O Camden, My Camden!

So I am fairly certain I'm not the first person to satirize Whitman's ode to Lincoln, but I gotta say, after seeing Camden I am certain Whitman would be lamenting in a similar fashion. Unfortunately, photography isn't permitted inside the house, but the curators have done an excellent job recreating Whitman's final home just across the river from Philadelphia.

There's just one problem. It sits in the heart of Camden - and I'm not going to mince words here - that particular part of Camden is thug city. When I pulled in for the tour, the entire block was occupied by several hundred black people (no exaggeration, my guess is 300-400 crammed in one city block) who were selling things, jamming to boom boxes, and running around with their pants halfway down their butt cracks. I thought I had stumbled into another million man march (if you never heard me tell this story, remind me to tell you how I ended up in the middle of the Washington rally - actually in the middle of the marching band driving a big white pick-up truck).

Now I believe my record on race relations is solid in this community. People that don't know me can think what they want about the above paragraph and the rest of this post, but you'd be hard pressed to find a person who's advocated for blacks, especially young black men, as hard as I have. This advocacy record stretches beyond the church walls and into the school district and surrounding neighborhoods. In fact, a HUGE portion of my journey this week is attached to paying my respects to men and women that despised racism. I was raised to hate racism by parents who grew up during racist times... they hated it too.

But let me tell you, Camden was BAD. If it wasn't so bad, there wouldn't be six cop cars parked on the city block. I recognize that many people, maybe even some of the hundreds taken to the streets like Egyptians in the middle of "Arab Spring," aren't all thuggin' out in their $300 Lebron sneakers and pants pulled down to their knees. But a bunch on the streets were "thugged" to the max. The victims, the hungry, the elderly, the children... they were probably all at home behind a locked door holding their Bibles and saying a few prayers.

Worse than any of the "pant-dropping thuggery" was the condition of the area, very run down. I can only imagine what that city block would look like if those 400 wandering individuals picked up a broom and dustpan and cleaned it one Saturday morning. Their property values would double in a single day. If they converted those $300 sneakers into paint, their property values would quadruple in a day.

I'm not unsympathetic to poverty, not in the slightest. I know education is a huge factor; and I know that it is hard if you've been raised a certain way. I'm not beyond my feelings on the problem; hence, the lament: "O Camden, My Camden." It was utterly heartbreaking to see. Doubly heartbreaking to know that wedged in between all that chaos is a historical landmark celebrating a man that would have given one of his kidneys to the most broken, run-down alcoholic on the street - no matter what his/her color.

So I probably started a flame war on this one. That's fine. I know there's a ton of good in this area of Camden. It's just was buried under a hundred sagging jeans and gold chains.