[burfog]

No. Being female only changes the nature of likely threats, slightly.

Assume the example person is walking. Fear of crowds is the norm for people with a rural/suburban mindset. Evidently, people with an urban mindset actually feel safer in crowds, which is difficult for me to wrap my head around.

The deserted road is safe, aside from wild animals.

In a crowd, the more extreme rural/suburban people would be keeping their hand near a concealed weapon. I suppose this feeling might be alien to a person accustomed to city life.

The above plays a role in the fact that rural/suburban people without jobs are often hesitant to move to cities. The stress would take a toll on such people.

[eesmith]

So, "urban" for you only means something like "urban core", eg, Manhattan, or the loop in Chicago, yes?

Why should we believe that "Fear of crowds is the norm for people with a rural/suburban mindset" is correct?

None of my aunts and uncles who were born and raised on a farm appear to have a fear of crowds. Most of them left the farm when they became adults ... and moved to cities.

For certain, most people from suburban areas do not have a fear of crowds. Otherwise, who goes to "crowded suburban malls" https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22crowded+suburban+mall%22&t=ffsb... ?

I read a book last night about ranchers in the mid-20th century. These are certainly rural people. Yet the ranch hands would go to the fair or rodeo, which certainly had crowds.

[burfog]

I think "urban" is a bit more, but the line is blurry. Factors include a high portion of people who are dependent on landlords and public transportation, the mixing of residential with non-residential, and of course density.

Cities wouldn't exist if there weren't people attracted to them, and of course some of those people come from outside. Clearly your aunts and uncles did not have that suburban/rural mindset despite being raised there.

Street crowds are different from other ones. Suburban malls try to keep an eye on things, ejecting people who cause trouble. The same goes for football games, the fair, the rodeo, and so on.

[eesmith]

It seems like when I try to pin you down, you add more qualifiers.

You first wrote "Fear of crowds is the norm for people with a rural/suburban mindset". Now you say it's, what, 'fear of being in insufficiently observed areas'?

I really don't understand that. So Times Square is okay because while there are crowds there are also a lot of cops?

Here's a cop van on Times Square. I literally did "Times Square" in Google Map, switch to street view, and rotated to see the van - https://www.google.com/maps/@40.758673,-73.984968,3a,75y,21....

You wrote "suburban/rural mindset" but when I point out that I know who were raised on a farm and don't have a fear of crowds, you now qualify that to "some people"?

I think your view is now the much weaker "some people from rural areas don't like being in areas where there aren't enough police or security guards or other people watching out for their safety"?

That's obviously true - white flight occurred in part as urban whites moved to areas where they felt the local government was more interested in keeping them safe from having to deal with non-whites.

I know that's not what you meant. I bring it up to point out how your statements are so general that they seem more over-generalized than insightful.

[cimmanom]

You’d keep a hand on a firearm just because here are 3-5 other people on the same 250-foot long stretch of concrete? That’s the most antisocial thing I’ve ever heard.

And yeah, that would make it unsafe.

[eesmith]

I'm pretty sure that "the more extreme rural/suburban people would be keeping their hand near a concealed weapon" does not include black rural farmers visiting the big city.

[cimmanom]

I have no idea what you mean by this comment. Or especially what ethnicity has to do with any of it.

[eesmith]

I don't know what ethnicity has to do with it either.

In the US, black skin is associated with the socially constructed term 'race'.

What I mean by this is that in the US, carrying guns has been something that whites do much more often than blacks. Historically, when blacks try to exercise their rights to carry weapons, as the Black Panthers did in the 1960s, white politicians passed laws to take those rights away, like the Mulford Act.

African-Americans surely know of events like the shooting of Philando Castile, who had a concealed weapon, informed the officer that he had a concealed weapon, and was shot by the officer who, IMO, was scared of the idea of a black man carrying a gun.

There are plenty of African-American farm workers - farmers for generations even. They must certainly have a "rural" mindset, by your definition.

How many of them fit into the category of the type of "extreme rural/suburban people [who] would be keeping their hand near a concealed weapon"? Knowing that if they are stopped by the police there is a much higher chance of harassment?

Quoting then governor Ronald Reagan, after the passing of the Mulford Act: "There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons."

[cimmanom]

Yes, I’m aware of the history of race relations in the United States. I just wasn’t clear on why you would bring it up or what it had to do with the prior conversation.

[eesmith]

Do African-Americans living in rural areas have the same "rural mindset" which causes them to fear crowds and carry concealed weapons when visiting urban areas?

If yes, do you have any evidence? If no, is it really a "rural mindset"?