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
DOWhat, are you saying you are a liberal, college-educated African-American?
“No, only the conservative, college-educated young African-Americans. The less educated and/or more liberal ones are not quite as open to integration.”
dow-You’re making no sense.
That would undercut the notion of “liberal” would it not? I know plenty of college-educated African-Americans, none of them would consider themselves conservative.
bxgrl: the counsel to resist reducing whether it’s a “good thing” or a “bad thing” to a set of measurements can be issued to both the newcomers and the old-timers and everyone in between. when it comes down to it, each person does what’s best for him or her – including the people that are selling or renting their homes to the newcomers at prices with which their old-timer neighbors apparently cannot compete.
“It’s a mixed back”
classic TWhat malapropism.
DOWhat wries…”No, only the conservative, college-educated young African-Americans. The less educated and/or more liberal ones are not quite as open to integration”
Talk about a gross generalization example of racism!!!!!!
Go back to your stock market and interest rate prognostication on the Fannie/Freddie thread!!!
Stop writing NABES!!! It’s like the combination of fingernails on the chalkboard and stepping in dog crap.
Do people say this out loud? Or just write it? Seriously… aaargH!
MiceElfAgain: Absolutely right! When we (a young white family) moved to Clinton Hill in the early 1990s, within days we’d been welcomed by our (black) neighbors, invited to barbecues, spent time talking on stoops and watching each other’s children play on the sidewalk, etc. When I moved to Park Slope, I found that the mostly white families mostly keep to themselves. To this day, I’m on a friendly “hi, how are you?” basis with my black neighbors on my North Slope block whereas the white neighbors seem to think I’m crazy if I say hello to them on the sidewalk! Talk about cultural differences….
” ‘…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?”
No, only the conservative, college-educated young African-Americans. The less educated and/or more liberal ones are not quite as open to integration. It’s a mixed back with respect to the demographic of each.
MiceElfAgain – good point, one of the times someone writes about something I thought only I’d noticed.
My old neighbors, when we would both be entering/exiting our brownstones simultaneously, would NEVER make eye contact or nod hello. This was in Park Slope.