The last thing they need is for the cops to show up for a dead white body on their streets. “… If anything, people of color will look out for you in their communities because they want to make sure that nothing’s gonna go down. “I’ve had these conversations with her family as well as with a few of my clients, ‘just keep in mind that they want to make sure no one’s buying drugs on their block and that you’re safe.’” “The thing that needs to be brought to the table is that white people are safer in Black communities than Black people are that live there,” he said. Through talks with his partner and her relatives, he learned the reasons he might be stared at in Black neighborhoods had little to do with him being in danger.
‘If you want, we can get you out of here’īeing in a relationship with a Black woman with family in the South and West sides meant he spent a lot of time being the only white person in Black spaces. … And the impression I got was, don’t go beyond these points because there are Black people that exist there.” Credit: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago The intersection of 63rd and Racine in the heart of Englewood. And then revisited what those people told me. “I saw the division, the racial divide, like right there. This is ridiculous,’” he said, realizing that people were warning him to stay away from areas of the city with majority-Black residents. I was heading west on Division Street and when I hit Cicero, I thought to myself, ‘You gotta be kidding me. This is a neighborhood I had never been to before, so we’re driving and then I noticed the change in the neighborhood. “Me and my colleague at the time … made a trip near Madison and Cicero. As he travelled throughout the city for work, once heading to West Garfield Park for a job, he started to see what those people really meant when they warned him about certain areas.
#Piano tuner chicago driver#
He took a full-time job as a warehouse clerk and delivery driver while attending piano tech school at night. … I often heard it wasn’t safe for white people. “And … I didn’t really know what that meant. “And I took their word for it, at first, because I was the new guy in town,” he said. “… Whatever you do, just … don’t go south of 18th street … and don’t go west of Central Park.” Almost immediately, he got advice about “no-go zones” in the city, even from people he hung out with casually at bars and clubs. But it was his experiences as an onsite piano technician that afforded him a window into the harm perpetuated by the pervasive negative perceptions of neighborhoods on Chicago’s South and West sides.ĭella Vecchia, now 43, moved to Chicago from Pittsburgh in 2006. In 15 years in the city, Della Vecchia’s social networks expanded his understanding of segregation in Chicago. ‘They won’t service our area…and we’re not the only community that suffers from this, just so you know.’” Because I couldn’t get anyone to come over here,’” Della Vecchia said. I didn’t want to tell you this on the phone, but you were about the sixth or seventh technician I called. “She said, ‘I want to thank you for all your hard work today. I just wanted to work.”Īs it turns out, Della Vecchia was the only contractor the homeowner could find willing to make the trip. I wanted to work, I didn’t care where the job was really. He remembers thinking, “I guess we’re gonna see how this goes. As he made the trek down to 73rd Street, he realized he not only was going to a part of the city he’d never seen, but he was going exactly where people had been telling him not to go since his first week in Chicago. So when he got a call from a homeowner in Englewood one day, he didn’t hesitate.
HUMBOLDT PARK - When Joey Della Vecchia was starting his business fixing pianos, he was eager for any jobs he could get, wherever they were in the city. Read the first here, the second here and the third here. This is the fourth story in a five-part series. We invite you to join us June 30 on YouTube for Making Chicago’s Segregation Personal, a live conversation about neighborhood stereotypes, segregation and how you can better understand your community by getting to know someone else’s.
Block Club Chicago is publishing five of these stories. As part of The Folded Map Project, Tonika Lewis Johnson and sociologist Maria Krysan interviewed 30 people about how they first confronted - and eventually combatted - harmful narratives about Chicago’s South and West sides.
0 kommentar(er)
