American city life: white and living "in the hood"

From our People-are-People series.

As Ferguson, MO, Baltimore, MD, and other cities make news around the world you can rightly wonder what life is like in deprived neighborhoods, especially if you only know them from TV or movies.

A white friend back in the U.S. once told us how she began life in a black city neighborhood.
She had just had a bad breakup and had to move out, the small company she worked at had reduced work hours to avoid layoffs, you get the idea.

So, I looked for a place I could afford, and all there was was this small apartment in "the hood". I took it, I was a bit worried but it seemed the only way forward. Two friends helped me move in. Not that I owned much, we were done within a couple of hours.
I made dinner for us, we share a bottle of wine, and they left. The move itself hadn't been much work at all, but I was tired from the stress. I set the alarm, I had to go to work in morning. After I glanced at the bullet hole in the ceiling one last time - did I mention there was bullet hole in the ceiling - I went to bed.

A hard, repeated knock on the apartment door woke me up. It was a few minutes after four in the morning. My heart started to race, I wanted to ignore the knocking but it didn't stop. So, I got up and opened the door just an inch or so. Right in front of me there is this black dude, he is tall, like at least 6'5, and with big dreadlocks. "I'm sorry, he goes, I didn't mean to wake you in the middle of the night, but your keys are in the door."
I looked down, and sure enough, my keys were in the door, worse than not locking the door, leaving your keys in for everybody to see. The dude and I talked for a few minutes, he was on his way to work.

That was my first night in the hood. I lived there for about a year, and of course, some bad things happened in this deprived neighborhood. But I did fine, and people talked to each other and kept an eye out for each other. One day, for example, I came home from work and this drug dealer who hung out on the corner all the time stopped me and explained he had seen a white who had obviously checked out my apartment two days in a row while I was at work. He described him really well, I guess that's part of the job description, and I realized it was my friend Jim from upstate, who had said he'd be in town later that month, and that he'd stop by.

A bullet hole in the ceiling of the apartment is no problem. It can't hurt you because the shot has already been fired.