BF's Neighborhood – NOT PC
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Yeah, there’s nothing you can do that won’t make the situation worse. Bossing him around will only hurt your relationship, like Essie and others have said. You can’t give him your sense of unease, it’ll probably have to come from experience.
Example: I always put away my GPS mount in the car to avoid opportunistic thieves and Bassanio always thought I was being too cautious, until he left the mount up and someone broke into his car and stole the GPS and some other stuff he kept in there. Riding around for a week with a broken window convinced him to put the mount away, not any nagging I might have done.
Also, the makeup of the area of town or late at night might not really mean much in the end: I remember a friend saying she lived on the rough side of town and for mugged in a safe area of town in the middle of the day, right across from city hall.
For the record, I am a white person living in a transitioning neighborhood. And while there’s certainly been a lot of press and chatter about older residents being worried about displacement and getting priced out – when it comes to people in our neighborhood, it’s been very friendly and welcoming. There’s been zero violence or animosity. I don’t know what city you are in, but I haven’t heard in the news of that being the case elsewhere.
There’s been violence and shootings in our neighborhood recently too – but to be honest that’s due to gangs and those shootings generally have very specific targets, you know? Not to say there’s a greater chance here than in a nicer neighborhood that I could be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but still, I’m not too worried about it.
And when it comes to being the victim of a mugging or being burglarized, in some ways I feel more safe in my current neighborhood than I did in my old, more affluent neighborhood. There it was perceived residents had a lot more money, so we had a very large number of homeless or people on the fringe coming in to panhandle or worse. Home or car break ins in that neighborhood were pretty common.
I see that you’re being beat up a bit on the race/gentrified neighborhood thing, and I think that’s because it’s not really relevant to your question.
I don’t see this as being any different than being frantic because your father won’t quit smoking, or your elderly, confused mother refuses to move into assisted living, or your boyfriend won’t quit skydiving, or anything else you see as unnecessarily risky. Remember the thread about the overweight BF with the unhealthy diet? Like that.
At some point, you have to accept that adults make their own choices and decisions, and that they’re responsible for the outcome of those decisions. And no matter how upsetting it may be, you can’t change people. You tell them your concerns, you make your argument for why they should change, and that’s all you can do. You have to let go.
well I only pointed out their race because not a lot of white people live in their neighborhood and often when we go around people say stuff like ‘those white folk’ (yes even when I myself am not white I am still ‘grouped in’ with them)
and often it makes them stand out. I’m not saying it to say ‘those colored folks! wow they are so bad!’ no, it’s that him being white really makes him / his house stand out and they often shout things that pertain to race when they see us/them walking around the neighborhood, like “Like hey you white people” I wish I were kidding, but I’ve experienced it several times before.
The community college he is near is also 99% black, and often when we go to the Starbucks there (I am Asian and BF is white), we get stares or actually asked ‘You don’t go to school here, do you?” I mean…if that’s not making anyone uncomfortable I don’t know what would.
I’m not even going to try and reply to your last comments. But, you sound young and immature. You cannot force your boyfriend to do what you want. He knows you think he’s making mistakes. He’s an adult he gets to do what he wants. You are not his Mom. No one is going to give you advice on how to make him do what you think is the right way.
I…what?
Honestly would those comments make me feel uncomfortable? I suppose if it was delivered with clear malicious tone, sure, but based on the words alone, no no they would not make me feel threatened. Is this your first experience being somewhere you are the minority? Did you grow up and go to school somewhere that is majority white and asian (or majority white with a very large asian majority)?
Speaking from experience – it IS very jarring the first time you find yourself the minority when you grew up always being in the majority. It can even *feel* scary, but it’s usually not dangerous or threatening. It just is, and quite frankly feeling a little discomfort and feeling like the minority once in a while is not a bad thing.
Those people in the coffee shop – were they just trying to strike up a conversation with you? Just because they recognize and comment on the fact you don’t look like a typical resident does not automatically mean you are unwanted or unwelcome. It could have just been an obvious observation and easy conversation opener.
sometimes, sketchy parts of town aren’t even about race. i live in an older part of my city which is moderately sketchy, and if i go 2-3 blocks over, super sketchy, i wouldn’t walk there by myself. at any time of the day. i’m white. the whole neighborhood is white. still sketchy. we’ve had slashed tires. people in our vehicle (thank god they didn’t trash it).
so even if we push race aside (i’m not going to pretend it’s not a factor, it can be, to say anything otherwise is being ignorant of the times we still live in.) sketchy is sketchy. all you can do is tell him how you feel. and decide if his unwillingness to check in is a deal breaker. i’m a check in type person no matter what, so i can understand the anxiety. a person that would not check in with me would not work out very well with me :/
Yes I said “colored folks” in an exaggerated tone to emphasize the racism aspect that I was trying to point out wasn’t my purpose, not like I would say that in real life or in seriousness
Um, do you not see how that’s offensive? even in an exaggerated tone.
Couldn’t you have chosen black people? It would have probably went a long way to illustrating your point without being overtly offensive to ya know… some of the black people on this forum who are regular commenters.
YES clearly I do get how it’s offensive. If you understood the context of where I put it, you would understand my point of using it. I said it to exemplify a racist comment and to point out that I wasn’t mentioning RACE in that way. It was a counterexample statement.
