Confessions of a Black Gentrifier

If we were nit picky we could point out to CTK that a lot of criminal activity and anti-social behavior is present in white occupied trailer parks, and berate him for not pointing that out again, even though it was mentioned above.

(I'm just trying to show how this medium can be used to indict well meaning people)

trumystic, Please let me know when I can stop making this point.

And saying things happen in the ghetto that don't happen elsewhere isn't an indictment of EVERYONE in the ghetto. All it takes is a few bad sheep or a higher incidence of certain behaviors to draw a conclusion. Obviously every young black male isn't a criminal, but for whatever reason we have a disproportionate amount of criminals among us compared to other groups. Likewise ALL people from the inner city don't exhibit the behaviors complained about in that article, but compared to other groups there are higher incidences of people within that group who do exhibit those behaviors than in other groups. Is that wrong to point out?

+1.

gun violence and disturbing incarceration rates affect the black community at a rate greater than any other. recognizing this and wanting to deal with it does not mean that one thinks everyone in the black community is a criminal.

We are talking about different articles that describe different waves of migration. The article about DC is about black middle class people moving into poor neighborhoods thus gentrifying the hood. The other article is about poor black people moving into black middle class hoods in the suburbs of Detroit. So if a black middle class person in the DC article were to say "I dont want to live around poor people" then I would wonder why the fuck they moved to the hood. For that same middle class black person in suburban Detroit to make that statement I could understand it-but would likely to think its narrow minded.

totally fair. i guess my comments don't directly address gentrification, so my fault.

Trumystic said:

Whynot, you have repeatedly said this is not the forum you would prefer to discuss these issues. I hear you. I think there are some advantages and disadvantages to this medium. But I am not sure why you are giving me advice or suggesting that I am "going after people" because I am asking them to clarify what they posted. This is a conversation on a message board, right?

Absolutely.

However, you may conclude, (like I have) that we will type endlessly about such things, but that very little progress is made unless in person conversations occur.

I was giving you such advice because many people find it very tedious to have to repeatedly ask people to clarify things, others become easily offended and conclude that they are the only intelligent people on earth.

....and then, in the event that they disappear, it is assumed that people are either "afraid to talk about such issues", or have been successfully "owned" by their opponent.

I was also making sure that you knew to have a thick skin on these boards, because we tend to have a culture and style of confrontation you may be unfamiliar with. ...In my view it we pretty fairly apply it. I like to think of the political and racial discussions on this board as being "rigorous", but I suspect many people disagree with my use of this term.

I also find that some do not have the time to escape from work to carry on such discussions, causing annoying luls in the conversation.

....but if you feel the exercise is fruitful, keep typing.

I've never discouraged anyone from typing. That would be an odd, hypocritical stance for me to make ....esp in light of having over 8000 posts on this thing.

(did you get the humor in that last statement, or did you find it to be snide? By pointing the limits of this medium, am I beating a dead horse or being helpful? ...I can't tell from your facial expression. Was that an exasperated sigh, or an amused laugh you just made?)

and now, fun with punctuation:

A woman: Without her, man is nothing.

A woman, without her man, is nothing

mr. met said:

I disagree with the embedded assumption that all impoverished blacks have a deviant culture that glorifies drugs, crimes and out of wedlock birth.

i guess that assumption wasn't embedded deep enough for me to recognize it.

ah, now we are getting somewhere. Everyone uses race and class in order to determine things about a person, but different people allow themselves to assign different weights to the factors. Mr. Met calls this the degree to which the factors are "embedded".

For example, if you are a member of the Klu Klux Klan, you assign a huge percentage of your opinion of someone based on their race. ....and you likely have eugenics at the core of your belief system (aka world view). They have a belief system that supports CAUSATION between race and factors such as drug use and criminal activity. The belief is embedded in them.

[in my opinion, the Klan ignores the effects of hundreds of years of past and current oppression in this country. I'm also not a fan eugenics.] ....did I need to type the parts between the [ ]?

Conversely, if you are a member of the Ayn Rand or John Birch society, you assign a huge percentage of your opinion of someone based on what social class they have achieved. Such societies are based on the belief that hard work can give people unfettered success, and from this premise declare that there is CAUSATION between anyone who is lower class AND laziness and unproductive behaviors (such as using drugs). The belief is embedded in them.

[in my opinion they ignore the fact that hard work alone will not make you rich, nor will it make you middle class] ....did I need to type the parts between the [ ]?

Clearly the majority of people in this country don't hold such extreme views, so we are merely discussing to what DEGREE they allow class and race to influence their opinions of others, right?

....no one is claiming that they are free from prejustice based on class and race, right? ....no one is claiming that they haven't given a just a little thought to the merits of eugenics and "hard work", right?

Trumystic said:

Cool the Kid said

I don't see any memes or veiled language being used. The only way I can see a problem with the article is in if you feel that people are lying. When the inner city folks moved into those suburbs they brought behaviors with them that were deemed unacceptable by those already there..

I dont think the people in the article are lying. Suburban folks clearly had a problem with what they termed unwanted behavior. What was the behavior specifically though? Sitting on your stoop or front yard? Not mowing your lawn? Having a loud party? Drive by shootings? Trash left in the front yard or street? Those are all different kinds of unwanted behavior.

They listed the behaviors pretty explicitly, and some were behaviors that in my estimation would be unacceptable in CH/BS... disrespecting other people's property, holding up traffic walking in the middle of the street, carrying on loudly in the middle of the night, etc....

Thats why the WNYC piece is interesting. It points out that many of these tensions come from assumptions some founded and some not. For example people assume that poor people are engaging in behavior because of lack or morality or bad behavior. Instead, it might be because they dont have the money for upkeep or they are engaging in habits they have from their old hood i.e stoop sitting.

This is a good point. However, just as you want to give benefit of doubt to the motives of the behaviors of inner city folks in a suburban environment, for the sake of equity we have to give that same benefit of doubt to gentrifiers. Both parties are people moving to new environments that best serve their needs within their means. And I don't think inadvertently raising rents because changing geo-economics force one out of the neighborhoods they would choose otherwise is equivalent to directly disrespecting or disregarding one's neighbor's property and peace of mind, for a litany of reasons I'd rather not have to repeat but think are pretty obvious and can elaborate on if asked.

And I firmly believe these negative sentiments/veiled language are embedded in many gentrification articles as well as discussions of the inner city. You give a perfect example when you said "suburban black people don't want inner city black people moving in". In otherwords, I think these are morally equivalent and problematic statements voiced in these and other articles:

* I dont want to live near lower income people

* I dont want to live near black people

which is different than:

* I do not want to live near poorly behaved people who do X.

The first 2 statements I deem prejudiced statements. I wont apologize for that conclusion. And I also wont apologize for trying to get you to see that those statements are diametrically opposed in meaning and intent.

I see an obvious issue with the second statement, but not the first, if it is changed to "poor inner city people". For the thousandth time, most inner city people are not bad people or criminals or whatever. But there is a correlation between poverty & crime, as well as between certain behaviors deemed as unacceptable outside the inner city that are associated with the inner city and the people from them. In the case of the article about Detroit, said behaviors included the disrespecting of property, noise pollution, excessive trash, etc. etc... these were direct behaviors exhibited by the inner city folks in question. Not ALL the inner city folks, but by SOME inner city folks (and NO "original" suburban folks, as the behavior was not there before inner city folks started moving in). If it were possible to separate the offenders from the majority of the new people who mind their business I'm sure the complaints would be more directed- but without keeping tabs on each and every new person it's impossible to make that distinction.

For example on my old block in CH, pretty much everyone was cool, but there was one building with a lot of disruptive kids and a crackhead that I had problems with. My girlfriend had been threatened by some of the kids, and the crackhead stole one of my bikes (which I wound up getting back from him). While those people weren't representative of the whole block at all, their presence had enough of an impact on us that they were a major factor in us moving out. If that building wasn't on that block, maybe we would have stayed. But it was.

One can argue about what makes for acceptable quality of life or whatever, but in my opinion when you put someone else's safety or property into jeopardy you've crossed into unacceptable behavior territory, and in my experience there is a higher incidence of people in the inner city who do that. For people in a neighborhood, especially a neighborhood in which most people living there own property, I don't think it's unfair at all to establish some standards of behavior. If not, HOA & behavioral clauses in apartment leases would have no legal ground.

A now, "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist" from the cast of Ave Q.

Not addressed to anyone in particular, of course.....

...I looked for "Everyone's a Little Bit Classist", but they wanted money for it. (as you might expect, they really like money)

There's always a bit of truth in comedy.

trumystic wrote: I had hoped for a conversation- given that in some ways I found some of my experiences echoed in the Washington DC piece.

trumystic-

I'm not going to call you names, or assume that you believe you know it all.

However, I think most people on this thread have been having a very genuine conversation with you. ...but this conversation now seems to be going in a downward direction.

Can we stay at a level where we are using our intellect?

I'd love for you to respond to my post above:

whynot wrote: While I admire and appreciate the efforts of those who work to eliminate the effects of racism and classism in our society, I often wonder if they have an understanding of "epistemology", "knowledge organization", and "reductionism" as these terms are used by folks in the fields of philosophy, sociology, psychology and library sciences.

When one understands these concepts, the challenge become even more complex:

The macro goal is not to have people actually get rid of their stereotypes and prejudice, but to have them examine and control them in a way that they do not inflict harm on themselves and others.

The expression "check yourself before your wreck yourself" comes to mind.

I can't imagine that the effects of "engaging in too much reductionism" are a lot different for someone based on their economic power, social class or skin color. As a result, I have a hard time cutting anyone slack.

Trumystic,

You seem have alienated both CTK and Mr. Met from your coalition to address racism and classism. In my view, that's unfortunate.... I have a sense didn't take the time or put in the effort to get to know them.

Are you sure this is a good medium?

Are you sure you are going about this task in an effective way in real life, and not perceived in a similar manner?

I look forward to you responding to my "epistemology", "knowledge organization", and "reductionism" post, as I am also considering writing you off.

Again here's my point

Someone who thinks that its all poor people who cause the problems is very different from someone who thinks its a minority of poor people causing the problem.

Obviously

But nobody here is in the first group

If those problematic individuals are always mixed in with groups of poor people, I don't see how it's unfair to avoid the whole group in order to not encounter those people who are usually mixed in with them. It's like if a warning goes out that some ground beef went out w/E coli... one could invest a ton of $$$ and effort to clean the meat or test + sort it out from the good meat, but as a consumer I would rather just avoid it unless I had no other choice.

The person who thinks all poor people are causing the problem ( lets call him Bloomer) might just say "Gentrifications good- lets clear the city of them". The person who says the minority of poor people causing the problem might feel (call her Flower) more ambivalent about the process and might be more open to dialogue. Flower might not be so apt to think gentrification is a totally positive and benign process. I can work with Flower but not with Bloomer. But I might be more conflicted with working with her if she made apologies for Bloomer's behavior and statements.

Again nobody here has said that neither explicitly nor implicitly so I don't even know why you feel this is a point that has to be made

I feel like I have said the same thing 10 times, I will say it again succinctly

Not wanting to live near inner cities or inner city people is not an indictment of all the people from the inner city, just the few responsible for the unique crime and quality of life issues within them

If you want to question the validity of such a generalization, fine, but there are plenty of statistics & anecdotes that show that people like the crackhead who stole my bike or the rowdy kids who threatened my girlfriend or the dude w/the loud car stereo who would park on our block at 11PM and shake our apartment for 30 mins are people that are unique to low income areas. I never saw any of these kinds of people in Greenpoint. I rarely saw these kinds of people just three blocks west. I didn't see these kinds of people when I lived in Astoria. But I did see these kinds of people when I did work down in the project in Coney Island. I did see these kinds of people when I was dating that girl in Southside Projects in Queens. I did see these kinds of people in Lefrak City. And there are stats out to back up my observations. So again those particular types of people are not representative of low income areas, but they are there and generally nowhere else. Why is that so difficult to understand?