We have all seen the discourse on places like reddit or whatever, where even the positive comments about rough neighborhoods is like “just keep your head up, don’t use headphones, pay attention and you will be fine”
Like how much of this is just white people playing out fantasy scenarios in their cop brains? I feel like most of “bad neighborhood” discourse just comes down to 
Like sure there are places where you are more likely to get your place broken into or whatever and systemic racism tends to result in certain outcomes but I feel like most places like this are in the minority, and in fact this must be the case or gentrification wouldn’t happen 
The danger is generally exaggerated but having lived in a few local ‘bad neighborhoods’, it is best to not look out of place or wear anything too expensive that could be resold or whatever. There are some desperate people who can be dangerous. I’ve had a few close calls, a couple attempted muggings where I literally didn’t have anything worth taking, one time I got rolled for a box of frosted mini wheats cause I went to the store when high af for munchies and that’d literally the only thing of value I had. I negotiated that I could take a handful. Almost got swarmed coming home by some kids looking to do so and being a crust punk saved my ass there, they got closer, saw how I was dressed I heard one say "naw, this is just some punk rocker!’ And then they wished me a good night. One time an older homeless dude who I was helping with his parking direction job in exchange for free speed thought I was also homeless and younger and was clearly trying to groom me into sex work, I just directed cars and got a handful of pills and left. Shit happens and there are for sure scumbags out there, but there are anywhere else too, it’s just in poorer places it happens outside more often. I felt less safe going through richer neighborhoods on weekend nights when shithead rich kids would cruise around and kick the crap out of people they didn’t recognize from hockey league or whatever. The racial demographics of any of these experiences probably leans a bit more towards white people being the perpetrators by incident. The group thar let me go cause I’m punk was all black kids and they would skew things if I went by number of people. A few of em I already knew who they were and they knew who I was, some were random. Like, I would say you may run a higher risk of getting robbed if you’re in a 'bad neighborhood ’ and are a clearly easy target for robbery cause there is a higher concentration of people that are desperate for quick cash for myriad reasons. Things aren’t as bad as they’re reported to be generally and racist fear mongering is a huge part of that, but at the same time, don’t be an idiot and at the end of the day, you gotta realize they just want your stuff and aren’t just doing random physical harmand while getting robbed sucks, robbing people isn’t that glamorous either and take your loss as a privilege check.