Posted on 08/25/2015 7:11:34 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
The other day, I was walking back to my Harlem apartment when I stumbled upon a very shocking sign in front of a black church. It read:
NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority), Funerals, Beauty Parlors Will Close in Harlem. Make room for sodomite gentrifiers. Have a nice day niggers!
This is a regular occurrence; this church’s messages are always provocative. A few months back, another homemade sign forewarned New Yorkers of “Wall Street bankers, gentrifiers, and sodomites ruining their community”. To this group of Harlemites, gentrification is synonymous with depravity.
The sign did not name me, but it was talking to me nonetheless: an outsider who recently made Harlem my home.
Before I came to Harlem, it was fairly easy for me to think of gentrification as a strictly “black versus white” issue. The dominant narrative targets white people barging into predominantly black neighborhoods. In layman’s terms, it’s imperialism in the 21st century.
It was very easy for me, as a native New Jerseyan, to mock white people who frequent artisanal teashops next to Jamaican hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Brooklyn. Those signs of gentrification – coffee chains, hipster restaurants and cocktail bars – having been popping up in Harlem for the past few years.
For my part, I moved to Harlem for its cheap rent and rich history. I had also devoured the histories of Josephine Baker and Langston Hughes, who flocked to the black cultural center of the world to express themselves more freely. Perhaps I romanticized their migration a bit too much.
I assumed that because of my skin color and kinky hair, I would fuse right into the community and be on one accord with its people but I could not have been more wrong.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Don’t you just love how a Black president brought blacks and whites together?
It’s always been sodomites at the forefront. They don’t have kids to worry about.
In New Jersey, I thought that gentrification did not apply to me. Because I’m a black woman, I was the victim. In Harlem, this message is turned upside down. Rather than the victim, I am the perpetrator.
Maybe I’m just a shallow person, but this article made no sense to me.
And stupid people do not understand why they have no skin in the game. The only care about themselves not the future because they do not contribute to the future.
Nope, it was definitely illogical bilge.
The lady is actually loony enough to feel guilt for trying to join and improve a neighborhood.
We got us a deep thinker here.
“Invisibilizes”????? Basically, her premise is that she’s a victim because she unintentionally became the perpetrator. Or to put it more succinctly “look at me, look at MEEEEE!!!” She doesn’t care about Harlem (she really only moved there, because it was cheap), she cares about the fact that she isn’t accepted, despite her pre-supposed insulations. She wants to be perceived as down with the hood, and the hood sees right through her.
Essentially the writer is saying that she is surprised that she doesn't fit in to her Black community because of her education, her occupation, her middle class or perhaps uppermiddleclass status and outlook. She has the approved skin pigment and hair, which means she should fit in. But she doesn't, and she feels guilty about this fact. It is as if she has become “the Man”. Just like white people. Oh nooooooooo!
For years we have been told that the “Inner City” was in ruins because of “White Flight”. Segregation was BAD, Integration is GOOD!
Now we learn that the real problems is “Gentrification” wherein whites return, with their capital, to the Inner City...
Ooops, now there is a problem with Black Gentrification.
How do you say “petulant” in Ebonics or lib-speak?
She is an outsider in a very insular community, she wrote: “ I am an Ivy League alumna and, like my friends, this signals both vast earning potential and social capital.”
And this is probably also a sign of the “crime of” “acting white” by studying hard, getting a degree and a good job. When my daughter was in grade and high school, her Black classmates would taunt other Blacks who studied hard with “Why are you acting White? Do you want to be Whtie like Sarah?”
You fed the crocodile of racial Marxism, and now it is eating you last.
When whites leave an urban area, it’s “white flight” and “abandonment”. When white come into an urban area it’s “gentrification” and “imperialism”.
I got to ‘imperialism in the 21st century’ and ‘Langston Hughes’ and knew the nonsense was coming.
Can’t much empathize with Marxists either.
Hey! You can't say that!
Oh... ummmm... OK - I can't say that.
or years we have been told that the “Inner City” was in ruins because of “White Flight”. Segregation was BAD, Integration is GOOD!
Now we learn that the real problems is “Gentrification” wherein whites return, with their capital, to the Inner City...
Yep, and people like Spike Lee stir the pot. He’s pissed off that the newcomers have no appreciation for the history of the ghetto. He’s offended by the sight of white mothers pushing strollers around “his” neighborhood.
So what exactly should be done about the ghetto? White flight was blamed for causing problems. Now we are told that whites and other ethnicities with money are going to push out blacks and change the character of the ghetto. What the heck???
But not the ability to compose a decent English sentence.
And what was it when blacks "barged into" white neighborhoods in the 20th century?
It was always about less cilvilized groups taking issue with more cilvilized individuals invading their little world...and expecting those indigenous to the area to act civilized.
But screaming "they want us to grow up!" has less impact than "they're racists!", so they went with the latter.
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