It was always pretty rough but it has continued to get worse exponentially over the past 25 years.

artie_fufkin wrote:

In what ways are Nashville and Memphis different?

That's an excellent question and one that I am reluctant to answer.  My hesitation is that discussing the differences in this context would suggest that I believe or theorize that those differences explain the crime rate differential, and some of them probably do.  But I suspect my prejudices of the moment, which are very different from those of my past, compromise my judgment and insight terribly.

Still, I'll go with the plain Vanilla version.  Today Nashville is much more cosmopolitan and progressive than Memphis.  A large part of that may be due to the presence of Vanderbilt University.  Also, at the time of the Civil War there was much greater sympathy for the union in East Tennessee than in the rest of the state.  That influence spread to Nashville, which is about as close to Kentucky as it is to Alabama and Mississippi.  The geography and ethnic mix change considerably once you get west of the Tennessee river and race relations have been much worse in this part of the state.  To many people in Mississippi and east Arkansas, Memphis is the state capitol.  And we aren't that far by boat from Cairo, Illinois.

Probably for economic reasons, Nashville and Chattanooga either maintained or reestablished political, social, and cultural ties with the Northeastern U.S. after the Civil War.  Ironically, the music culture in Memphis is much more Jazz and Rock and Roll, which I think most people think of as more sophisticated than the country music that is so much a part of the culture in Nashville.  But I don't think that music as an economic engine has ever had near the pervasiveness in Memphis, despite Elvis, B.B. King, and W.C. Handy, that it has had in Nashville.

Also, the Tennessee governmental structure is such that makes it very easy to the Western third of the state to ignore the rest of the state, and vice versa.  Because the University of Tennessee, at least the part that has the most successful football program, is in Knoxville, Nashville has a lot of incentive to look to the east, but very little reason to care about what happens in Memphis.  And a lot of reasons to want to forget about it.

Mags wrote:

artie_fufkin wrote:

In what ways are Nashville and Memphis different?

That's an excellent question and one that I am reluctant to answer.  My hesitation is that discussing the differences in this context would suggest that I believe or theorize that those differences explain the crime rate differential, and some of them probably do.  But I suspect my prejudices of the moment, which are very different from those of my past, compromise my judgment and insight terribly.

Still, I'll go with the plain Vanilla version.  Today Nashville is much more cosmopolitan and progressive than Memphis.  A large part of that may be due to the presence of Vanderbilt University.  Also, at the time of the Civil War there was much greater sympathy for the union in East Tennessee than in the rest of the state.  That influence spread to Nashville, which is about as close to Kentucky as it is to Alabama and Mississippi.  The geography and ethnic mix change considerably once you get west of the Tennessee river and race relations have been much worse in this part of the state.  To many people in Mississippi and east Arkansas, Memphis is the state capitol.  And we aren't that far by boat from Cairo, Illinois.

Probably for economic reasons, Nashville and Chattanooga either maintained or reestablished political, social, and cultural ties with the Northeastern U.S. after the Civil War.  Ironically, the music culture in Memphis is much more Jazz and Rock and Roll, which I think most people think of as more sophisticated than the country music that is so much a part of the culture in Nashville.  But I don't think that music as an economic engine has ever had near the pervasiveness in Memphis, despite Elvis, B.B. King, and W.C. Handy, that it has had in Nashville.

Also, the Tennessee governmental structure is such that makes it very easy to the Western third of the state to ignore the rest of the state, and vice versa.  Because the University of Tennessee, at least the part that has the most successful football program, is in Knoxville, Nashville has a lot of incentive to look to the east, but very little reason to care about what happens in Memphis.  And a lot of reasons to want to forget about it.

Thank you. A lot of that confirmed some of what I had read and suspected, but it's good to hear from someone who actually lives there. The first time I became aware of some of this was the year the Oilers regularly played in front of a half-filled Liberty Bowl. I was led to understand that the reason Memphis didn't embrace the NFL was that the team was going to move to Nashville and there was animosity between the two cities.

Mags wrote:

And you're not even on this list.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/18/best-worst-cities-to-find-jobs-leadership-careers-employment-worst_slide_11.html 


If you going to live in a high crime area, then surely you want to be unemployed.

Whose not on the list?  You can't be referring to St. Louis.  We came in at #11

Mags wrote:

forsberg_us wrote:

Mags wrote:

And you're not even on this list.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/11/18/best-worst-cities-to-find-jobs-leadership-careers-employment-worst_slide_11.html 


If you going to live in a high crime area, then surely you want to be unemployed.

Whose not on the list?  You can't be referring to St. Louis.  We came in at #11

Damn.  I thought it was just a top ten list.  I never have been any good at document production.

Crap. There goes my image of Rochester as a paradise.