On a summer afternoon in early June, I walked up and down the street with a child I nanny and my 6-pound chihuahua. The wheels got stuck on a bump and as I readjusted the stroller for the tenth time, I had a quick thought that I instantly regretted. I hate this rundown neighborhood. But we made it to our local, tidy park and went up and down the brand new green, plastic slides. On our way back home, the stuck stroller wheels were punctuated by my kind neighbors chuckling at my dog sitting in the toddler's lap. After lugging that stroller up a flight of stairs I gave a deep sigh entering my living room with its lofted ceilings and generous windows. We watched the sunset with our dinner while pink and orange hues splashed against our clean, white walls. My precious cat cuddled up in her bed on the windowsill. That night, I listened to Kumail Nanjiani tell Dax Shepherd about the man he saw killed in the streets of Pakistan and the anxiety and anger he felt for years afterward. He felt lucky to be in America.
For 2 years, my husband I dreamed of beautiful homes in the city and purchasing property together, but we were continually unable to bring ourselves to a point where we were willing to leave this lofted living space for the smaller, outdated homes we can afford in our early twenties. We didn't want to purchase a smaller space for a higher mortgage.
The next morning, in a halfhearted attempt to stave off the summer heat pouring through my historical (read: poorly insulated) windows I crossed my living room to close the blinds. Looking out onto my idyllic urban, freshly paved street it took my brain a second to process the two men meeting in the middle of the road. One pulls out a gun and the other throws his hands up. It's already 82F in my living room with the AC set to 65F. Am I hallucinating?
But the shooter fires. And he goes on. Several shots go out as I freeze in the widow before looking towards the two toddlers. I throw myself to the floor and push the kids down. There is a brief pause and I raise my eyes to the edge of the window. I look out just in time to see him shoot once more before running into the courtyard of apartments across the street. I turn off the lights and close the remaining blinds and lead the kids to play in the hallway before calling my husband who had just left for work to make sure he made it. I argue with him and yell at him to not come home. His whole office could hear me.
As I watched my brave neighbors exit their homes and rush to the body, I told myself that it's okay I didn't memorize any details about the shooter. Maybe other people did? Or maybe they didn't. Was I front row a witness to a fatal shooting who didn't even bother looking for height, weight, facial features, or race? I watched him die.
I began to spiral.
I called my husband and told him that we were no longer walking the dog in our neighborhood. It isn't enough to just avoid walking him in the dark, this shooting happened in the morning. For the remaining two months of our lease in my gorgeous, lofted apartment, the blinds never open, the dog is being driven to a park for his daily walks, and no one is entering or leaving the apartment alone. For the next two months, I am living in fear.
Did I lock the front door? Will I be killed between my car and my front door? Who is watching me?
The reality of this shooting (and so many others) is that the dispute might have been domestic, but it remains unknown. This probably wasn't a random shooting or a mugging. This shooter probably isn't coming back to kill me or my neighbors and the streets are likely as safe as they have been for the last 2 years. But my allusion of safety was gone. When I looked out my window I saw phantom pools of blood on the concrete the police bleached clean. I now know what the slightly dark spot on the left side of the road is from. I was afraid of the windows I once loved. What if he saw me? What if he comes back and hurts me?
Somewhere between ignoring calls from my mom—who I am very close to—and accepting calls from my dad—the NRA member—I find that I am the only person I know who has ever seen anyone die. How is that possible? My dad grew up in an objectively bad area. How do I keep having the strangest, most traumatic life experiences possible? My dad pleads with me move now and I yell back WE CAN'T AFFORD TO.
I opened up my laptop (to prove that I'm right) by entering our financial information to our Credit Union's pre-approval FHA loan application. To my surprise, we were pre-approved for up to $125,000. Not great, but it's something. It gave me hope—and I had to apologize to my dad for yelling at him. Oops.
I spent the rest of the day finding other FHA lenders at different rates. Within 12 hours of the shooting on that Wednesday morning, we had found our pre-approved loan, received our pre-approval letter, acquired a realtor, and scheduled over 20 showings for Friday and Saturday. It was all so fast and felt too good to be true. I couldn't walk outside of my building without crying, but at least I had a light at the end of the tunnel.
We saw a lot of houses. Rundown Victorian mansions at the top of our price point, new constructions in sketchy areas at the bottom, but after seeing every house we possibly could over the span of two days, we put an offer in on the very first one we saw. A 5-bedroom, 2-bath ranch-style home in the middle of our budget. With all hard flooring, a master en-suite, and located in a nice neighborhood, we were able to overlook that it wasn't in the city and didn't have a ton of character. (I can add character, right?)
Our offer was accepted quickly and 30 days later, we closed on our first home. We moved in that day. After 35 days of nightmares, panic-attacks on 4th of July, and a general inability to walk outside of my apartment, our perfect little home was filling up with my dream appliances, my new Purple mattress, and a lot of fur. *So much fur*
Everything is perfect, right?
I guess for us, things are going pretty well. We became homeowners just before we turned 24. We love our home. I have a very ~fancy~ Café range with 6 gas burners. My cat’s self-cleaning litterbox is now tucked away downstairs by my brand new champagne Samsung washer and dryer. Pure bliss, but honestly this is ridiculous.
Just to be frank, are you f****** kidding me? It is absolutely ludicrous that we were able to buy a house on a whim. Yeah we worked hard and had to pull money out of my husband’s 401k and drain our investment accounts. We accept a small amount of money from my parents. We didn’t do it alone, we’re lucky, yada yada yada. All true, very good points.
But let’s get real. We had A LOT going for us. This was only possible because of an immense amount of socioeconomic privilege. Let’s set aside the privilege we have received from our university education, my husband’s job, and the income I receive working for my family’s business for a minute.
When we live in our downtown townhouse I wrestled with gentrification guilt. My affordable trendy apartment in a minority neighborhood was a steal that allowed us to buy nice cars and pay off debt while still being close enough to walk downtown. But a lot of our neighbors were scrapping by and some moved out when our rent increased by $25/month. My husband and I were vaguely annoyed by the increase. Being there felt like an intrusion. Everyone was overly nice to us. Kids waved to me when I came home from work, but they ignored other adults. No one complained when our friends were loud.
For months, I tried to convince myself that even though privilege allowed me to leave, maybe it was a good thing. At least I was no longer taking up space that belonged to other people? But the circumstances still make me feel icky after 6 months of living in our new home. Even though buying was a sound economical decision, the events leading up to this put our spontaneous move into a new disdainful form of migration: white flight.
I did not get the urge to move because I saved up and planned for a year. I already had Zillow installed on my phone, but I had been window-shopping for houses since high school. That wasn't new for me. When we moved into our apartment, I developed a financial plan that would allow us to purchase our first home in 2022. We were still operating with that plan when we quickly decided to move.
When I am blunt and give myself a third-person narration, the facts are simple. A black man killed another black man, and a white woman moved. Trauma aside, those are the most basic facts. I was able to overlook similar troubling acts of violence in my neighborhood for almost two years because I wanted to justify my affordable rent downtown, but when the violence got too close I was frightened and I left.
And the (white) people around me helped me leave. My dad liquidated an asset. My husband's family wrote a check. Everyone was sympathetic and concerned. During our move, the racial imbalance was further imprinted when I realized that the professionals (loan officers, realtors, lawyers, etc.) were all white and the movers and handymen were all black.
After a lifetime of pretending that in my little world racism doesn't exist, it turns out that it obviously does.
I really don't have a takeaway here. I don't have a life lesson from personal experience to dole out.
There are so many factors in our lives that are completely out of our control. The amount of privilege we receive from our racial and socioeconomic statuses is definitely one of those uncontrollable factors. By facing how privilege helps (or hurts) us, we begin to form a more empathic society. It is important to know and understand our privilege. I'm working on taking off my rose-colored glasses right now. I do not want to pretend that my actions are not at the expense of others. Did I single-handedly bring gentrification or white flight to my little neighborhood in Louisville? No. But I did contribute to the perpetuation of damaging systemic issues, and those are decisions I have to come to terms with. My goal now is to make choices with a greater world in mind. It's not a perfect solution, but I hope that I am heading in the right direction.
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