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extent. I'm now talking about the Earl, which was a big welfare hotel, and the one that fell down on Broadway -- that had huge numbers of welfare families. That, as you know, was destroyed from some explosion. So I would not say that there has been an appreciable increase of blacks living in the Village, but there has been an extraordinary increase in the blacks who frequent the Village.
To go back to what you were referring to, life style, and you've also mentioned the poverty factor, to refine that a bit: is this essentially a problem between income groups, or is this actually taking over, in your opinion, from what formerly was largely a black-white confrontation?
I think the problem of life style is a class problem and not a racial problem, but that's an abstract analysis, because in the city of New York poverty happens to be black. So it makes my position easier to postulate by saying, “Well, it's not racial -- it's class.” And I really believe that. The fact is that in the city of New York class and race happen to work out in the same way.
To go back to your comments about the police activity in Washington Square Park and to broaden that a little bit, as you watched that -- and other observations of police surveillance
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