Sims believes that the people terrorizing embattled communities aren’t the ones fighting to overcome poverty but the ones who have succumbed to it. He also places some blame for the decline in tough neighborhoods on “brain drain,” the result of well-to-do blacks having moved away, and on what he calls “values drain.”
Sims lives with his wife, son and daughter in Auburn-Gresham, where he grew up. Once solidly middle class, his neighborhood used to be filled with residents who were strivers. Both of his parents had master’s degrees. But that was a generation ago.
He recalls that it was about the mid-1990s when his community began to change. A few home burglaries and car thefts evolved into drug dealing and drive-bys. He said some of his neighbors left fairly immediately. Others tried to hold on, but eventually they moved too.
“You began to see that there were so few men left,” he said. “The kids might see a man at school, the gym teacher or the custodian. But there were no men going to work in a suit and tie. And that makes a difference.”