Pine Hills: A White Perspective

Pine Hills: A White Perspective
by Lisa Parani

I recently wrote a paper that evaluated the community where I lived from the age of seven until I was nineteen, and graduated from high school, Pine Hills.  Pine Hills is a small community that is just outside of central Orlando. 

 My mother chose to move there because she was able to purchase our home for a modest $36,000.  At the time that we established residence at our new home in the Pine Hills community, it was ever so slightly slipping away from the grasp of the wealthy.  The homes on average were designed for, and catered to, the middle to upper class citizens; however, as time passed the members of society that chose to inhabit the outskirts of Orlando grew less wealthy and less selective about community, about education, and about each other.

It seems reasonable to believe that during the eighties when the City of Orlando actually attempted to annex Pine Hills, this is when the community began to decline.  In retrospect, it makes sense that as the town grew disenfranchised and disengaged, government would mimic such behaviors.

 Pine Hills manifested into an impoverished community comprised of those members of society’s lowest socio-economical classes.  As I write this analysis, it is even more ironic that I recently participated in a community outreach effort where the City of Orlando’s Dick Bachelor paid homage to child abuse prevention month at the Rosemont Community Center located in Pine Hills.  This community center was chosen because crime had seen a forty percent increase from two years ago.

 My current community consists of predominantly middle to upper class Caucasian families and the truth is the cultural values of my community and Pine Hills differ a great deal.  Pine Hills is comprised of mostly lower class Hispanic and African American families and this dates back to as far as I can remember.  Pine Hills inhabitants value leisure, equal opportunity, mobility, cooperation, collectivism, interconnectedness, spirituality, extended family and compassion. 

 However, while this community is integrated enough to be cooperative, it is because of isolation and disassociation that they have become crime infested, educationally challenged, and lack the appropriate resources to empower themselves as a whole.  
 
 The community that I currently reside in would represent the essence of American values, which are values tied closely with capitalism and industrialism.  We value work, equality, stability, competition, individualism, independence, materialism, nuclear family, and moralism.

 As I write this sad reality, I’m appalled at the existence I am facing; I’m living the antithesis of the life I have ever planned to live, particularly because of where I grew up.  It seems so strange to realize that people from a lower socioeconomic class have stronger cultural values, but they do, in so many respects, from my vantage.

 Identity permeates the African American and Hispanic individual.  This is because they hold cultural values so highly and this could also be, because that is all they truly have to hold onto in a community such as Pine Hills.  Interests intermingle between the races and being that I am Caucasian I intermingled, as well.  The community, as a whole, enjoyed so many of the same activities within each culture, such as dancing, singing, laughing, and loving.

 There are two individuals who were raised in Pine Hills that come to mind who have gained success and fame; Horace Copeland and Brian McKnight.  Horace was the star football player at my high school, Evans.  He played football for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, then later for the Miami Dolphins.  Brian McKnight was a Grammy nominated singer, who gained notoriety in the late nineties.  Both of these men were African American.  There was not one individual that I can recall who was held in high regard, as an agent of change.

 During this past year, I have visited the issue of socialization and social control with regard to Pine Hills on numerous occasions.  I am disheartened at the reality that I have had to face with relation to the community that I grew up in.  I was a gifted student that took myself out of the gifted program. Just so that I could be considered “normal”, moreover, so that I could demote ambition, drive, and an education.  More than ever, I realized that education was the means of social control within this community.  There was no academic guidance or support in accordance to my future or any of my peers. 

 I recognize this now as part of the social control that transferred over from the near annexing that almost occurred in the eighties.  I mean if they don’t want a whole city, why would they care about one person?  I feel fortunate that I had enough resilience and self-determination to walk away from the unhealthiness of oppression, but I am still able to look back in distaste at the form of social control that was and still is inflicted upon this community. 

 My current community does not operate in this manner; in fact we have good public school systems for the most part.  I would guesstimate that the form of social control that occurs within our small world would be the appearance of one another’s homes.  Everyone knows that how things look on the outside is exactly how it is on the inside.

 Mutual aid and social support came from one another.  I believe that you knew you were all in this thing together called “oppression”.  I learned how to feel oppressed and be oppressed.  Living in Pine Hills was like breathing the same air of another person of a different race or a different culture.  You actually felt as though you were one with each other and never were I happier than when I lived amidst people that were so different than me because that made us so much alike.

       Pine Hills is definitely a good arena for social interaction; everyone stays outside and talks to everyone else.  The residents provide a minimal amount of mutual aid for each other.  The residents do often communicate and share information, they often look out for one another or tell other families if there is something they feel should be of concern. 

 My current neighborhood makes clear distinctions as to the boundaries of one another’s home and relationships with neighbors.  We do not perform but one of the five functions of an optimally healthy community and that is the component that Pine Hills is lacking; an organizational or a political base.  We accurately set boundaries by only interacting at Colonial Town meetings that are extremely well-organized.  These meetings enable the community to then follow through with their efforts in performing the four other functions, but this is the only arena we have for social interaction, communication and exhibiting status.

 The most important systems would be the community centers, (The Boys and Girls Clubs), and outreach programs, because prevention is critical to this volatile climate.  I was enthralled with the Community Center that I visited in Pine Hills recently.  I spoke with the Director and asked him if he had felt the center made a difference within the community and he affirmed that it had.  The center opened in 2005 and is a safe haven for children returning home alone from school.  Open and cooperative discussion with regard to the future of such a community is one of the most difficult objectives to attain within a community filled with such diversity.  Gathering a group or forum would seem next to impossible, for so many reasons; financial constraints, disinterest, or perhaps even fear of the unknown.

 I believe it is very clear what the most important inputs into this community should be, representation and funding.  Pine Hills is almost ostracized and without appropriate representation of the people, they are not heard.  Furthermore, without funding, there is no one that is willing to advocate for their futures loud enough to be heard. 

 Without appropriate representation and funding, Pine Hills will only continue to decline in the most fundamental areas; education and empowerment, the truest form of degradation.

 The people of Pine Hills are its strength and also its weakness.  There are families who are united but uneducated with regard to their strengths and weaknesses and I can say this because I have lived it.  I always knew there was something unique about being witness to such declination and I truly believe that others feel the same.   It’s almost as though we are all waiting for an uprising and you never know what could happen.

 I feel that education is one of the most accessible means to bettering generations and the school systems are lacking more than words could express in Pine Hills.  This transcends into identity, as well.  Children at the local high school are uncertain as to where they will be going to receive their educations because similar, previous patterns are emerging with regard to annexation. 

 If it’s not the city, it’s the people once again, and this is how it’s always been, as far back as I can remember. 

 During one phase or shift in educational priorities, we lost almost one third of our student body to another high school.   This was all due to misrepresentation by a government that felt they were “fixing” the problem.  We were told they were “reassigning” those students to another school and I remember how we felt when it occurred.  We knew those reassigned students would be receiving a much better education, but more importantly much better opportunities, while we were still going to be stuck with the same.  I believe that the government’s responsibility should be to unite not divide. 

       Throughout the course of my life I have realized that growing up in Pine Hills has made me a much more holistic, tolerant, educated, culturally competent, and self-aware individual and for that I am grateful.   I also recognize that oppression against the dominant culture, African American, affected me and there was little I could do about it, until now.  I have always gravitated to those who have overcome adversity, the underdog, and I always will.  That is what Pine Hills represents to me and what I want to emphasize the most is that this unique community only needs the right input in order to get the right output.