gentrolicy: what's urs?

Gentrification is a serious consideration: not a threat necessarily, but nothing to take lightly either. The fact that African-Americans will soon no longer be the majority race in Harlem is tragic. What it does is weaken community ties, affect solidarity, affect bootstrapping, affect community-based organizations such as churches. Yes, there is a certain amount of economic development that takes place when gentrification looms large, but that is slow and can be skewed in the favor of the existing majority, that is to say, the white man. Because when a big electrical job needs working, or there is a huge construction site on the row, who gets the contract to do it? Not us. On the other hand, when there is a call in the middle of the night for a police presence, who is the first to be suspected of committing the crime? Us.

Some might argue that without the presence of other, there is no sense of self, and that we’d fight among ourselves. To a certain extent, I agree with that claim. There is usually that crabs in a bucket feel in black neighborhoods, but I submit that this is usually likened to healthy competition, for the best car on the block or the nicest TV set. Maybe if we can start healthfully competing for the highest degree or the most legitimate net worth, we’d be saying something. How about competing for the longest life or the most number of grandchildren who go to college? The quickest member of the community who paid off his debt…The presence of other, this newfound infiltratrion, does nothing but put legitimate citizens on guard in their own communities, guaranteeing a higher level of stress and anxiety from the train to the park bench to the grocery store to the apartment building. We have less in common with these outsiders, and as landlords do not know what they expect. We have to cater to them in order to make them feel comfortable, although most of the time we overlook this fact and leave them out there as pioneers. Let them struggle, we say; let them get lost; let them sweat a little bit out there in the cold streets. But it is just this sweat that makes them feel like they belong, that they have sweat as much as us, that would almost legitimize their very presence.
This new phenomenon, of a personal gentrification policy and stance has been dubbed gentrolicy. It is only now catching on as we realize the need to smoothly integrate businesses, lunch counters, schools, and churches without feeling threatened. If it can happen in Harlem, it can happen anywhere, and the streets need to be ready for it. These brave souls, and yes, I do respect them, are looking for a break on rent, looking to venture into new ground, and looking to plant some seeds of their own. But, and this is big, don’t think that some aren’t out here studying how we move, and groove, and party, and work, and hustle, and grind, and interact with each other. Malcolm X said that “Before there can be any black-white unity there must first be black unity.” Isn’t it true? For instance, most of us are too busy to take note of the various trash offerings of our communities until we step in some dog crap or gum or a candy bar wrapper. Well I’m hear to tell you that allowing white folks into our most sacred communities is just like stepping in that crap, and we must mobilize to keep our own solidarity, focus, and drive despite their presence for 2010.
Now, believe it or not, I’m not a racist, I just believe in getting a few things squared away before we entertain our guests, that’s all. I’m a firm believer in ownership (not slave ownership but ownership of self), solidarity (defined as personal and collective mobilization and responsibility), mobility, and collective economics. Sound familiar? It sounds like Kwanzaa, don’t it? I don’t like the prospects of being hovered in and around by those who don’t identify with these politics and who implicitly seek to undermine them as a result. Many neighborhoods have their own way of dealing with these issues. In Flatbush, you might get lit up by a West Indian vudu witch doctor as a welcoming present into the community (shit, black or white!). In Crown Heights, the Hassidics and the blacks would take turns with you, hazing you until you broke down and submitted. But what’s the process in Harlem? Maybe I should ask some of my white friends who’ve lived there what it feels like at nighttime, or on the way home from work. Oh and don’t get me started on work, cuz while a significant percentage (21%) of able bodied black men aged 22-50 are currently out of work, only 11% of their white counterparts are. But we’re out of work in the cities in which we live and hustle; their out of work out on the farm somewhere. Yet you have the nerve to look at me, like, “get a job, take care of your kids, be a man,” when you get the nod for good, secure, respectable jobs, and while I have to pick up trash and grin about it (hated that commercial)? No way. And you want to move into my neighborhood to “save extra cash.” I know the system is not your fault, but you are the passive beneficiary – allow me to be the re-active proletariat: and by the way, are you the cat who I play ball against at the YMCA, cuz if so, remind me to give you an extra elbow in the ribs the next time you go up for a rebound. Not that violence is going to change anything right now, but sometimes it’s just satisfying in a carnal sense.
I must end with this. I love most people: Black, white, Asian, Native American, West Indian, Indian, etc. and mixed. I see more interracial couples these days than ever before. I smile and just think about when I was in one and what the older heads must have thought about me back then. I try not to judge. And when it comes to neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods in this concrete jungle called NYC, I have full confidence that they have their ways of weeding out the weak links. If I had it my way, we would all have lived together for years in relative peace and harmony. But history has a way of leaving me bitter, so don’t be surprised when that bitterness gets taken out on the descendents of a manipulative and corrupt populous who just happen to try to move next door to me.