The blog All-City New York posted some interesting commentary at the end of the day on Friday concerning the New York Times’ story about the rising white population in Bed Stuy. The post echoed some things that readers were saying in the Brownstoner comment thread earlier in the day:

The Times completely misses a gigantic factor in both these stories, which is the growth of the Hassidic population in Northern Bed-Stuy between Myrtle and Flushing, in favor of their general gentrification narrative. But more importantly, the Times seems to think the story of the city is that of young, white people with disposable income and their varying migration patters, and the impact of these migration patters on the rest of the city (the flaws of which I wrote about here). While this is certainly A story, it is not THE story. It is not even a large story.

The blog then followed up with some more detailed analysis in this post on Sunday, which included the map above.

Out of the 16,000 new white residents that have arrived in Bed-Stuy in last decade, which this NY Times article references, 4,569 (28.5%) – of them are concentrated in just one census tract: Brooklyn Tract 1237. 1237 is bounded by Taffe Place, Nostrand Avenue, Flushing Avenue, and Myrtle Avenue. Take a walk through this area. You will find a lot of new apartment buildings with scores of small balconies jutting out awkwardly. You will find a lot of signage written in a strange, but somewhat recognizable alphabet. You will find a lot of guys dressed in black suits, a lot women dressed in long skirts, and a lot of children running on the sidewalk. You will not find very many people like the Jazz musician Arthur Kell, or Lawyer and Coffehouse owner Tremaine Wright, or anyone else the Times references in the article.

Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic, who blogged about the article on Friday morning, follows up on this analysis with some more thoughts:

There is a rather weird fascination with the “poor blacks vs.hipster whites” dynamic that pervades the conversation well beyond the Times. As I alluded to in the last post, I think this because of lengthy and particular history of social engineering directed at African-Americans. We would like to believe that blacks have the same sort of purchasing power as their fellow citizens. Confronted with the fact that they don’t, and our own socio-political paralysis, we react with a mix of guilt, frustration and nostalgia.

Lots going on here!


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