Christine, I was not in the least offended. To be frank, I was amused.
If you had said simply that Washington is "full of poor black people on drugs", I probably would not have responded. But the question you really asked cracked me up:
Doesn't Washington have a lot of desperate poor people on drugs preying on people at night, and a generally high crime rate?
It cracked me up because it is precisely the kind of question that people who have never been to Washington ask. Alas, the problem, as I said in my original post, is that here the poor prey on the poor, in their own poor (and often isolated) neighborhoods, where the rest of us never go. And they (the poor)never go to the fancy neighborhoods where we prefer to hang out. In other words, "we" (the fortunate ones) do not get preyed on. (New York City, for example, is a MUCH more dangerous place to be, for anyone, rich or poor.)
Joan |
