Blog Post #5

Prompt: To what extent does a person’s neighborhood shape who she or he is?

Write a post on your blog- 300-350 words- in which you talk about your surroundings and how this environment has affected you as a person:

Briefly describe your neighborhood.
Which statement best fits you and why?
I am who I am because of the neighborhood I live(d) in.
I am who I am despite the neighborhood I live(d) in.

The neighborhood that I grew up in is a fairly quiet area with what might be considered a low crime rate (for Oakland), and I suspect that many would categorize it as middle class. I have never lived in what many would call a rough neighborhood. However, I have been around and worked in some neighborhoods in Oakland that could be described as such. It is difficult to say that my neighborhood has been the sole contributor to my character or that I am who I am because of it. In truth both the place that I have lived in and the places that I have lived near are responsible for much of my development. My home and directly surrounding area have provided, for the most part, a beneficial environment, while the more difficult areas have endowed me with a certain understanding of the value associated with that kind of asset. But which statement fits me best “because” or “despite?”

I would have to choose “because” for the simple reason that my immediate neighborhood has provided me with more benefit than detriment, the pros have always outweighed the cons, so to speak. Many of my neighbors have supported me throughout my life and I have never felt unsafe on my street. This support and relative safety (with perhaps the one exception of a heavily armed police squad aiming at my house) has proven invaluable to me in ways that I probably don’t completely understand or even consider. I can’t say I’d be a vastly different person if I had lived somewhere else, mainly because I believe that people and events have a much more tangible and measurable influence on a person’s life. It is true that location can have an effect on who and how but in my particular case the people that have most influenced me have been independent of my home location in respect to neighborhood.