So white people have discovered " gentrification".
I'm so not sorry but I feel this is one time where I have to insert I am about to be an unapologetic asshole about something.
Dear, 20-40 year old " liberal" white people .
Please shut the fuck up about gentrification, if your main goal is to express how much you are aghast at what you are " not doing" and what more can be done .
Now that you have pretty much discovered that you might not be able to move out or the neighborhood won't be changing fast enough for you to not have to deal with those growing pains, and how you can still keep your I am a good liberal creds.
This article pissed me off HARD
Because while you may desire to be a part of " meaningful conversation with your neighbors" . Notice how even though the article you LINK TO has quotes from RESIDENTS OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD , they are " summarized" and moved on to the important quote of stuff we can do .
Because truly the gentrifier and the gentrified truly have similar responsibility or capabilityility. And untangling the issues still ends up being about how YOU can do something not the effect your having or WHY?
The Brooklyn Rail piece was also an annoying copout because it came reallyclose to hitting on some really fundamental truths and then glossed over them to remind us what WHITE people could do, and how white she felt.
( IF you want to have a conversation solely among white folk fine , but stop doing it in public and pretending that mentioning brown people is the same as talking to them especially if the end result is how to make you shiny).
Then someone showed me this and my flip out is complete.
The comments are good ( Nanette and La Lub for the win) but, not only does the question pisss me off but the preface does me in.
( not to mention WHERE people are trying tohave these convos)
The common thread to all of these conversations is that while everybody is very concerned that people understand they have "history" and aren't " that Kind" of gentrifier, and have basic knowledge of where they are( and I do mean basic), they seem to fail to connect linear time, and the same sense of importance to the history of the neighborhood as they do their feelings and slow realizations, not to mention the straight up it seems in ability to master a basic GOOGLE search.
The Brooklyn Rail piece mentions the fact that people were 70 years remove from the Civil War and part of the great migration.
Translation : These are people WHOSE RECENT FAMILY HISTORY involves slavery, the massive move out of the South to escape large scale discrimination, lived through said neighborhoods being flooded with crack and benign neglect only to be displaced by people who need wireless internet in cafe's
( and I will leave the West Indian bit alone as this will get long and cursefilled so read this and you'll have some Idea)
and can't even speak to you when you smile and say hello .
and seem confused by your reticence when they finally do. ( mind you this could be as many as 5 YEARS as protests were happening THEN)
( shit Wiretap covered it 2007)
The lack of ability to see people as people , not as stars in your quest for enlightenment, or demographics thrown together that make them alien. Or having such a low neighborhood expectation that common courtesy extende dto you is evidence of " good relations" ( how littel do you experience community or how little do you expect of people that them extending common courtesy to you is noteworthy don;t answer that)
but suddenly want to have this discussion as the building has stopped and the ability to move you up and out is decreasing.
Yeah they forgot to mention that in these articles.
Part of the move to discuss these things is that as long as we are in an economic crisis , gentrification agents have lost the capital to be as swift or complete as they once were. Usually it took about 7 years and most of the people who were protesting would be priced out , but now that construction is stalemating and condos are lying fallow, as well as the young " creative types job prospects to fill them"
You can't really ignore your neighbors anymore while jetting off to other points. The multicultural fantasy is colonism gone rancid.
Aka now that the end game isn't as obvious THEIR comfort gentrification is something we need to discuss.
What has happened is that now more than ever in a dismal economy our futures are tied tighter together.
White flight isn't an option.
And now that white flight isn't an option suddenly there is an option for white " neighborhooding".
Aka the phenomnon of trying to create something that was there but just didn't include you or you were certain was not on your list of priorities till now.
It's the price of believing your own bullshit, pretending that all the time you WEREN"T having this conversation isn't just as much a factor as the time you do.
It's the " zeitgiest" phenomenon. The believe that until it breaks in national pages ( putting you firmly BEHIND it) it's not so much of a concern.
But mostly it's really awesome disgusting privilege being unable to reference any non white people speaking about it , or having no idea where to find such perspectives until AFTER called on it.
I am all for dialogue and conversation and actual building but , when the privilege is so ingraned that we watch discussions and words taht have been coming from communities of color FOR DECADES, being suddenly discoverable. The discussion rings false.
It's not progress, it's a constant culturally convenient, colonial advantageous of keeping every protracted ill of POC as a " new discovery" so no one has to do anything while they "gather information" and get tehir feelings honored. It's the kidn fo discussion that wipes out entire towns , blocks and neighborhoods because no one has to think about what tehy say or who they're saying it to and about until it comes "home"
Because point blank if it wasn't NECESSARY , you wouldn't be in love with our communities or in our neighborhoods, because when you weren't your barely pretended they existed. COnsidering many of these communities are formed of love, pride, solidarity and or reaction to descrimination , lets talk about a conversation predilected on you having to
SETTLE FOR OUR LIVES. and finding out all teh stuff we were saying , but you had better things to get to
ARE TRUE
That maybe if you are really comitted to " doing something about it" you are first honest, REALLY HONEST about what you're doing right now.
You are in no small way destroying many peoples lives and communities which maybe you'd get a better sense of if you actually pretended like you wanted to listen as much as you want to talk.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
White People Like to Discover Things
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18 comments:
great post.
now i want to add something, or read something about what should be done in place of this cycle, this behavior that is locust-like. because it needs to change.
thanks for underlining these patterns of exploitation and greed and displacement and appropriation, and so on. its an important part of the very real conversations that we need to be having at all times.
<3
I mena part of it is happening already peopel arent rich enough to move on and tehy have o live at equilibrium now
AKA the empty block phenomeon
where these apartments and houses which are supposedto be up and ocming
have no one in tehm. The change cant afford to come so hwo do you deal
and for real when you're dealing with folsk
they have memories you got to do more than show up late to teh party
no doubt.
i want to drive a chisel in. i want to drive a stake in. i want to draw a chalk line and stand over it. but where do i stand? not in the neighborhood, not on fifth street in park slope, its too late. where do they come from? why do they come? i want to chase the root. you detail beautifully a happening. and talk about the blind spots. i want to back up and cut off the vine of taint. where do i go?
people can't afford their own homes. so they move where its cheaper. kill culture. replace it. displace it. they are looking Out For Number One. they dont see the picture.
so frustrating how fights break out among all the people in the sway of the tide of larger corruption. all these shattered factions. so many hands...but where to grab on?
bless you mujer for being one of the real thinkers out here
"The lack of ability to see people as people , not as stars in your quest for enlightenment."
Hi BA, I'm a lurker and first-time commenter but I just wanted to thank you for saying this!
I'm a WOC at a predom. white university and this sums up almost every progressive white person I've come across. There was a community service class here called "The Detroit Project" and I think that's exactly how a lot of gentrifiers/activists see my community: as their personal enlightenment project. There was even an article in our newspaper not too long ago about the adventures of young (white) alumni that moved to Detroit and did cool!, artsy! things that are sure to help the city! Because all Detroit really needs is artsy white people to get back on its feet... Blech.
-Shelby
Your a littel more forgiving than me nez.
I don't believe it's benign or unknown or JUST actively looking out fo rnumber one ( yeah upper class immersion It's not me no faith in people ) it is active destruction based on racism and striaght up narcissism with a dash of looking for my promise dominion.
A lot of this is jsut they are too lazy or happily enjoying tehir own racism and privilege. Becuase it takes a special kind of asshole to wake up and realize they barely talk to tehir neighbors aafter YEARS.
There is a reason you don'ti n tehse neighborhoods and its not whateve rthe claim increased isolation.
It's crisis point now because evryone has to talk and in terms of media etc etc we are going tow atch more "inventing" of history
BUT
the godo thing is taht it's just is. POC nad other peopel of color MATTER and they nee dto matte rin conversations REALLY
and those inter racial post racial conversations peopel claim to want now HAVEA TO HAPPEN ON OUR TERMS
and until tehn tehy will continue tow onder at teh contents of tehir navel and wonder why tehy cnatf ind colore dpeople
but he tehms breaks
-----------------------------
Welcome Shelby
It's that that kills me every body is Siddartha on a quest for enlightment believeing tehir latest examination of their oh so integral life is necessary , because hey some white colonist male did it becfore them and why shouldn't they
and tehy not having teh foresight of your average peanut are SHOCKED It ell you
SHOCKED when it doesn't return in teh kind of community they have envied in teh palces tehir colonizing
mmmm why?
It's disturbing how so many conversations about gentrification are so navel-gazing, starting with white people.
I mean, not that white people shouldn't talk about gentrification, but rather that it always seems to turn into talking over the people who are hurt by it, or even treating them as props for the discussion, rather than agents.
And of course, I read these descriptions of Bed Stuy and I remember the first time I heard the name of that neighborhood - in Billy Joel's You May Be Right, implying that it's a dangerous or scary neighborhood to be alone in. It's a pretty stark portrayal compared to everything else I've heard.
Why aren't the (white) conversations about the displaced people, the destruction of neighborhoods? I think that question is answered in your post.
How to break the cycle? How to stop turning POC's neighborhoods into raw material for white people to consume and renovate?
There's a whole shitpot of stuff to unpack with gentrification. Not the least of which is "why is housing---a basic human need---so goddam out of reach to begin with"? Because that's always referenced in the conversation---the "i don't want to displace anybody but what can i do i have to live too & can't we all just get along?"
Why not start there? Why not start with organizing around housing as a basic human right, since it's a basic human need? Instead of going with the pre-existing racist and classist practice of maximizing your privilege and then wringing hands about it? Of course, it's easy for me to criticize from the cheap seats---I ain't goin' nowhere, and blockbusters lost interest in my neighborhood long ago when they build a set of townhouses and nobody came.
Yet everywhere I look I see older housing and brick storefronts that could provide jobs and trade apprenticeships and housing and businesses for the people in the central part of my dying (but no one wants to admit it) midwestern city. Where's that in the economic stimulus package, huh? Not profitable enough?
Ahh shit. I gotta get to work.
props for the discussion
that's a big part of it. It's something that only irks my soul cause i did/do theatre
but if you notice while the author and the white people are given descriptions POC tend be given characterizations ( quick demographics, positions) and then entirely defined by their relationship to the main character
the white folk
And frankly BEd Stuy was a dangerous place to be in if you're not from there or don't know your way around
much the same way my black ass shouldnt be in bensonhurst or many areas of staten island alone after sundown but that's not as problematic to some.
And it's a we ebit mean but it will help .
Stop giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are honestly trying to do something till they doit.
It's simple and short and kind of mean but pretty much.
WHen some one writes about DOING something actually connecting with their neighbors outside of the superficial or NOT through a white person proxy thne consider it hoenst.
BUt as long as the topic is memeeemeee and my self image
their not and should be treated as such.
*hugs LA LUBU*
I need you email*
pre-existing racist and classist practice of maximizing your privilege and then wringing hands about itI will be using this for a whole section of why I am not a big fan of uplift
and I am very sorry but teh I don't wanna
Yes you fucking do
because when it came down to it life for life you would
shit you're doing it now for stuff as little as being closer to a bar you like
so please shove it about teh I am so sorry
because people who have GENERATIONAL centuries long memories aren't gonan go ohh you have the generational memory of a carrot
so it's okay
and the simple fact is that for all tehir bullshit across generations and ages and race most progressives and liberals have ahard time thinking of anybody below a certain income or "usefulness" level as people
so if it aint cool or catchy they don't care
and when they start its to put peopel more like them in charge
My email is lubiddu (at) aol (dot) com.
Too many white folks put the emphasis on "pre-existing" (therefore, no responsibility! la,lala, la la!) when there should be more emphasis on "racist and classist". Because that shit does not go away by itself, no matter how many Horatio Alger myths are repeated.
It doesn't help that one of the stronger tropes of whiteness is individualism---that "i'm only responsible for me."
seriously. "I went to bed feeling very, very white."
boo fucking hoo
now off to read things that will just make me angry.
Lots to think about and learn in this, BA. I wish I'd read it before I decided to answer that (to me, very odd) question on feministe. Great points, particularly about the recession and upward mobility - the poorer communities needing to become home now, instead of a stepping stone.
I have little experience with gentrification (and little love for what I do know of it) but even then it just didn't occur to me that simple, common courtesy - greeting people, getting to know your neighbors at least on the surface and becoming part of the fabric of the existing community - would seem such a foreign concept to some when it comes to moving into communities primarily of color.
I think part of the reason is - well, you know how colonizers the world over (current and past) often justify their actions with "There was nothing there when we got there"? That's what the articles you point to reminded me of, as did a couple of comments on the feministing thread.
If you don't see or acknowledge the existing community, or if you can point to areas where it's run down or people have not built up their property values or not razor edged their lawns or planted tulips or painted their houses or had wireless coffee shops and boutiques already, then one can safely say, in the recesses of one's mind, that "until we got here, there was nothing there".
La lubu- Sweet expect an email and you know what it's really okay with me ( and Ive had this happen) with people going this is hard im tried i want out
but the faux
"i am engaging"
drives me nutty
and i would challenge that it involves any responsibility
teh mythos is that teh rewards are mine everyone else rewards are mine to attain and my suffering is outward
so the things that are happening to POC ar etheir fault
( also as a longtime all my damn life new yorker and west indian I really am amused with peoples characterizations of neighborhoods and class structures because it's so and god forgive me obviously racist generalization in terms of how you lump black folks together. there are reasons that section is being gentrified in this way in certain ways that have a lot to do with whose there. As much as they say " Bed Stuy" they are talking about really DIFFERENT phenomenon)
Noemi- because truly the fact that your whiteness may be bad and you might have to think about it once is soooooooo hard.
nothing like a woman trying tomake human connection with people as her known friends are moving out . NOpe you felt bad with your organic plant SO SAD !!)
Nanette - I really think that's teh part that makes me really angry the disingenuous about this and why it's important
It's much like the discovery of radicalism and class analysis, you really can't be taken seriously if you aren't talking about ( also POC?WOC/trans issues)
its not actual reflection ( which would you know include actual examples of why this is brought to your attention and what the people you so want to talk to are saying)
and it's the straight up racism of hwo do i deal with THOSE people
if you wer emoving among white folks what would you be doing? Would you be asking.
( and i leave out people who have social phobias LIKE ME because hmm you ask about meeting people in general and not just dealing with POC)
it's a really shady ass question and frankly the fact that it was asked in a space that has it's own issues with POC and WOC in many ways
says somethinga bout who they were ACTUALLY trying to talk to
if you wer emoving among white folks what would you be doing? Would you be asking.No, they wouldn't. And that says a lot. If they were moving into an already gentrified area (minimum of POC), then they'd talk to those white folks automatically because they'd be "our kind of people." And if they were moving into say, Bensonhurst, they'd talk to white people who resembled them but would most certainly not talk to white people who did not resemble them, because that way they wouldn't have to challenge anyone on racism (hipsters already have a well-practiced code for how to shift the convo away from race).
it just didn't occur to me that simple, common courtesy - greeting people, getting to know your neighbors at least on the surface and becoming part of the fabric of the existing community - would seem such a foreign concept to some when it comes to moving into communities primarily of color.Nanette, that struck me too. The woman doing the asking mentioned having moved a lot, so maybe for her it's a matter of not knowing how to introduce herself without some automatic "we're in this together" context combined with I'm-gonna-go-ahead-and-say-fear of hostility from black people---despite the fact that so far, no hostility has been shown (and in fact, if I'm reading it correctly about her landlord and the porch parties/community gatherings, I think it's safe to say the informal welcome mat has been laid out---how much more of an invitation does she need? Does she not recognize that as an invite? Geez louise, bring some chips & salsa or some cold beer and stick your hand out and say, "Hi! I'm so-and-so, and we just moved in! Pleased to meet you!).
There's a post on racialicious that goes into how the structure of white flight communities, from the street design on down to the housing templates, were designed for a lack of community and to keep people of color out. Things like unwalkable streets, houses distant from businesses or even churches, no front porches, etc. That post was about how unworkable that type of design is for older people, but I think it's just as relevant for the younger people who have experienced the anomie that suburban living brings.
But with that said---I'm unfamiliar with New York and its neighborhoods; I mentioned Bensonhurst because of its infamy and because it is known as a white neighborhood. (do I need to say, white, Italian neighborhood, to my great shame?) Is it, and other white neighborhoods like it that also have the same features (like the porches and walkability) financially unreachable for twentysomething white people? I ask because I can't recall hearing of any hipster movement into areas like that (areas of significant or predominantly white presence) in Brooklyn, the Bronx, or Queens.
Why is that? Is it high rent? Or....something else?
Bensonhurst has really questionable train access to be blunt and thats part of what the deal is Minority communities less likely to own cars live in areas where your not hosed if you cant catch a train
and white ethnic communities to some extent are less likely to be busted.( williamsburgh the polish neighborhood being an exception)
and that's part of my i hate peopel going tone tone we have to work WITH peopel argument
uh for the most part not only are these peopel working against us
THEY KNOW THEY ARE doing it it is ingrained and taught to them
The link to the "Nice White Lady" bit was on point. Interesting that so much of the advice on the thread concerned how to get involved. Her question was how to seem like a good, nice person. This would be her question whether she was "gentrifying" or not: How do I interact with racial others without coming across as the bad guy?
La Lubu,
Why not start there? Why not start with organizing around housing as a basic human right, since it's a basic human need? Instead of going with the pre-existing racist and classist practice of maximizing your privilege and then wringing hands about it?Yeah, this.
BTW, my final paragraph was supposed to be an extension of "Why aren't the white conversations about this" but I think my phrasing is both fucked up and wrong. I was trying to get at white people moving into (for example) historically black neighborhoods, complaining about gentrification or lamenting that they don't know what to do, but keeping themselves apart from the community, rather than seeing themselves as a part of the community.
Of course, all I did was end up handwringing. Sorry about that. :(
BA,
point taken about Bed Stuy. I was thinking "This is all I ever heard about this neighborhood until white people started moving in."
The white author of that article definitely comes across as navel-gazing and guilt-tripping herself into non-constructiveness. Like, is it that hard to be part of the community? To talk about the community and not her specific presence as a white person in the community, yet as separate from the community.
YES to this post.
Please shut the fuck up about gentrification, if your main goal is to express how much you are aghast at what you are " not doing" and what more can be done .
YES to this bit
( IF you want to have a conversation solely among white folk fine , but stop doing it in public and pretending that mentioning brown people is the same as talking to them especially if the end result is how to make you shiny).
and this bit
and the rest
and to La Lubu's comments (specifically, the parts about responsibility and how so many of these conversations are about denying it).
It's refreshing to read these posts lately (this one, and the one at BFP's as well). Hand-wringing and what it conceals are a necessary part of being a white feminist lately and it's just such apologetic bullshit.
Of course, this is where it's convenient to ignore history - because there have been plenty of colonials and even slavers who have hand-wrung about not hurting people of colour too much.
Then again, on the one hand, white liberals see themselves as the actors in this and everyone else is an object, as you say an opportunity for them to earn a badge of some kind. But white liberal women specifically - they tend to treat themselves as less than human anyway. Sure, there's all the comfort and all the denial of responsibility - all of this, though, is a huge part of white middle-class femininity. They don't want to be enfranchised or whatever, because it's not in our interest - whereas all other women, without enfranchisement, we're basically fucked (well, I'm white, but I'm not liberal - I'm socialist - and I'm not middle-class).
I've just moved out of a neighbourhood that was being gentrified - in fact I work in one, which is predominently inhabited by people of colour, and it's definitely the kind of place white liberals move to and start hand-wringing about. The place I'm living at the moment is basically a slum that people do not get out of if they're born there, with a handful of posh town houses on the periphery that have been done up by property developers. There's no reason for it not to be a perfectly fine neighbourhood, except that no one's interested in, as La Lubu says, the basic human right that is to have an adequate roof over your head, but a bunch of people are interested in gentrification, property development, and the various myths and dreams surrounding these things. I don't see anyone hand-wringing about that neighbourhood. I've never seen it mentioned in the local "radical left" publications. I did notice that one of the guys on the recently-published BNP list was from down there. That makes things way too complicated for the hand-wringers: with people of colour, they can totally dehumanize them so they become these objects to be helped and saved and, let's be honest, used. That helps the narrative. What also helps the narrative is assuming that poor white people bring it on themselves, and that basic human rights are actually a privilege of "the virtuous" according to a bunch of white liberal people: that would mean that those who are too innocent and earthy and [insert stream of orientalism here] to have opinions are virtuous, but... well, it really exposes how phony and despicable the whole thing is, and how little of the compliment the hand-wringing really is.
(this comment is a huge muddle, isn't it? plus it was going to be brief, oh well).
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