#73 Gentrification
February 22, 2008 by clander
In general, white people love situations where they can’t lose. While this does account for the majority of their situations, perhaps the safest bet a white person can make is to buy a house in an up-and-coming neighborhood.
White people like to live in these neighborhoods because they get credibility and respect from other white people for living in a more “authentic” neighborhood where they are exposed to “true culture” every day. So whenever their friends mention their home in the suburbs or richer urban area, these people can say “oh, it’s so boring out there, so fake. In our neighborhood, things are just more real.” This superiority is important as white people jockey for position in their circle of friends.
They are like a modern day Lewis and Clark, except instead of searching for the ocean, they are searching for old properties to renovate.
In a few years, if more white people start moving in, these initial trailblazers will sell their property for triple what they paid and move into an ultramodern home.
Credibility or money, they can’t lose!
When one of these white people tell you where they live, you should say “whoa, it’s pretty rough down there. I don’t think I could live there.” This will make them feel even better about their credibility and status as neighborhood pioneers.
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Very funny, but I think this one honestly depends on what type of white person you are. If you’re a straight, early-30s, married, financially successful white yuppie with a kid young enough to ride in a stroller, I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t mind gobbling up a piece of the urban pie (because that’s what I see all the freaking time!) while the poor, the queer, the minority, and the artistic are shoved off somewhere else. As a 20-something lesbian white woman who’s just getting by, and who sees no intrinsic value in children, marriage, owning property, or the so-called “American Dream,” I abhor seeing Chicago -especially Boystown- being turned into one giant Jamba Juice/Potbelly’s/Baby Gap plaza. Some whites may think they’re living in a more “authentic” neighborhood by buying into a gentrifying area, but they’re in fact just becoming part of what inevitably saps that neighborhood of its personality in exchange for the illusion of safety and convenience. And gentrification isn’t just happening to the poor areas. It’s also happening in the areas that are hip and rife with unique artistic culture, like Wicker Park, which is being taken over and regurgitated into something sanitized and painfully boring. They just can’t resist eating up a neighborhood like Wicker Park. Until the minorities and misfits who made these neighborhoods great in the first place rise up and send the stroller-pushers and condo-dwellers back to the suburban hell from whence they came, I dread that this city will eventually have no unique, non-chain-store personality left. I also dread eventually getting pushed out of my neighborhood by the exact people you’re talking about. *Shudders* Look out! Here come the condos!
Until the minorities and misfits who made these neighborhoods great in the first place
You are a class A idiot.
Whites built those neighborhoods, all of it, the stores the buildings, the churches, the housing stock, etc. Then these third worlders come in an turn it all into nothingness and it all gets run down and they cannot create of build-up shit!!!
Many pf the suburbanites have family root in the city going back over a hundred years. I for one could care less about some Latino squatter getting priced out. It was never their neighborhood, these were all White before they became a wasteland and ghetto devoid of civility and legit culture.
Yes, you’re right, but you have to remember (or maybe you don’t know history) that when Whites FLED IN FEAR of, at first, one or two minority families moving in they wrenched the stores and the businesses with them, did not serve them, and city services like trash pick up illegally refused to pick up the trash. Good jobs were still withheld from certain people, and the houses, already in need of repairs because of the belching soot of the steelmills all over deteriorated fast. That’s what made then ghettos.
Neighborhoods like Pill Hill, Avalon Park and Chatham were fortunate enough to have middle-class Blacks with the means to build them back up and make them envies of the South Side. There are pristine gated communities in Chatham and Avalon Park that are 100% African-American.
I’ve been through them many times and they’re as gorgeous as people remember with vibrant business districts. There are Starbucks on East 79th and West 87th Streets. Let’s not forget the historic Drexel Avenue mansions are almost all Black owned and have been for generations when the first minor White Flight occurred in the 1920s. Go figure. So I think your “they became a wasteland and ghetto devoid of civility and legit culture.” line is a bit harsh and not universally true of all the urban areas relenquished – forefeited – given up to minorities by White people to scared to deal.
Perfect. Not that long ago some graffiti in my edgy ‘hood read, “White people = Useless” Classic.
haha sounds like Baltimore.
How come no one mentioned Harlem except #80? Harlem is the best example.
Try the fifth Ward in Houston. Sheila Jackson Lee has sold the home boys out and Metro will do the rest.
Great Value
“Anonymous
PS For every neighborhood that is gentrified by Whites, there is another White area going to HELL!!!!!!
Today it’s the “inner-ring” suburbs and even some further out ones. They are the new ghettos, and unfortunatley they won’t have a critical mass of whites to pay into the tax base like in a larger city.”
You are so right.
Can you imagine? The next string of gangta rap hits coming from the suburban experience?
Here is Chicago it’s the samething, but it’s more than Blacks moving into them. The collar suburbs are getting old like the inner-city once was. Reselling a house built in the 1960-70s is harder than an urban rehab with updated appointments built in 1899. It can even be a hovel if it’s in a hot spot.
Plus those old areas were the rush built subdivisions developed during the mass exodus from the city in the late 1950s thru the 1960s and early 70s – popularly known as White Flight. Not exactly Architectures golden age when drywall and no sidewalks was the latest thing.
Today people want brick, poured concrete and someplac(s) to stroll around the corner. And the house or the area has to be historically significant.
What’s so great about the Johnson years. What’s he do anyway?
Give me Uptown or I ain’t goin’!
In Chicago take your pick. The Southside is moving up one neighborhood after another rediating from the The Loop west and south.
Bucktown used to be so gritty and dangerous, now the average flat goes for 500K! Can you say, “priced out?”
At this rate the Urban Music genre will include Daughtry and Carrie Underwood.
@463 DeeCee
Good point.
Look up Colin Ferguson, Cho Seung-Hui, John Lee Malvo, Chai Vang, Julio Gonzalez, Juan Corona.
(I don’t know if including the killers of 911, the 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center, etc., counts in this case, so I’ll leave them out.)
Never really thought of myself as a “gentrifier”– I just bought into the only local area at the time I could barely afford: a crappy, crime infested neighborhood. Fortunately, a number of other venturesome, improvement-minded people (both white and non-white) did too, and today I don’t who could say that it’s not a better, more positive place in any way imaginable. And it’s still “authentic”, whatever the h that means.
Speaking as a gentrifier, I thoroughly enjoy this blog.
lol
Maybe white people should just stop being nice and go back to what they are really good at, domination via technology and generally being awesome at everything involving ruling the world.
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