3.0 out of 5 stars

Personal Opinion about "Thriving in Bad Places: Studies in Awareness..."

By David L. Carrollon January 30, 2017

Format: Paperback

|

Verified Purchase

An okay read, but the author's consistently negative portrayal of African-Americans made reading it unpleasant. It's unfortunate that his personal experiences have been so negative, which appears to have adversely affected his opinion of all African-Americans (or at least that's the impression that I got from reading this book). I grew up in Newark NJ during the early '60s and, although there were a few people who fit the stereotypes in this book, there were far more who were decent, law-abiding, citizens.

First, I believe this reviewer is sincere and that he is generally bothered that I have run across the only violent black Americans in the U.S. He is, however, a suburban liberal, based on his use of the term African-American, a term that college-educated Black Americans insist on being used in their presence, yet a term that most Black Americans think is demeaning and meant as a patronizing slight by the upper class.

I believe that Mister Carollon grew up in Newark—a pretty tough town—during the early 60s and had positive experiences with blacks, as blacks did not become violently radicalized and used by the elite whites to prey on poor and working class whites, in order to drive them from prime gentrification real estate, until the mid to late 1960s.

In case you read this, David, it bothers me every single time I portray blacks in a negative light, because some of my closest friends are black, some of my personal heroes are black—I even tried to adopt a black kid, but was barred by the State of Maryland—and, since I have dedicated my declining years to a search for the truth, the Truth forces me into a negative portrayal of urban American blacks even as some black young men seek me out as a mentor.

In my first two books I portrayed blacks as less aggressive than whites, as, up until that time, although my experience had shown blacks to be more violent towards me than whites, my research—conducted mostly among whites and covering the 60s, 70s and 80s—showed that whites were more violent. However, by the time I ended my survey, blacks had become more violent across Baltimore, to the point where no white-on-black attacks have been documented since 2003 [okay, two white crackheads did attack a trio of blacks, who were far larger than they, and later apologized for doing it], yet every week numerous black-on-white attacks occur in and around Baltimore.

By the time I took over managing a majority black supermarket in Baltimore in 2006, law abiding blacks and whites were living and working and shopping under a black thug reign of terror, which intensified in 2009.

Since 2015, black-on-white violence in Baltimore City and Baltimore county has leaped ten-fold over the numbers I kept in 2010.

David, this past six months, I have been attacked or threatened by 11 black men and youths in 4 encounters, forced to draw a weapon in three encounters.

David, in the springtime of your life, American blacks were emerging from a government sponsored reign of white and police terror, and you bear witness to the fact that most of them, even in a place like Newark, were decent folks.

Now, in the winter of my life, I and other urban whites live under a government sponsored reign of black terror. Thus far the cops are neutral. I await to see if the pendulum shall swing entirely the other way.

Thanks for buying the book, David.

James