West Coconut Grove

Driving west on Grand Avenue toward US-1, away from the waterfront, the marinas, the multimillion dollar homes and the boutiques, Grand Avenue changes in less than a mile, from the Ritz to Inner City Anywhere.

West Coconut Grove is the historically black section of town, it was first settled by Bahamians.

Today the dingy yellow apartment complexes are pretty depressing, but I think part of the issue at hand is that we don't share space. Especially in a car-dependent culture. Driving everywhere is extremely isolating.

How many people, even those who frequent the shops at Cocowalk (the mall on Grand Avenue) have ever set foot on the pavement in the West Grove? As Dave Chappelle put it, he knew he was in the ghetto when he looked out the window and saw liquor store, liquor store, gun store...

Coconut Grove is not at all like the more dangerous inner cities, of Jon Singleton movie lore. But you sure can tell when you're not at the marina anymore.

When Bill O’Reilly expressed surprise that Sylvia’s in Harlem was a well appointed place, where black people behaved like, well, people, that's the same sort of ignorance that this physical separation fosters. I hold him completely responsible for that ignorance, mind you, but I understand where it comes from.

I really think that a car based culture has something to do with it.

Driving through the West Grove, it is indeed a scary place, full of drug dealing boogie men on bicycles, as images from CSI Miami play in the imagination. (Never mind that UM students are, according to received wisdom, the bread and butter for local drug dealers)

What if more people walked on the streets of West Coconut Grove?

Now, don't get me wrong, I do not romanticize the inner city, there is a Bill Cosby in me too. I wish that people would keep their damn neighborhoods clean. "Just because you're poor doesn't mean you're dirty" echoes my mother's voice. And I certainly would not date any of the young men on their bicycles in sagging pants.

Of course, I am not naive, I would not walk through that neighborhood alone at night. But as the wealthy drive by the dingy yellow apartment blocks huddled on this end of Grand Avenue, the psychological separation is an even greater barrier than the income gap. Those people over there are the undesirables, the bad ones. And that's the most upsetting thing about middle class appropriation of inner city culture, the "blackface" of so-called ghetto parties on college campuses. It's like something out of the late Roman Empire, or pre-Revolution France, making comedic sport out of others' despair. Again, possible if you're separate from it, if these are caricatures from tv, not real people.

What if it weren't so obvious that the decrepit neighborhood was the black neighborhood? As a visibly growing black middle class is the changing norm, poverty is not necessarily synonymous with skin color.

But you wouldn't know that, driving up Grand Avenue.