Race determines quality of life?

My co-worker, M., told me that her daughter's ex-husband was trying to sell his house. "It's in a bad neighborhood," she explained. Knowing that M. lives in a subdivision where the homes cost several hundred thousand dollars, I was curious to know what the term "bad neighborhood" meant to her.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Well, his house is surrounded by Mexicans."

"That doesn't mean it's a bad neighborhood."

"I know that, Grizzbabe!"

I don't think she does. This is the same woman who said, when describing her hometown in New Jersey, that the neighborhood is not what it use to be because it has now been taken over by Puerto Ricans. That's like me saying that my uncle lives in a bad area of town because most of his neighbors are black. Never mind that he lives in an upper-middle class suburb where the homes cost more than I can make in a decade.

My ex-roommate's neighbor had his house for sale in a cove where the neighborhood kids congregated to play basketball. This neighbor called the police to have the kids remove their goal because he didn't want potential home buyers to be scared off by the sight of a bunch of young African-American males hooping it up. If this man could have looked past skin color for a moment, he would have seen that these kids come from respectable, hard-working families and that basketball goal has brought the neighborhood together in a way that wasn't evident when I lived there.

Race does not tell the whole story and should not be the reason that a community is deemed a bad place or a desirable place to live. A neighborhood's quality of life is determined by schools, crime rates, property taxes, pride in home ownership, etc. One's race does not influence any of these criteria.