Do Generalizations About Harlem Hold for Brooklyn Nabes?
It was hard to read this weekend’s NY Times story about the changing demographics in Harlem without considering the extent to which the article applied to some of the predominantly black neighborhoods in Brooklyn that have been attracting waves of white newcomers in recent years: In the past few years, the Village of Harlem, as…
It was hard to read this weekend’s NY Times story about the changing demographics in Harlem without considering the extent to which the article applied to some of the predominantly black neighborhoods in Brooklyn that have been attracting waves of white newcomers in recent years:
In the past few years, the Village of Harlem, as older residents still call it, has become a 21st-century laboratory for integration. Class and money and race are at the center of the changes in the neighborhood. Lured by stately century-old brownstones and relatively modest rents, new faces are moving in and making older residents feel that they are being pushed out. There have been protests, and anger directed as much at the idea of the newcomers as at them personally.
While this particular story focused on what it felt like for the white, middle-class arrivistes trying to make a home in a place that has been predominantly black for decades, it also touched on an aspect of gentrification that often gets overlooked— Middle-class black gentrification— as well as differing attitudes depending on generation. Older blacks didn’t have any choice but to live in a black neighborhood, said Mark Thomas, a 29-year-old African American man who recently moved from Atlanta to Strivers’ Row. So they get nervous when a white person wants to move in. But if you talk to young African-Americans, they want the neighborhood they live in to be integrated. Do you think that’s a fair generalization to make about neighborhoods like Clinton Hill and Bed Stuy?
In an Evolving Harlem, Newcomers Try to Fit In [NY Times]
Photo by rfullerrd
i live in bedstuy and bought here b/c it is a black neighborhood. i felt comfortable here. all of my friends here have moved here in the last 6-7 years are all black professionals with beautiful renovated homes. so we are a big part of the gentrification. however, the majority that have purchased over the last 3-4 years have been white. this is plain and simple a socio-economic issue. bottom line. men make more than women. whites make more than blacks. so as these prices soar – it prices out many, many black folks. unfortunate but very true. just show up at any open house for 1M +! Racism is real – i work in HR, this is not a debate. most folks (especially white) just don’t know how real it is b/c they are not being effected by it. this is a fact!
So well put East New York, thank you!
My husband and I (both white) moved into a predominantly black neighborhood and we’ve been taken into the fold in much the way Parksloper described.
The only disparaging comment I happened to overhear (I was inside the house cleaning by an open window)was from the one neighbor on the block, who I might add has always been quite friendly and engaging, that is a renter. He said, “All these whites moving in with their money does no good but to push us out”. My other neighbor quickly said, “Now wait, everybody has got to live somewhere and when I sell the color I care about isn’t black or white it’s green.”
In the last year and a half there have been 4 homes sold on our block, each to a white family. One was a quick sale, one an elderly person passed away and the family (who lived out of state) sold the home, two others including the one I bought the people retired and moved away). Prior to that the sales had been quite stagnant and homes sold for significantly lower prices. So, I can see how if I was a renter I’d feel nervous that I’d be priced out so I’m not going to take offense.
That experience aside I can honestly say that the people here both black and white have opened their homes and their hearts to us. They all know us as individuals not just as the white folks that bought Miss Brown’s house.
Polemicist, yes, not all housing court lawsuits are frivolous. But many, many are. Think about the neighborhood elderly, who’ve been there in lean times, who also have, possibly, large rent-controlled apartments. Prime targets they. And that’s a shame. I know of frivolous primary-residence lawsuits, as well, which are scary for some tenants, even if the apartment is their primary residence. The list goes on, with the goal being $ rather than humanity. Change can be positive, and change happens. It just need not be unethically produced.
Miss Priss: I think it definitely is a block by block thing for Clinton Hill in re how friendly people are on the street. Most of my social interaction in the neighborhood these days comes in the parenting context and I guess this is an area where people are naturally going to be a bit more friendly (in the confines of the kid park there is not a lot of room to be standoffish anyway). I agree that in the end some of these social differences/ways of looking at the world end up being class based but that the racial identity issue is an easier one to define and put a name on hence the misinterpretation.
chnyc:
You may not know this, but rent-stabilized tenants can be evicted if the building is going to be replaced with a new property.
Rent-stabilization may seem like communism in that everyone has a right to live in a slum, but it really doesn’t work that way in fact. It is a real pain in the 4ss to evict someone – even when following the letter of the law – but it will happen eventually.
So, these lawsuits are frequently not frivolous.
A lot of you are taking a really short view of things. The story of NYC neighborhoods is that they all change rapidly.
If you could do a way-back machine on most of the neighborhoods in NYC you would list out just about every race and ethnic affiliation over time. The whole point about NY neighborhoods is that they change. Who gets title on it? The people who were there in the 80s, the 70s, the 50s or the 30s?
In my neighborhood, Clinton Hill, there is a very palpable hostility from some people to whites moving in and none at all from others. Recently, a (white) neighbor found a woman passed out with her skirt up above her waist and naked below. he tried to wake her up and when he could not, he called 911, afraid that she may have OD’d and was dying. When a (black) old time neighbor heard him do that, she railed against him and told him that he’d had no right to do that and was now just going to make the police come. On my block and a few surrounding blocks this is where we tend to see hostility the most – when the old timers feel that the white newcomers are reacting to the crime and the drugs on some of the blocks with alarm, when they should just be minding their own business. I have to agree with one of the posters that generally there is no animosity from the middle and upper class black residents, but that it is a class issue and it simply becomes race related because that’s the easiest signifier. In Clinton Hill, most gentrification over the years has been by young black professionals and families, but it is easier for the potentially displaced to place it on the shoulders of the white gentrifiers. While I don’t always enjoy that, I can understand it.
Before we moved to this neighborhood, I was reading Brownstoner.com, probably in the first year it existed and read from one commenter that the reason this animosity existed had something to do with how the white people never say hello. I grew up partly in the South and loved that we were moving into a neighborhood where this was commonplace. So, when we moved here, I said hello. Well, some nice people responded in kind, but by and large, my black neighbors keep their heads down as they pass, or pretend they haven’t heard. Maybe some of you have ended up on more friendly blocks than mine, but I would not exactly say it’s the rule of thumb.
I keep doing it because it feels good and there are those few who seem to like it, but I think there are unfriendly black people just like there are unfriendly white people and ultimately, we’re all going to just have to find a way to realize that most of this stuff boils down to class.
Just wanted to chime in here and add “absolutely!” These issues are so relevant to other nabes, but especially Brooklyn. One of the best parts of this NYTimes experience, was getting to meet and talk with the woman who took my pic, Michelle Agins. Turns out she’s got a sweet Brownstone over in Bed-Stuy, since 1988. There was definitely much common ground there in terms of why we selected the nabes we did, why we stayed and how we made it “livable.” I just love hearing those stories because one must transition from an objective morality to a subjective understanding of the situation in order to fully experience what your particular neighbors have to offer. If you are unable or unwilling to do this, friction ensues.
Thank you, East New York, thank you!
Harlem is at war right now. In my observation, people aren’t breathing – they are knee-jerk reacting to unethical owners/ developers (and not all owners/ developers are, of course) who are evicting tenants seemingly left and right through frivolous lawsuits which take advantage of tenants’ lack of knowledge about the intricacies of housing court. Lower-income people are being divided and conquered in Harlem. And, they are dividing themselves. Shouting ‘cracker’ to white people who may be in a similar situation, or who could be part of a larger community with their neighbors is counter-productive behavior. Harlem is getting hit hard. Yet, it need not be so negative uptown. There’s an opportunity to bring a community together there, which doesn’t appear to be happening.
Thank goodness for Brooklyn. I can now breathe.