Photo Courtesy of Flickr/CuriousYellow
o matter how you feel about the Occupy Movement, 2011 will be remembered as the year the movement-coined terms “top 1 percent” and “99 percent” became mainstream memes. Everyday Americans might have been feeling the financial pinch for the last three years (at least), but the Occupation highlighted the handful of people and industries who’ve been loosening their belts at everyone else’s expense for at least the last thirty years. The movement’s indignation over wealth inequality fueled a national and international dialogue about fairness. Its scope aligned broad interests. Its structure bucked convention. Its elusiveness frustrated critics. And for anyone paying any attention, its mere existence provoked reflection.
Do I agree with them?
Am I part of the problem?
Am I too comfortable?
Is this even my fight?
For me, watching the movement’s forced eviction from visible and valuable public spaces across the country echoed the urban displacement process that is uprooting low-income residents of color from major city centers across the country. First the undesirables (in the movement’s case, mostly young and under or unemployed) got ignored, then mocked, then criticized, then colonized. Now they’re gone. The efficiency creeped me out. The symmetry got me thinking.
Over the last two decades I’ve watched three different neighborhoods undergo the same inner city-to-urban center face lift. In Washington, D.C. the U Street Corridor went restoration-and-condo crazy in the late ’90s and early ’00s; Prospect Heights, Brooklyn became a hipster haven during my time there in the mid ’00s; and at the height of the real-estate bubble, Jersey City, New Jersey began re-fashioning its Historic Downtown and Waterfront districts into NYC-Lite, to attract yuppies looking for a commuter-friendly escape from Manhattan proper. I looked upon each of these urban renewal projects with mixed emotions. It bothered me that the measure of a neighborhood’s “potential” was its appeal to the young, white, and educated. But I knew these communities had fallen into disrepair and needed an infusion of new energy. It also wasn’t lost on me that longtime residents were often eager to sell and move away from the grit (often to the suburbs or down South). But when urban taste makers gushed over a new cafe, boutique, organic produce market or restaurant serving up microbrews, clever cocktails and locally-grown food without mentioning the persistently unfair racial and economic arrangements that primed these communities for gentrification in the first place, I always took it personally.
I grew up in a genuinely integrated but predominantly black professional community. I graduated from the same Quaker school the Obama girls currently attend. My friends’ parents and parents’ friends were doctors, lawyers, journalists, news anchors, authors, executives, engineers, entrepreneurs, deans, professors, and politicians. By my mid-20s I had a law degree and was working on a master’s.
That’s the quick and dirty version. And if you were to make judgments about my life based on those bare-bones facts alone you’d probably think I had it pretty good. You wouldn’t be entirely wrong, you just wouldn’t know much about me. A more nuanced version of my quarter-life bio would include the following two details:
1. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt conflicted about my identity. My friends and classmates at school were affluent and mostly white. My neighborhood was middle class and mostly black. At 14, I earned a spot on the city’s premier AAU basketball team. I was only the kid on the squad from Shepherd Park. Everyone else lived in the inner city. I remember feeling ashamed when my teammates saw the house I grew up in. I remember feeling terrible that I couldn’t change their circumstances. I remember one teammate asking if my father had paid my way onto the team. I remember my coaches questioning my “heart.” I also remember wanting to be accepted by them. My teammates were supremely self-assured. They approached every opponent with the certainty of victory. We’d win most games before we stepped on the court, just by the way we walked into the gym. Opposing coaches feared us. Opposing players, white, black or otherwise, wanted to be — or at least be down with — us. At 14, 15-years-old, I saw my teammates — not my successful black neighbors or even my neighborhood friends — as the most authentic representation of blackness I’d ever encountered. And, as I would with the rappers I’d come to respect, I connected their grit with the ghetto.
2. In the ‘80s my father ran an engineering firm in the old U Street corridor. I watched him struggle to build and maintain a black-owned business amid the crack epidemic. He was repeatedly robbed by neighbors. The city often failed to pay him for work he completed. D.C. was at once a national laughing stock and a danger zone. White people avoided the inner city. Corporate America avoided the inner city. That all began to change toward the end of the ’90s when Anthony Williams, a Harvard-educated, bow-tie wearing technocrat became mayor. Slowly at first, then with certain rapaciousness, developers, aided by city planners, law enforcement and banks, colonized the corridor and re-purposed it into a playground for a gentry that in turn assumed an air of callous indifference toward the rich history it was stepping into or the community — albeit dysfunctional — it was displacing.
Watching my dad and teammates struggle and being powerless to do anything about it broke my heart. Watching the city turn around so quickly put a sour taste in my mouth. It left me thinking that black people were merely the temporary placeholders of urban spaces and that once white people want to “take back the land” the civic and business community will bend over backwards to accommodate them. This sensibility has only been reinforced by the well-orchestrated and financed urban renewal projects I’ve experienced in Prospect Heights and downtown Jersey City. They’ve followed similar paths of upheaval and re-settlement. As well, I’ve seen the antipathy gentrification unleashes on both sides, the sense of estrangement it produces in the gentrifee and the feelings of entitlement it reinforces in the gentrifier.
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Looking at this article again, only 8 months old, especially with the reopening of McCarren Park and the factthat the “old balkynazie” brooklyn will not accept the new gentrifiers, I have concluded that Dax, you, need to come to terms to accept yourself.
Even though you may share the pains of black struggle, their is nothing wrong in sharing the joys of the influx of new people, cafes, galleries, bars. and the various entertainment spaces. There is nothing wrong in celebrating your own individuality. in fact what’s different about this new gentrification, it is class based, and it is open to open to people of other cultures, backgrounds, or people of different shade but sharing common values- one is being education.
Regardless of society there will always be hierachy, and but as a non-white person, Asian, I am taken every advantage of prosperity that has come forth to Brooklyn. But as much as I am partaking in this it is open to all to share.
Thank you Mr. Ross. Wonderful, well-written article that proposes a thought-provoking question. My inclination would be to suggest that relatively well-to-do black people can indeed be gentrifiers although it may not operate with the speed and intensity as when gentrifiers are white. I live in Fort Greene, BK and see the significant impact that young black professionals had in the earlier stages of the neighborhood transformation. (Not dissimilar to the impact of artists, gays, students, etc. moving into the neighborhood).
Generally I have not been overly-troubled by gentrification because I see change as a constant. No neighborhood (particularly in a transient city like NYC) ever stays the same. People feeling like they “own” neighborhoods (from either side of the tracks) has seemed to me, a little short-sighted. However, the story about Mr. Ross’s father opens my eyes about the frustration and sense of unfairness likely felt by many “original” inhabitants of a neighborhood as they are able to juxtapose the worth/value of their needs vs the gentrifiers through the eyes of law enforcement, politicians, landlords, service providers, retailers etc. I wonder if the real issue is gentrification vs. the fact that those needs weren’t being met in the first place! Perhaps gentrification just puts the disparities in your face.
Thank you for making me think with this wonderful peice. Please keep writing!
Hi Dax,
Thanks for the really great article–I really enjoyed reading it. I’ve been living in the area for 2 years now and thought I would share some thoughts. In response to the central question, I think the answer is yes, you, as a Black man, can be a gentrifier but only relative to this particular situation. The neighborhood is predominantly non-english speaking and doesn’t approach the levels of higher education found in many other affluent parts of NYC. In addition, Harlem has always been a massive melting pot of non-white ethnicities: I think there is a sociological expectation that Harlem can ‘gentrify’ in a way that isn’t contingent on 100% whiteness.
From a simple perspective of services however, I think your presence as a middle-class, educated, English speaker trumps whatever skin color you have. By services I mean both commercial services, but also important institutional functions like 311. The more calls people make to 311, whether it’s noise, garbage, snow plowing, etc., the more attention the city pays to the area. I got a few street trees planted last year through 311 and I know that some of the noise complaints I’ve been making have had a lasting effect (keeping in mind that I call about once a week…). In any case, simply having people of any stripe who give mind to local ‘problems’, whether it be the blunt innards in your building or the litter on the sidewalk, makes a huge difference.
In a more specific sense about Hamilton Heights, I just wanted to bring up two personal aspects. When my grandparents (both Jewish immigrants, one from Europe and one from Buenos Aires) got married and found their first apartment together in 1944, it was on 141st St. between Bway and Riverside. My mother and uncle were raised there and they stayed until 1968, before moving to Queens. My grandparents oldest and lifelong friends were all from the same block, or very close by, and they all met at the Riverside Playground. I grew up in Canada, but in a sense, moving into the neighborhood in 2010 felt somewhat like a ‘return home’, and that I have just as much lived family history in these streets as many other Latino and African-American families do. Harlem is an interesting place in this regard, different in many ways from the case of a gentrifying Bed-Stuy because Harlem expressed so many different forms of social classes, with the important unifying distinction that they were all non-white (Jewish, Italian, Irish, Black, Hispanic, etc.). Harlem has always been diverse and similar to the Lower East Side. The flanking areas in particular–West and East–have historically served the same role: a landing pad for new immigrants before moving up and out. I wonder then if gentrification can follow the standard model here, re: Williamsburg/Bushwick.
Mr. Ross
You are out of touch and have no idea about the politics of NYC. It is apparent that you and Bloomberg live in the same NYC. Which is an illusion. You need toread more about NYC. Which is like no other city. Go to you tube. and listen.to Dr.Clarke, Amos Wilson. Get the facts
Celina, what makes you say the Mr. Ross is “out of touch” and has “no idea about the politics of NYC?” I’m the moderator and I approved your comment, but Mr. Ross can’t respond to it, because you stopped short of offering a critique. He is considered an expert, someone that the New York Times and the New Yorker cites. Why do you think he’s out of touch?
This publication has had a great start and has great prospects, really. But, like Mireille said, required discourse also requires face-to-face, in-person, brick and mortar dialogue. Would be great if Dominion could facilitate that.
Thanks for stopping by! We are planning events that will bring folks together to talk. Stay tuned!
Dax, bruh, I have a greater appreciation for your article after actually reading it. Though, I’ll admit to finding it a troubling symptom of the dearth of black analysis and black-affirmative worldview too prevalent amongst black folk today.
Ruth Glass, who you say coined the term “gentrification”, defines it as a phenomenon that, once sparked, must, by definition, “(go) on rapidly until all or most of the original working class occupiers are displaced and the whole social character of the district is changed.” It then follows that gentrifiers must either spark or be operative in encouraging the mass influx of other gentrifiers. This is not something you or other affluent black folks did or do, just as the presence of Count Basie, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson and the nameless black doctors, teachers, etc. who have always lived in Harlem did not. These folks definitely could and probably did pay more than the average economically alienated black Harlemite (who nevertheless often paid more than the NYC average due to segregation) – though the role of rent laws througout Harlem’s history and in the present shituation probably deserves greater scrutiny…
Harlem has always been mixed-income, just not enough. Harlem was/is majority poor, because black folk are, disproportionately. Harlem reflects the income/ wealth inequality that OWS is just getting hip too, but that black folk have been suffering from since the slave ship Jesus. It’s why the relatively low salaries and property values in Harlem are primarily about race; because ongoing black economic stress was born of systematic socioeconomic terror based on race, that was never systematically and effectively addressed. Counteracting it will require the concerted efforts of blacks, across “class”, and the methodical application of a black-affirmative (NOT black-supremacist) agenda, in spaces/ communities that we can control, like Harlem.
It’s why your presence, and the presence of other formally-educated, creative black folks like you, in traditional black communities (black-safe spaces, that are still required) can and should be a great thing, so long as your black-affirmative ethic – critically lacking post “integration” – is in effect.
Great piece, eloquently written, very interesting conversation. It would be great if there was a place where we could get together and discuss these issues. In the mean time. I’ll keep reading.
Great article, however there no such thing as “black gentrifiers” unless upper class people of color move into a white predominately poor neighborhoods. Blacks who made out of these lower income neighborhoods are just returning home. It unfortunate some blacks still believe in the 21st century that the only way to “make it” is to move into predominantly white suburban neighborhoods. Why is it that every time we move in their neighborhood they move out and it becomes a ghetto? For sales sign suddenly pop up everywhere why? When will the upper class blacks get it? If you do some demographical research, you will find that most white’s integration efforts are pseudo, because they only believe in integration in “theory” not in “practice”. New York City is the nation second most segregated city behind Milwaukee why? If integration does not happen in NYC first how can happen anywhere else? Look at my neighborhood in Bed-Stuy its becoming the new Forte Green. The second wave of whites gentrifirers (aka trendsetters) who moving in don’t really want to live in this predominantly black neighborhood they just there temporarily because they cannot afford the high price of Manhattan and prefer areas of Williamsburg (formerly a Hispanic), Park Slope (formerly black), Forte Green (formerly black) Cobble Hill or Brooklyn Heights. Ask yourself and put yourself in white people shoes who was raised in suburb mostly their whole life; and then ask yourself why you would you want to live in a neighborhood full of poor uneducated black people that does not cater to your lifestyles (no malls, no bookstores, no Starbuck’s, no Trader’s Joe, no dog parks).Why do you think upper class blacks moved out of Bed-Stuy in the first place? Like whites (and fully assimilated blacks), there nowhere to shop/socialize unless you into dollar stores, Popeye’s Chicken, Baptist churches on every corner and tons of ethnic stores. If I am white I can’t send my kids to the local district school (especially not a charter school) because there too many blacks and Latino children who will corrupt the learning of my child’s education. The bottom-line is this. Whites are in poor black neighborhood in hopes of changing the entire neighborhood, not integration purpose. Bed-Stuy will be called five years from now BeStu. The solutions for middle class blacks who want to escape from poor black blight and middle class whites who move out the neighborhood once they move in is to form their own neighborhood like in Atlanta’s Buck head and Maryland’s Upper Marlboro. Here also something to think about? How come when middle class blacks move into predominately white neighborhoods nothing changes (i.e. retail stores, schools, restaurants) but whites move into predominately black neighborhoods everything changes including the color of the people. Check out this video of whites making fun of the displacement of poor blacks in urban area. “How to Gentrify Your Neighborhood” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc2Uv0wEUWs
Nate,
I appreciate this thoughtful comment. And since you took the time to offer I’d like to take a moment to respond to some of your questions.
You talk about blacks who make it out and return “home” but my question — one I think I was wrestling with — is what about the black person who did not grow up in a “lower income” neighborhood? I think part of the challenge this conversation poses is the all-too narrow parameters of the black experience. Not everyone comes from the ‘hood. So not everyone thinks of the ‘hood as “home”. But then does that make them a gentrifier if they decide to move to the so-called ‘hood later in life? I would argue that there is a particular look we’re accustomed to seeing when conventional gentrification is occurring, but that its absence does not mean gentrification is not occurring. It just means it looks different. As long as residents are being displaced by people who can afford to pay significantly more, that’s, in my mind, evidence of gentrification.
You note that every time black people move into a neighborhood whites move out and it becomes a ghetto. While I agree that there is evidence of the first point — the moving out — I would challenge the second point. I grew up in a neighborhood that was predominately white and became predominately black but remains, to this day, firmly middle class. I don’t mean to suggest my experience is the norm only that it exists.
As for integration, you’re right New York is very segregated, but that segregation is complicated by ethnicity as well as race and class. “New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world,” said British journalist Alistair Cooke. People make choices regarding where they live based on a host of factors many of which have to do with cultural preference. New York is one of the few places in America where one can actually elect to live in an ethnic enclave that fits their upbringing or lifestyle while retaining the perks of a cosmopolitan experience. And because these easily attainable perks allow us to notice that we live in an integrated city we often don’t think about where we live as being segregated.
I also think that what I was trying to suggest with the article is that we hold all of these near and dear beliefs about who we are — our uniqueness, especially — that aren’t always true. For instance we all think we’re progressive in our minds, but our actions are often driven by factors that have everything to do with the privileges (or lack thereof) we’ve been afforded. Which is to say none of us is as “unique” and “different” as we like to believe. Which is to say, I don’t think “whites” as a group collaborate to take over a neighborhood or “blacks” collectively decide to leave a neighborhood. I think we each seize the opportunities that present themselves to us. I think we each perceive our intentions are pure and decent and individualized, and that only when we honestly reflect do we begin to see how our choices are generally driven by our socio-economic factors that are indeed intertwined with race. All of which is to say, we’re not innocent bystanders in the historical processes that have produced and reinforce inequality that int turns plays itself out in the fight for space in the city.