>>>>>Dragan,
>>>>>
>>>>>Sorry for your loss. But I am wondering, would you write the same message if the two kids were white? Would you stop giving to white charities if the kids were white? You see what I am saying?
>>>>
>>>>It's that I feel betrayed, I guess. We wanted to be part of the neighborhood, not just a family of foreigners, and this is putting a barricade between us in a way. This is probably my bubble bursting.
>>>
>>>Dragan - I thought better of you. That a couple of kids misbehaved is no reason for you to turn against _all_ your neighbors.
>>
>>How often does stuff get stolen on Ivory Tower Lane?
>
>Bikes that get left outside do sometimes get stolen around here. Things get taken from unlocked cars, too. (The Obama magnet on my car got stolen from a synagogue parking lot a couple of weeks ago, for that matter.)
>
>But none of that is an excuse to blame a whole group of people.

I'm not blaming everybody who's black, just my neighborhood, which is maybe fifty people who may have made a difference, but didn't.

And this wasn't left on the lawn, or in the open. It was behind a tall fence, invisible from the outside, unless you happen to be around when the gate in the fence is open. So this was either someone riding on a tall vehicle, or visiting a neighbor and seeing the bikes from above, or someone who saw inside when we were coming or going. The bikes were not in the open; the gate wasn't locked.

As for blaming a whole group of people, I haven't done that lightly. I know how it feels, as I know you do. It's just that this is the peak of a long line of small things that happen here, like feeding whole slices of bread to seagulls who then can't take that away, as they're too big, so it all falls into our back yards and attracts rats - we caught a dozen last winter but nobody else seems to notice; dog turds on the lawn (I was seriously thinking of hiding a camera and posting a "you and your dog can be on YouTube..." notice), stealing the front license tag off the car (found the second one two weeks later, 30m away). There's garbage too, but can't complain much, saw far worse in the back alley in downtown Richmond. OTOH, the lawns are mowed regularly, and the mowers shred most of it :).

Like Tracy said, it's the attitude. I'm not blaming them for being black, but for buying into this "we're a black ghetto" attitude. Civility and respectfulness (and teaching one's young so) wouldn't diminish anyone's cultural identity.