A tale of two cities

It must suck coming from Martinsville. \nNot because of the actual living conditions, but because for honesty's sake, you've gotta tell people where you're from. \nThen, they silently judge you -- some less silently than others. \nAnd while being an assumed backward-thinking, Confederate-flag-in-the-Midwest-donning racist isn't a stereotype I deal with on a personal level, I know how it feels to be judged falsely because of a certain hometown reputation. Coming from the nation's 2004 Murder Capital per capita, I can relate.\nFellow Garyite and IU sophomore Jasmine McCully shares this scenario: \nStranger: So, where are you from?\nJasmine: Gary.\nStranger: Oh really? (Eyes widen then relax, tone hushes) Is it really that bad?\nInstead of answering, Jasmine usually just calls the homies and does a routine beat-down. She won't brandish the pistol unless provoked. \nYeah, right. \nBut after Googling "Gary," in ten short minutes I see how Jasmine's reaction might be semi-believable to non-Garyites. \n"The city of Gary is an American disaster," reports abcnews.com.\nSelf magazine ranks Gary as one of the worst cities for women's health and the absolute worst for working women. \nSearch Google for "Gary, Indiana, schools" and you might find the opinion piece about 26 of Gary's institutions on academic probation in 2003, or the article about a 17-year-old shot in Gary's Lew Wallace High School parking lot.\n"I guess as an outsider, it would seem like a disaster," McCully said. She cites crooked cops, inadequate schools, substance abuse, gang violence, domestic abuse and stunted economic opportunity as a few indicators of such disaster.\nPersonally, I'm disturbed because the once-upon-a-time home of America's second black mayor, Richard Hatcher, is now the ninth straight Murder Capital title-taker.\nIn 1967 Hatcher proposed a "different kind of Gary," an integrated one in which "black power" involved both blacks and whites sharing the benefits and the burdens of politics together. By 1976 however, Gary's black population claimed more than 50 percent of the total, and now the number is nearly 85.\n"The town that God forgot," as a columnist from the city's Post-Tribune describes it, hangs on for dear life. It seems as if white flight took along with it peace, economic prosperity and any hopes of fulfilling the civil rights-era idea of black progress.\nThe media portrays Gary as some kind of irredeemable wasteland. If you follow the news reports, it might seem as if Michael Jackson was the last good thing to come out of Gary. (Scratch that -- let's just say Janet.)\nChicago saw 599 homicides last year. In fact, of major cities, it was Chi-town that actually received the title of Murder Capital. It's funny how Chicagoans have yet to be labeled as a through-and-through group of killers and brutes. \nIn 1968, a black woman selling encyclopedias in Martinsville was stabbed with a screwdriver and left to die in the street. The town, which at the time was probably no more racist than many other predominantly white, KKK-influenced southern Indiana towns, carries a stigma of racism they just can't seem to shake. \nAnd despite the obvious differences, a young man from Gary and a young man from Martinsville share much in common. Both deal with scrunched foreheads and raised eyebrows when they mention their hometowns to strangers. And what's worse is that the label they've been given, whether common criminal or backwoods racist, is one they'll either be tempted to live up to, forced to justify or determined to counteract for as long as they claim their roots.