Welcome to “the ghetto,” suburban style. At least that’s what some kids call Pride’s Crossing, an unassuming subdivision of cozy homes on tree-lined streets in a slice of the southeast metro area where Aurora, Centennial and unincorporated Arapahoe County converge.
Homes here typically sell for less than the metro area’s average price of $239,000.
A half-mile away are sprawling McMansions with four-car garages that start at $1 million.
Pride’s Crossing has no government-subsidized apartments, no trailer parks, no public-housing developments. But its juxtaposition near uber-wealthy neighborhoods may explain the slur.
It speaks volumes about the skewed view some rich kids have about what constitutes poverty.
“The people who live there are probably very poor,” a 14-year-old freshman from nearby Smoky Hill High School told me. I’m withholding her name so I don’t embarrass her. It’s not her fault she thinks that way.
I heard similar comments from other teens in the area.
Twelve-year-old Jonathan Greenhut, who grew up hearing that term, says he dislikes it, but that’s the name most kids know that area by.
“The elementary school in that area is Meadow Point. Some kids call it ‘Ghetto Point,”‘ Greenhut told me.
Greenhut’s mother, Nancy Cronk, worries that many children in the area have a distorted idea of what poverty is because they aren’t exposed to it.
“I don’t blame the kids. I feel as a parent it’s our responsibility to show kids the world outside of our neighborhood,” said Cronk, a 42-year-old interfaith minister.
It’s difficult, though. Cronk, who describes her family as middle class, says her children attend Cherry Creek schools with wealthy children who talk about vacationing in exotic locales.
“My children will complain about it. They feel they’re so disenfranchised because they’ve never been to Hawaii. I tell them, ‘You have it better than 95 percent of the world, so get over it.’ ”
Those are tough words, but in a competitive society where people often judge how well they’re doing by what others have, those reminders go a long way in correcting distorted perceptions.
Harry Bull Jr., the principal of Grandview High, the Cherry Creek school many of the kids from this suburban “ghetto” attend, has spent a lot of time pondering why “ghetto” is applied by kids to anything that isn’t expensive.
For some kids, a pay-as-you-go cellphone might be considered ghetto. Wearing clothes from Wal-Mart would be ghetto. The late-model cars that some of their teachers drive – compared with the new BMWs some of the teens drive – would be labeled ghetto.
Bull said many young people use the term without thinking about what it really means – not that he defends use of the term.
“Kids used to say, ‘That’s so gay’ or ‘That’s faggy.’ It drove me nuts,” Bull said. “I don’t think every kid was reflecting negatively on homosexuality. It just became a trendy phrase.”
He does believe many suburban children grow up not understanding what poverty is, and as a result may not comprehend how difficult it is for some people to escape it.
That, in turn, might lead to callousness and insensitivity and to the belief that it’s their own fault they are poor.
Who should teach rich kids about poverty? “We all should,” Bull told me. “You as a journalist. Me as an educator. Parents as parents.”
He’s doing his part, urging teachers to use “teaching moments” such as explaining why Hurricane Katrina took a devastating toll on poor people. Parents like Cronk will do their part.
But what about the parents who don’t have a clue? Who is going to teach them so they can teach their children?
Cindy Rodriguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays in Scene. Contact her at 303-820-1211 or crodriguez@denverpost.com.
