Letters to the Editor
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Of Gentarification and Race
It has been most interesting to read half of these responses. More is really too much time on Oleanders. They make really
beautiful flowers, I believe they have an outstanding fragrance and are an old southern favorite.
I am going to share my thoughts about living in a "transitioning neighborhood". Transitioning is a euphemism for a poor neighborhood that is being bought up by white people and/or rich people. Spending money to make it different then it was, is gentrification. Now some of us urban types like the flavor of the old untouched funky neighborhoods and some don't. Those that don't like it funky tend to come in from the suburbs and try to make everything look like the suburbs.
Gentrifying effectively forces old and poor to move because they can neither afford the raise in taxes due to higher home prices and can not deal with the changing zoning codes and new neighbors. They become displaced. They are
removed. They lose their family homes, community, security, pride, I can go on. But that is, as they (capitalists)say, progress.
Dear well meaning but clueless white people,
(Of which I am sometimes and at times embarrassed to be.)
White people are the only ones who can afford to ignore race. To state that race is not an issue denies racism in a kind of old, anxiety ridden, clueless, liberal kind of way. I will bet good money that the elderly black woman refers to her new neighbors as the white people who are moving in and taking over the neighborhood. First, race matters to those who are black and should matter to those who are white because it defines culture, history, assumptions, aesthetics, music, art, and preferences. Kind of like how class does, ya know. Second, old neighborhoods and old post 60's black neighborhoods really don't take kindly to strangers coming in and "fixing up" their hoods. The ones they abandoned because black people dared to come in. Oh, and I have lived in these neighborhoods before they became impossibly expensive and contained the latest culinary affectation. Not that I don't like well made food but, at the time, my neighbors and I couldn't afford to eat there.
Here is an important piece of info that white people rarely get to know about the black community unless you are fortunate enough to spend a lot of time there and are accepted enough that they let down the walls.(And please don't talk to me about the African American thing, most black people I know think they are black Americans) Ok, here it is, black people talk about race all the time. It is as if they can't get away from it, seeing how they walk around with the evidence and consequences in their skin. White privilege makes us think we have no color and, like Stephen Colbert, we can't see someone else's race. To think it doesn't matter always smacks of arrogance to black people. As white people we need to confront our more subtle kinds of racism as well as the blatant kinds.
I would also guess that the elderly neighbor thinks that her new white neighbor doesn't know her well enough to come over and offer to help. And it is seen as an insult. I will be really provocative and go on to say she may apologize about her home to her white neighbor in the old southern way of blowing "massa" off. All that politeness and decorum can be the biggest front to keep white people from barging in and taking over. The assumption that she is just like any old white lady that needs and would love help from her white neighbors needs, to be explored throughly.
LW, get to know your elderly black neighbor before you offer too much more. Laugh a lot with her. Sit on the porch and just watch the sky change. Amd if there are other original black neighbors talk to them, when you see them on the street, and see what they say about that lady across the street. Maybe they have ideas about how to help or approach your nice neighbor. They might surprise you by being just as offended as you are, or not. They are used to white people taking more then their share. Just don't expect them to act all white. To use the system to defend themselves is not second nature. To do it against a white person could be really unthinkable. Go slow. Be open. Remember you come from a whole different world. And tell that f*cking crazy women across the street about the new (that you are starting) or old neighborhood association and how you are going to raise the encroachment and trespassing issue with them.