path: root/research/community-on-the-edge.rst

The community on the edge
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:date: 2006-01-29T22:16:00
:category: research
:tags: dissertation, BostonMiracle

There were again two shootings yesterday, one in Mattapan and other in
Jamaica Plain. I was thinking about the TV news report about that and
how does it shows the image of the community, and actually I found one
thing interesting—the phrase “a community on the edge”. Somehow it again
lead to the Dave’s “resist outrage” slogan. Of course, that it is
terrible that somebody was killed, but what edge we are talking
about—civil war, uprising, falling into anarchy? Probably, they meant
the last one, but is it really so? Is really “the highest number of
murders in ten years” (which is still somewhere around the Boston
average of the long trend) reason for being on the edge?

And of course, that the point is not, what is the truth about the
homicide rate, but how is it presented and what is the image of that
homicide rate. What is probably the most interesting (but it may be
again just the image) is that in this as in the December quater-murder
people living around were claiming that this was previously rather quite
neighborhood. Was it really (power of self-dellusion is enormous) and is
it thus change in the focus of murders from the Blue Hill Avenue area?
Or were they living in dellusion and whole Dorchester, Mattapan,
Roxbury, Jamaica Plain is dangerous?

Much more questions that answers. Oh well.