he was found guilty. Apparently though his family had money so he got off light.

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ParkingChampion2652@reddit (OP)

Yes I was talking about safety like the risk of getting mugged or harassed. Note that this is my experience as a man.

Let’s just say, whenever someone is killed in egypt, it always makes national headlines and makes George Floyd level noise (minus the riots) for weeks. It’s that rare.

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

Looks like the murder rate in Egypt is 1.34/100,000. In France and Germany it’s about 1/100,000. So forgive me I don’t buy that Egyptians get in an uproar over every homicide.

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hugemessanon@reddit

what do france or germany have to do with anything? we're talking about egypt and the US. in 2017 (latest data i can find for egypt), the murder rate in egypt was 1.336 per 100k, while that of the US was more than double, at 5.24. egypt's murder rate is pretty low compared to the US's, which is the context of the op's statement. they're just sharing their lived experience. the skepticism is weird.

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big_sugi@reddit

Egypt’s murder rate isn’t the relevant number. It’s the fact that there were more than 1,300 reported homicides in 2023 according to UNODC. There’s no way each killing “always makes national headlines,” much less “makes George Floyd level noise (minus the riots) for weeks.”

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Hoosier_Jedi@reddit

Additional perspective. Not like most Americans have personal experience with Egypt.

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Narrow_Tennis_2803@reddit

And that's still less than half the murder rate of the US............homicide is very rare in France and Germany and somewhat rare in Egypt...

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ParkingChampion2652@reddit (OP)

Can’t really argue with statistics so yeah you’re right, maybe it’s because there is a very toxic culture in a large but very rural part of egypt called “tar” which essentially means that if one person murders a person from another family, the relatives of the murdered person must kill someone or at times multiple people from the other family. They lose all their dignity and pride if they don’t at least try to do so. This goes on for generations and is probably one of the reasons the homicide rate is higher than I expected. I also think that the type of crime that gets reported by the media are the ones that happens in cities and not the ones that happen in rural villages which make up a huge part of egypt.

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Drew707@reddit

Sounds like Luxor Las Vegas in 2025.

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VelocityGrrl39@reddit

I have never been to Egypt, and though I would love to see the pyramids, it’s pretty low on my list of places to travel because of the stories I’ve heard about how female tourists are treated. I’m not keen on going anywhere I need to hire a guard just to be safe.

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SquidsArePeople2@reddit

Give me a break. Your dictators literally murder people doe talking bad about them.

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SonofBronet@reddit

Hmm

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chzie@reddit

Racial segregation.

It's because it was on purpose.

You can look up redlining.

Certain groups also weren't allowed access to capital to improve their situations.

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Odd-Help-4293@reddit

Bluntly? Racism and classism.

If you know that Neighborhood X is mostly populated by Group Y, and you don't like or care about Group Y, then you'll do things like cut off public services, not maintain the schools and streets, not inspect housing owned by slumlord landlords, etc. And things will fall apart.

For a long time in US history, black people were only allowed to rent or buy in certain specific neighborhoods. Those neighborhoods were then intentionally not policed adequately, the schools in those neighborhoods were shockingly bad, and so forth. These were intentional policy decisions that cities and towns made. If black neighborhoods got too nice and prosperous, they were sometimes destroyed by white rioters

By the 80s, that was all officially illegal, but... just because a law is passed doesn't mean things change overnight.

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Square_Stuff3553@reddit

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

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Fearless-Weakness-70@reddit

you’re not going to get a good answer for this on reddit. you probably need to visit the US and meet people that experienced that time period to really understand the social dynamics that caused that

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chezewizrd@reddit

This is a massive question that is extremely complex to answer. First, America is huge. There are poor, oppressed, and disadvantaged peoples all around the country. There are well-off and privileged people as well. There are many in between.

The US has a long and intricate history of racial, social, and economic segregation. Some of this was codified into laws. Some of this was de facto reality, and some of this (though often not as overly) exists today. 160 years ago, black people in the US could be owned by white people and traded amongst them like their livestock. This is not why areas like this often are predominantly black (and there are non-black areas like this). But it is important context. As slavery is outlawed in the US, former slaves and their families are not suddenly equal and offered equitable opportunities. Much of society was structured against them. there has been a lot of hard work and sacrifice by people better than I to progress the reduction of these inequalities. As people of color moved to areas, white people left (white flight), governments and businesses stopped investing in communities and they were/ate simply not supported in ways that modern societies should. But none of this is simple and me even writing this will have many saying I’m wrongs. There are valid points on many sides to this question.

A good, not too long article about this: https://www.mobilitypartnership.org/file/944616/L5cUOKLd.pdf

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Creative_username969@reddit

Institutional racism, is the short answer. The longer one is that it’s a legacy of a practice called redlining, which is basically a form of housing segregation, which led to the creation of heavily minority neighborhoods like that. In the 70’s and 80’s the City was undergoing a massive financial crisis, and with limited resources, the City prioritized the white neighborhoods and let the minority ones decay. Then, as the crisis started to ease, the minority neighborhoods were the last ones to benefit from the increased resources.

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Creative_username969@reddit

Harlem’s a historically Black neighborhood. The South Bronx is mainly a Black and Hispanic (mainly Puerto Rican and Dominican) neighborhood, but more Hispanic than Black. As others have noted, NYC has gotten significantly safer (it’s one of the safest big cities in the US) and those neighborhoods look nothing like that now.

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Ear_Enthusiast@reddit

It looked like WW2 Germany

I took a train from Richmond to Boston and 8 years ago. That’s exactly how I’d describe the parts of Baltimore and Philly the train went through. It looked like a scene out of Saving Private Ryan or 1917. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve seen The Wire. This was worse than anything portrayed on that series. NGL, I was a little shook. I didn’t realize places like this existed in the US. It looked third world or almost post apocalyptic.

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karenmcgrane@reddit

Did you mean to say 8 years ago? 2017? As someone who has taken the northeast corridor trains for more than 25 years, and definitely a lot in 2017, this just doesn't check out.

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Ear_Enthusiast@reddit

What doesn't check out? My wife got me tickets to see the Celtics versus GSW. I have anxiety issues when I fly. I took the train up. I left the night before, while my son and wife flew up the next morning and we met each other at the hotel. First time traveling by train. It was amazing. I got drunk and watched movies on my tablet.

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karenmcgrane@reddit

The part where they said

I’ve seen The Wire. This was worse than anything portrayed on that series. NGL, I was a little shook. I didn’t realize places like this existed in the US. It looked third world or almost post apocalyptic.

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Ear_Enthusiast@reddit

What doesn't checkout about that? Lol. The Wire ended in 05 or 06. I went through around 2017. I passed through Baltimore and Philly. They looked worse than anything that was portrayed in the series.

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karenmcgrane@reddit

I… okay

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

I ride that train sometimes and always think about the terrible view of America you get from those train tracks. A lot of the property around the train tracks is owned by the train companies themselves and is terribly maintained. I used to work for a city government and we had ongoing battles with Amtrak about abandoned structures, dumping, fires etc on their property that ran through neighborhoods. It’s sometimes shocking how terrible the “back side” of a building that faces the tracks looks (graffiti, trash, broken windows, etc) compared to the side facing the street. You get two totally different impressions of what’s going on. Except Bridgeport CT, which is a cesspit. (Joking. Kind of.)

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Unndunn1@reddit

There’s a reason we call it Bridge-pit

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Roughneck16@reddit

I went on a self-guided "abandoned building safari" through Baltimore's worst neighborhood in 2018. It was interesting.

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Mysteryman64@reddit

The Baltimore trainyards are a shithole because the industry barons who use it (primarily for freight), like it that way.

Property taxes are cheap because the land is "blighted", they can buy up land nearby for next to nothing if they need more space for storage, and if no one wants to live nearby, they don't have to fight with local citizenry about things like noise pollution or zoning issues.

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jane7seven@reddit

Wow, that video is super interesting. I've never seen the footage from that time and place before. It's worse than what I imagined, I'm kind of heartbreaking to see the little kids playing in the schoolyard next to all the blight.

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thestereo300@reddit

Yeah it's wild.

I live in Minneapolis and have since the 80s. Place was pretty shitty in the 80s and then from like 1995-2015 it was paradise and now it's now it's pretty good but not as good as paradise. but nothing like the 80s. Cities were sketch as hell in those days.

What is strange is this timeline very much seems to parallel most US cities.

The movement out of cities and back into them was pretty much across the board.

and I'm hearing the South Bronx is much improved from those 80s days.

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jane7seven@reddit

It's putting a lot of old hip hop into perspective for me, how they often rapped about how tough and bad things were where they were from. There's a song by Grandmaster Flash called The Message that says, "broken glass, everywhere"... And like, damn. There really was broken glass everywhere!

And he was from the Bronx.

I grew up in the '80s in a suburb of Atlanta. I remember anytime we had to drive into the city, the driver was sure to lock the car doors. It definitely seemed like there was danger lurking around every corner back then, or at least that's what it seemed like all the adults I was around thought.

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CynicalBonhomie@reddit

I remember that in the 1980s, the city of NY put up decals on the bricked up windows of abandoned blocks of apartments along the Cross Bronx Expressway and along subway routes (the 6 maybe?) with curtains and plants and cats on them to make it look like were inhabited to the casual passersby.

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

Actually the murder rate in the midwest cities are about the same as in the Bronx in the 1980s

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thestereo300@reddit

The murder rate in NYC (overall) was 25.8 per 1K. The Bronx was pretty much the worst part of NYC and while I can't find those stats I assume it was higher.

Murder rate in no midwestern city is anywhere near that. So can you share your stats please?

https://wallethub.com/edu/cities-homicide-rate/94070

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

In 1980, New York City's murder rate was 25.8 per 100,000 residents

What are you talking about?

The thing you are looking at seems to be for a single quarter in 2023? Cleveland is 27.5 per 100,000.

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RoseRedd@reddit

Chicago's murder rate was 28.7 per 100,000 residents in 1980.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Chicago#Murder_and_shootings

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

And? We were comparing 1980s NYC to current day Midwest.

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RoseRedd@reddit

Oh sorry. I thought they were comparing 80s NYC to 80s Midwest cities. My ADHD strikes again?

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

Oh no problem. I'm ADHD and it's probably why my posts are never clear!! Could be me.

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ParkingChampion2652@reddit (OP)

Wow, Didn’t even know places like this existed America.

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BullfrogPersonal@reddit

I remember a French MMA guy talking about NYC in the 70's-80's. He said dudes would get on the trains and rob people.

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vingtsun_guy@reddit

I visited NYC in the 90's. Stayed with a cousin who lived in Brooklyn at the time. We visited Harlem, but he refused to take me to the Yankee Stadium, which is located in the Bronx.

That's the extent of my knowledge.

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Rhombus_McDongle@reddit

They are so nice long time New Yorkers are angry about it "what happened to the grit, the danger? It's Disneyland now"

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Current_Poster@reddit

Yeah, I hate that. Like, at the time, they wished it would go on forever.

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boldjoy0050@reddit

People don't want the crime and grit back, they just want the city to stop being so commercialized. Everywhere you go in NYC feels about the same now. It's Starbucks, Duane Reade, Chipotle, and more corporate places.

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ModernMaroon@reddit

Not sure why you're being downvoted. This is basically the answer. It's become sterile.

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boldjoy0050@reddit

Most cities in the US have gotten like this. Maybe Charleston, New Orleans, and towns in Maine are a few exceptions.

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ModernMaroon@reddit

Shared hardship creates bonds that little else can compete with. No one wants those times back. But I cant help be amazed when two old heads who don't know each other strike up a conversation about the 'old days' and its like they lived the same life despite being from different neighborhoods or boroughs even. It was just a time/vibe that is pretty much irreplicable.

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RoryDragonsbane@reddit

I work with a Gen X'r from Brooklyn and he says the same thing

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Lickthorne@reddit

I always get that weird feeling of such footage. What were these peoples doing that day, were are they going. Are they still alive, were do they live now, are any of these cars still driving, are these little kids adults now and what did they become.

How would you name this feeling? Its a strange feeling I can’t describe.

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ModernMaroon@reddit

The Bronx was on fire in the 70s. A lot of buildings were burned down for insurance money and owners got out of dodge.

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zebostoneleigh@reddit

I liven Harlem now. I moved here about 10 years ago. Someone I met when I moved here said, "You wouldn't have come here 25 years ago)." So, yeah - I imagine worse.Harlem is safe now. I like it.

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Usagi_Shinobi@reddit

To whom?

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Current_Poster@reddit

Also are these places even that safe nowadays?

I normally don't discuss it, but I lived in Harlem for about a year and a half/two years. I used to get up to go to work at 4:00-4:30 AM, and walk to work. Basically fine, didn't have real safety issues.

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Drew707@reddit

What led to the changes in a relatively short period of time?

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RoryDragonsbane@reddit

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_epidemic_in_the_United_States

Tl;dr government and economic policies caused wealthy white people to leave cities (with their money) and forced poorer black people to stay. Add in a highly addictive and destructive drug to make things worse. Bonus points for the lead-crime hypothesis which argues that lead in gasoline, paint, and drinking water lowered the national IQ average by a few points.

I think a more interesting question is how did it stop? It's way easier to break something than to put it back together again.

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

What government police caused white people to leave the cities?

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libananahammock@reddit

Did you not click the link?

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

I did. I am a history researcher. And they didn't teach that in school because it's inaccurate in incomplete and leaves out the real reasons. I don't need wikipedia.

My response to him. ---I think you are skipping a few steps.

For one. Redlining. The Emergency Banking act in 1933 lead to redlining because the Gov said - hey, we'll protect the customer from you banks taking away their houses if you don't give risky mortgages purposefully so you can just then yank back the house (because they were doing that like the 1980s). White people would NOT sell to Black buyers so Black buyers were stuck buying in Black areas and they could get loans for those homes.

Now when it came to GI bill, Southern racists politicians wouldn't sign unless they got to administer it BY state and not Federal. They specifically made it difficult for Black people.

Now add that companies wouldn't hire black people? A college education isn't very useful.

". It's difficult to argue that that same mayor isn't at least complacent in what's happening."

That's a real stretch. You have Black people whose families have been torn apart by slavery, then by poverty and racism and PTSD and you land in today. It's not simple to fix - and impossible as a mayor. What on earth can a mayor do except try to policies in place? If you have an answer you'd be the first.

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libananahammock@reddit

Where do you do your research?

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

I am a consultant and do it for authors and auction houses. I've been studying history and have a personal interest in slavery, jim crow, and reconstruction and later. I also help Black people try to research their family. A couple decades ago I was a professional genealogist.

Why did you not really read my post and just immediately downvote it?

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libananahammock@reddit

I didn’t down vote you.

I’m also a professional genealogist after stepping down from teaching history after having my kids.

I have a degree in history (American concentration) and sociology, I specialize in the Northeast and am hired to not only do genealogy work but sought out because I have the degrees I do so they aren’t just getting the names on a chart but I give them full histories of their families and place them in the time period they lived and what was going on in their area during that time. I give them a book. I’m also hired by people to do research on their old homes and the history of the home and people who lived there. Fun stuff.

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RoryDragonsbane@reddit

Policies, not police

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

I'm american - it was a typo. What policies?

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RoryDragonsbane@reddit

I'll try to keep it brief since this was supposed to be a tl;dr (great question for r/AskHistorians)

It was more a combination of government and economic policies for blacks and whites. For example, the GI Bill caused veterans to go to college (and stop working in industrial hubs of northern cities), but many of those colleges had policies that discriminated against black vets from going there. HUD/FHA mortgages caused whites to move to the suburbs, but Redlining made it difficult for black people to buy those houses even with a government mortgage. Interstates would divide communities, judges would sentence certain people using certain drugs more severely, public funding for schools, roads, police, and other infrastructure was tied to local governments instead of state/federal, etc.

Imagine you're a mayor of one of these cities. You see some neighborhoods entirely populated by one race and others populated by another. One neighborhood looks nice and the other looks like a bombed out hellscape. It's difficult to argue that that same mayor isn't at least complacent in what's happening.

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Technical_Plum2239@reddit

I think you are skipping a few steps.

For one. Redlining. The Emergency Banking act in 1933 lead to redlining because the Gov said - hey, we'll protect the customer from you banks taking away their houses if you don't give risky mortgages purposefully so you can just then yank back the house (because they were doing that like the 1980s). White people would NOT sell to Black buyers so Black buyers were stuck buying in Black areas and they could get loans for those homes.

Now when it came to GI bill, Southern racists politicians wouldn't sign unless they got to administer it BY state and not Federal. They specifically made it difficult for Black people.

Now add that companies wouldn't hire black people? A college education isn't very useful.

". It's difficult to argue that that same mayor isn't at least complacent in what's happening."

That's a real stretch. You have Black people whose families have been torn apart by slavery, then by poverty and racism and PTSD and you land in today. It's not simple to fix - and impossible as a mayor. What on earth can a mayor do except try to policies in place? If you have an answer you'd be the first.

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RoryDragonsbane@reddit

Yes, it would be natural to skip things in a tl;dr explanation. Again, an r/AskHistorians post, or better yet, reading the links I shared, would yield more information.

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libananahammock@reddit

There was also a lot of working class businesses that left the US in northeast cities like what happened in the rust belt.

Factory and mill jobs that could once sustain a family of 4+ disappeared so people either left to where the jobs were, went to college to get better jobs and moved to better areas, or stayed working lower paying jobs.

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phord@reddit

Believe it or not, it was this fucking guy right here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayoralty_of_Rudy_Giuliani

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WolverineHour1006@reddit

Maybe somewhat. But New York was/is a part of declining crime rates all over the country that Giuliani had nothing to do with. There are lots of theories about social & economic factors that led to the drop in crime.

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boldjoy0050@reddit

The easy answer is that poor people who usually commit the crime got priced out of NYC.

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TheLizardKing89@reddit

Not really. Crime declined nationally at the same time.

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ND7020@reddit

Highly debatable, given the crime decline started under Dinkins…but even moreso, that it happened simultaneously in almost every other American city, which would make it challenging to give one NY mayor credit.

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Current_Poster@reddit

I'm going to have to defer to better experts on that.

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Mr_Rio@reddit

People often act like we’re living in the worst and most violent times now, but the inner cities during the 80s-90s was an entirely different monster than now.

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TipsyBaker_@reddit

I'm close with a family where the parents generation all grew up in the Bronx and Brooklyn in the 70s and 80s. The little, old, church going aunties talk about braiding razor blades in to each other's hair so when (not if) they were grabbed, jumped, attacked, whatever there was a nasty surprise for the attacker and a chance to fight or flee. They act like it's normal.

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RoryDragonsbane@reddit

I taught in North Philly in the late 2000s and it was pretty much the same thing. Girls putting razor blades between their finger for when they slapped another girl. Putting Vaseline on their faces beforehand to reduce scarring. When two pregnant chicks took off their earrings (so they wouldn't get ripped out), you knew shit was about to go down.

I teach in a better school now, but there's still rough areas. You have to remember that the 1980s were just a generation ago, so kids from then are raising kids now. Lots of learned behavior ingrained into the culture.

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libananahammock@reddit

My family is from Philly. They moved us out before I started middle school but my mom talks about her experiences often. She went to Philadelphia public schools from the late 60s-1980. She had that waist long 70s hair parted down the middle and said that one time a group of girls jumped her on her way home from middle school and one big girl grabbed her by her hair, wrapped it around her hands and started swinging. Wild shit.

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ParkingChampion2652@reddit (OP)

Holy shit bro.

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BigDamBeavers@reddit

By all accounts, folks I know who grew up in Compton and the Bronx in the 80's said it was "A don't go out alone at night neighborhood", but otherwise you hung out at shops or playgrounds during the day and never saw any trouble unless it was the police hassling people.

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Esselon@reddit

They were definitely more dangerous back in the 80s. I lived in NYC for over a decade, there are spots of the Bronx I wouldn't want to be in at 2am alone, but during normal hours I walked through Harlem, the Bronx and other areas without the slightest concern.

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Berniesgirl2024@reddit

Much worse than now

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Kman17@reddit

The Bronx was as dangerous in the 80’s as the current most dangerous cities in the U.S. now, which is places like Memphis or Oakland.

Which is bad, but also probably not quite as bad as the internet and tv would lead you to believe.

Harlem and the Bronx are a lot nicer today. Lots of hipsters live there.

Compton is better too, though not like dramatically so.

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morgan_lowtech@reddit

Comparing the Bronx in the 80s to Oakland today is absurd.

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Kman17@reddit

Why is that? The per capita murder rate is about the same.

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akmjolnir@reddit

Oakland has some sketchy parts, but it's nowhere near as bad as people think.

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PacSan300@reddit

Yeah, Oakland has some areas that are genuinely pretty nice and safe. The city has changed quite a bit over the years.

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Drew707@reddit

It's also really hard to compare Harlem, Bronx, Compton, Memphis, and Oakland as they are really different in what they are.

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TheLizardKing89@reddit

They’re much safer now than they were back then. In 1989 there were over 2200 murders in NYC. Last year there were 378.

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OnThe45th@reddit

Actually it was worse in early 90’s (in Compton). Murder rate was nearly 1.5 times worse than the worst countries on earth today. Over 3,000 violent crimes for a population just under 100k.

It’s murder rate was nearly 40% higher than the worst year Detroit ever experienced, and Detroit was labeled the most dangerous city in the US by the FBI, and the “Murder capital of America”.

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PacSan300@reddit

Compton has changed quite a bit since then for the better, from what I hear.

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semikhah_atheist@reddit

More dangerous than the most dangerous city now. Even the official death toll in Gaza is lower than peak US murder towns.

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nylondragon64@reddit

Back then if you got mugged expect to be shot or stabbed. Today nyc isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous city's anymore.

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dew2459@reddit

Today nyc isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous city's anymore.

If I am reading the crime stats right, it isn't even in the top 50 for per-capita crime. Even Buffalo has (much) worse crime numbers.

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ParkingChampion2652@reddit (OP)

Even if you gave the muggers what they wanted?

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johnvoights_car@reddit

70s-90s were a bad time in inner city America. Late 80s and early 90s were the peak.

LA County, which includes Compton, had 2589 murders in 1992.

For 2023 there were 683 homicides, and I believe it went lower in 2024.

LA County is large in area with around 10,000,000 people. Compton is a small city of about 80k people within it.

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Nuclearcasino@reddit

New York City had 377 murders last year. There were 2245 in 1990. Crime overall in the U.S. is a fraction of what it was in the 70’s and 80’s

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nousernamesleft199@reddit

Instant murder

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rrsafety@reddit

I'm from the Boston suburbs and we'd drive on highways thru the Bronx in the 80s and, holy shit, it looked like a war zone. Burned out buildings, burned out cars, tireless cars littering the side of the interstate. It was madness. Now my own kids spend time in NYC and I bore them with stories about how much the place has changed.

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StationOk7229@reddit

I lived in L.A. then. Compton wasn't dangerous except for a couple of areas where gangs hung out. You just stayed away from those parts of Compton. I worked in Compton.

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balthisar@reddit

For a bit of a lighter take, look up Eddie Murphy's Mr. Robinson's Neighborhood skits from 1981 or so vs. the newest in 2019. They're all on Youtube.

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kinnikinnick321@reddit

Watch Boyz In The Hood, pretty accurate depiction of Compton in the 80s and 90s

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LoyalKopite@reddit

They are still dangerous. Hell on earth.

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Purple-Display-5233@reddit

Compton was bad in the 80s. Listen to some NWA. They told it like they saw it. Way more violent back then.

In 2013, Los Angeles reported 296 homicides in the city proper, which corresponds to a rate of 6.3 per 100,000 population—a notable decrease from 1980, when the all time homicide rate of 34.2 per 100,000 population was reported for the year. Sorce

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NekoArtemis@reddit

Lesser known but Potrero Hill in San Francisco was pretty rough. My mom, my dad, and I all got mugged at least once. So did most of our friends. Finding crack on the street was common. Gunshots were common. Everyone but us got their car windows bashed in (our car was beat up enough already, we figure they felt sorry for it.) One of my neighbors got pistol whipped. One time someone parked an RV in front of our house and used it as a mobile crack house.

Fun times.

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Black_And_Malicious@reddit

Building owners used to burn down their buildings in really shitty areas back then to collect insurance money because they couldn’t rent them out or sell due to the exorbitant violent crime and widespread looting. It’s insane to see how much NYC has changed since then. Watching 70s and 80s movies about NYC really makes it seem like a whole other world. But by the time Friends and Seinfeld came along, the perception really changed about the city. It’s like a thousand times better now, although theres been a bit of an uptick recently since Covid, but its almost impossible to compare the two eras.

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Mysteryman64@reddit

It's really hard to understand a lot of cultural media that came out of the 80s without having a lived experience of just how bad white flight and urban decay absolutely decimated cities in the 70s and 80s in the US.

So much of it is informed by the juxtaposition of these blighted urban wastelands sitting right next to cushy corporate monoliths and the weird daily commute many people had from suburbia through the urban blight, into their jobs.

Or alternatively, being trapped out in the blight looking in on success and money but never actually being close to it.

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nylondragon64@reddit

Yep. It was pretty bad.

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Forward-Wear7913@reddit

My father was born in the Bronx, but he wouldn’t drive through there in the 80s.

We used to take the subway sometimes to go to the zoo. It was very depressing to see how bad the community looked. You definitely had to be on your guard.

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leeloocal@reddit

My mother’s cousins grew up in Astoria in the 70s, and it was dangerous, but she said most of New York was. Same with Los Angeles.

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WarrenMulaney@reddit

What scale are you using? Dangerous for whom?

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ParkingChampion2652@reddit (OP)

I’m not American so perhaps you could explain to me American safety standards and why these areas weren’t considered safe?

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WarrenMulaney@reddit

Beats me. I didn’t ask the question.

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ParkingChampion2652@reddit (OP)

I live in egypt for example, where, as a man, no area is a no go zone for me. The worst that could happen in the worst areas in the country is a fist fight or very rarely, getting mugged with a small knife.

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