I’ve been living in New York for eight and a half years now, and since I lived in Queens for my first four (and not in the trendy areas of Long Island City or Astoria), I’m used to hearing all the backlash and negative reactions people have to Queens as a borough. To so many (white) people who are in New York, there’s really just Manhattan and Brooklyn, and that’s it.

Yet I actually was surprised yesterday night when I was at my mentoring session for foster kids when one of the Latina mentors said she was born and raised in Jackson Heights, a neighborhood in Queens, and still lived there, but had a very negative reaction when I told her I lived in Elmhurst for four years. Her face turned sour and she asked me if I liked living there. I said I really liked it a lot, still missed the food, but I much prefer the quick commute of living on the Upper East Side and the convenience of being in Manhattan. She asked me if I ever witnessed any crime, and I said no; my neighborhood was full of families, mostly Asian, Latino, and white.

She told me that growing up, she and everyone she knew in Jackson Heights always considered Elmhurst the “ghetto,” the area that was crime-ridden that no one ever wanted to go to. That’s so odd to me, I said to her. East Elmhurst has a lot of crime (and is really only accessible by car or bus), but that’s a very different neighborhood than Elmhurst, which is accessible by the R/M yellow train line that I used to take. She didn’t seem to know the difference and said that she wasn’t a fan of Elmhurst. What about Corona (the actual neighborhood next to East Elmhurst that is known for violent crime)? Her face completely went off. “That place is bad, really bad. I would never even consider going there!”

First, there was the negative reaction against Queens as a borough. Now, I’m getting negative reactions for Elmhurst supposedly being a dangerous and crime-ridden neighborhood from someone who lives in Jackson Heights, which is only two subway stops away from my old stop in Elmhurst. Yet, this person, despite never having lived anywhere other than Jackson Heights her entire life, doesn’t know the difference between East Elmhurst and Elmhurst as neighborhoods. Ignorance, even in your own borough, is just rampant here. And people are happy to be ignorant and not know what they don’t know and dismiss opinions from people like me who actually have “been around.” I can’t escape it anywhere. It’s no wonder Trump is going to be inaugurated tomorrow.