NYTClean →
euri.ca
For those of you who have hit your 20 article limit, as of now this still works.
Edit: Apparently, it’s going to stay working for a while.
March 2011
28 posts
BAR: Not a Word About Gentrification as Black Urban Population Declines →
blackagendareport.com
The corporate news media greeted new census data detailing the drastic and general decline of Black populations in center cities as if the phenomenon were, somehow, a vindication of the American dream – a cause for celebration. The dramatic increase in the movement of African Americans back to the South, which actually began decades ago, is held up as proof positive that America’s racial conflicts will soon be a thing of the past. Newsrooms seemed filled with jubilation, that the nation’s cities will soon be liberated from two generations of concentrated Black presence. Underlying the upbeat news coverage is the assumption that a diffusion of Blacks is, by definition, a good thing for the nation as a whole, and for Black people, themselves.
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Sorry for all the posts at once. I guess new census data = a bunch of newish popular media meditations on race and the city = a bunch of open browser tabs that I need to close.
Confessions of a Black Gentrifier: When demographic change doesn't involve color →
washingtoncitypaper.com
For neighborhoods where it suddenly feels like white people are “everywhere,” the U.S. Census Bureau says the vast majority of residents in LeDroit Park and Bloomingdale (and Petworth, and Brookland) are still black—more than 80 percent of the residents in some gentrifying census tracts in a 2009 estimate.
Perhaps that’s because just as “black people” is a proxy term for poor people in D.C., “white people” is a proxy term for the young professionals who have moved in—and neither term is being accurately used.
The proportion of black folks in my neighborhood of LeDroit Park remains higher than the average black population in the city, around 70 or 80 percent in some census tracts. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey three-year estimates, the black population in D.C. dropped from 56.4 percent to 54.2 percent between 2005 and 2009. Despite breathless accounts of D.C.’s changing demographics, that’s actually not all that much of a dip. And maybe concerns about that dip are beside the point.
See also, TNC and postbourgie
TNC: End of Chocolate City →
theatlantic.com
I’m obviously sympathetic to the plight of the black urban poor. I’m sympathetic to arguments over the effects of drug laws. I’m sympathetic to arguments over the generational effects of red-lining and block-busting. I’m sympathetic to arguments over old-school racism and job discrimination. But we seem to assume, that, all things being equal, most black people would rather live in big cities. Really? Certainly some would, but I’d see that assumption tested.
NYT: Many U.S. Blacks Moving to South, Reversing Trend →
nytimes.com
“This is the decade of black flight,” said Mr. Frey. “It’s a new age for African-Americans. It’s long overdue, but it seems to be happening.”
Sugrue: A Dream Still Deferred →
nytimes.com
So far, Detroit’s black suburbanization has followed a well-trodden path. Those blacks heading outward from Detroit aren’t moving to all suburbs equally. Rather, they move into places with older houses, rundown shopping districts and declining tax revenues. Such towns also typically have poorer services and fewer job opportunities than wealthier suburbs — where, despite strong antidiscrimination laws, it is still harder for blacks to find housing.
It’s not clear that this new migration is a positive step, even if it allows blacks to escape the city and its troubles. For whites, suburbs have often been a big step up — but as long as most blacks find themselves in secondhand suburbia, the American dream of security, prosperity and opportunity will remain harder to achieve.
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“These rappers are scared. They be like, ‘B, you weird.’ I ain’t weird. I might be a little based. But these rappers is Republicans!”
—Lil B (via The Village Voice)
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Doing Research on Restrictive Racial Covenants and FHA Hsg Insurance from 1934-68 and found this:
In the late 1930’s, as Detroit grew outward, white families began to settle near a black enclave adjacent to Eight Mile Road. By 1940, the blacks were surrounded, but neither they nor the whites could get FHA insurance because of the proximity of an inharmonious racial group. So, in 1941, an enterprising white developer built a concrete wall between the white and black areas. The FHA appraisers then took another look and approved the mortgages on the white properties.
If you haven’t already, def. check out David Freund’s Colored Property. Beyond its discussion of racial covenants, it also offers a pretty great critique of Jackson’s Crabgrass Frontier (quoted above) and challenges some of his assumptions re: the inexorability of so called “white flight” and the particular ways in which US metropolitan areas were racially reconfigured following the Depression.
David Simon, Creator of The Wire, Speaks on Felicia "Snoop" Pearson's Arrest →
slate.com
The war on drugs has devolved into a war on the underclass, that in places like West and East Baltimore, where the drug economy is now the only factory still hiring and where the educational system is so crippled that the vast majority of children are trained only for the corners, a legal campaign to imprison our most vulnerable and damaged citizens is little more than amoral.
Both our Constitution and our common law guarantee that we will be judged by our peers. But in truth, there are now two Americas, politically and economically distinct. I, for one, do not qualify as a peer to Felicia Pearson. The opportunities and experiences of her life do not correspond in any way with my own, and her America is different from my own. I am therefore ill-equipped to be her judge in this matter.
