Please Don't Bad Mouth My City

My mom used to always tell me that it was rude to say "Ugh" about someone else’s food and now that I’m older. I’m a firm believer of not "yucking someone’s yum."The concept is still the same, but now it applies to the bigger things in life. Bigger things such as loving my city, while you go on hating it.

In my search for looking for a college, I checked out all the places that were close to my home. I was lucky to call Milwaukee home. It's a city that is crawling with colleges and universities that were right in my backyard. My beautiful, urban backyard. I found that the small college life was for me, so when I visited Cardinal Stritch, I knew I had found the right school that would match my personal needs and wants.

When I got there, I was excited to see how diverse Stritch was. There were students who were as close as a few blocks down the street from me and all the way from around the world. It was really exciting, but one thing I wasn’t prepared for was the criticism that came with some of them. Now, don’t get me wrong, not every student who wasn’t from another city, state, or country had negative things to say about my city, but a lot of them did.

What was most shocking were that the ones who lived not too far from Milwaukee in neighboring cities yet had the most negative view of Milwaukee. It was frustrating to hear students in the dorm halls bad mouthing certain areas of the city that were not too far from where I had lived. There are conversations that I heard that still make me mad to think about how people believed how crime ridden and scary my home was.

As a Milwaukee native who has lived in some of those places and is still standing to show for it (can you believe it?), I found and still find it offensive. Milwaukee may not be the cleanest, safest, or most beautiful city, and yes, crimes are committed here as they are in all big cities, but it’s quite funny how I never hear anyone complain about how awful Summerfest is or how State Fair should be shut down. And guess what? Those wonderful events take place right here, in good ‘ol Milwaukee. The same Milwaukee that is here all year round and still my home.

I haven’t been in too many places in Wisconsin, but even if I had, I wouldn’t complain about them as much as people complain about Milwaukee. I have lived here my entire life and never have I had the things happen to me that people say happen to them when they come here. I have never been robbed or shot at and neither have my friends, and I have lived dead smack in the middle of most of those ‘scary’ areas that non-Milwaukeeans are so afraid of. And again, I’m not saying bad things don’t happen here, but before you step all over my city, please remember that I was born and raised here and am damn proud to say so. Probably just as you are about your hometown.

Milwaukee has so much to offer and I think people sometimes forget that. They forget that while there are an endless amount of positives to Milwaukee, there are a large number of negatives. And again, Milwaukee can be a dreary place sometimes, but roses still need dirt even after they are beautiful.

Maybe it’s just because I have lived here and I have seen some bad things happen, but I’m not afraid of my city. I’m not afraid of the bad things it has to offer I’m always embracing the opportunities that it gives me. Milwaukee is my city, and through the good and bad, it always will be.