Comment 53182

By Michelle Martin (registered) - website | Posted December 15, 2010 at 21:21:17

Many families with kids in poverty would not want that in their neighbourhood and are actively trying to raise kids who don't perpetuate or participate in those things. Fewer are actually involved in them as addicts, clients or workers. And to paint poor people with the "oh, they all want this kind of stuff in their neighbourhood" brush is offensive, especially given the values of so many new immigrants who are so often incredibly hardworking and family-oriented people. -- Meredith, above.

Absolutely. Many years ago, now, an acquaintance of mine, schoolteacher by profession, had immigrated to Canada from Kenya. Within a year, she packed up and went back to Kenya with her teenage son (and lost so much time and money in the process) because she saw quite quickly that the neighbourhood where they ended up, where they could afford to live (I think it was an apartment complex in Scarborough), was a minefield for a young male at a particularly impressionable age, who would have been feeling insecure and little homesick. She felt the risk to her child just wasn't worth it. Fortunately, she had the resources to change her mind. Not everyone does, or is even in such a neighbourhood by choice.

Comment edited by Michelle Martin on 2010-12-15 20:21:59

“Conviction without experience makes for harshness. ” Flannery O'Connor

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