Gentrification is a BITCH! That's why I hate Whitey, what about you?

I'm going to vent a little here. This might be offensive to SOME but you know what? I don't give a pluck! I'm getting off the plane to come back home to Harlem after being away at school for a long stretch. As I'm coming uptown I notice that the crowd is a LOT "brighter" than I'm used to.

Ok, I think you might need a lil background info on me and my life before I start this post. I grew up in Harlem, NYC but went to school on the "Upper East Side" of Manhattan AKA Ritzy Old White Mansville. Most of my classmates had never seen a black person up-close before they met me or my best friend David (who I went to school with). As such, most of the people I went to school with or their families had never been above 96th street. 96th was the invisible line that separated Manhattan from Harlem, The Heights, Spanish Harlem and basically anywhere else that had some actual culture of it's own... long story short... if you were on the train before 96th and staying on further uptown you would literally see them run off and all the Black and Brown people come on. Like a choreographed dance almost...

Ok, back to my story... So, I'm coming uptown and all of a sudden it's just, for lack a better, term... ugly! All these damn WHITE PEOPLE are EVERYWHERE now. Before all you crackers start throwing around words like "Reverse Racism" and so on, I would like to SMACK you with one that's a million times uglier, you ready? Dictionaries out! "GENTRIFICATION". For those of you that don't know what that means I'll break it down shortly. Gentrification is a big word white people use that means. “We realized that we moved ourselves out of the places that we need to be via "White Flight" to the suburbs and crammed all the Spanish and Black people into the city where we have left them to their own devices and given them what we, at the time, considered to be the, less choice area of the city but now are wanting to move back.” So what they do is very covertly buy property in the low income overwhelmingly black/Latino areas and start to do things like leave abandon buildings vacant for VERY extended periods, raise rents, build stores that push out locally owned businesses and that the people of the area can't afford to shop in, and ultimately make OUR neighborhoods too expensive for US. Once that's done, like vermin they move in an multiply, with NO, absolutely NO regard for any of the people or CULTURE that were there before, totally disregarding the fact that the ONLY reason these people they are trying to push are there in the first place is because of blind discrimination in real-estate and social systems that wouldn't allow for them to relocate... Again before you "bright" people start getting all tight (cause that's what a good pussy does) and start throwing around exceptions like the few black people sprinkled out in queens and far out in the Bronx and, L.I. realize that those people are the FEW exceptions and even though they have "made it" (a concept that warrants a entire post on it's own) they have done so in SPITE of the oppressive factors I'm talking about, NOT because they don't exist or have gotten "better", so SHUT UP!

Now that we know what Gentrification is, I'm going to "TELL 'EM WHY I'M MAD!" Ok, I'm mad because I have been living in this area for my WHOLE LIFE and my mother has been living here for all of her life before me... all together that something like 80 years cumulatively, and all that time the "hood" was still the "hood" To quote Mr. Rock... Stocks went up and down, the hood was still F'd up, white people went through Enron jumped out of windows and the hood was still F'd up, White people, travel and worry about bush vs. Clinton vs. Nixon blah blah... all the while the hood was STILL F’d up... Growing up it was like all we had was each other in the neighborhood because we weren't welcomed downtown. Being followed in stores, stared at on streets, and stopped by police... and they were all too scared to come uptown except on those fucking tour buses to stare at us like monkeys and take pictures... so after a while we got used to having "less". But now that they have decided to "re occupy" our neighborhoods all these big corporations that didn't give two shits about placing stores here when it was just us are "developing" all over the place! Starbucks, Staples, H&M, Chucky Cheese's, Nine West, Sprint, Verizon; all these businesses have BEEN heavily used by the residents of these areas (Harlem, Washington Heights...) for years, matter of fact without our business they would crumble, however when it was just us in these areas they didn't provide us with ANY attention, they didn't expend ANY energy to reach our or expand into our community. Now that the "Cracker Committee" has moved in it's "Oh, we have to move uptown." <<<*Tight white voice*.


So, I think I have vented enough, But because I just am not here to babble I'd also like to spark some thought I'd like to say this to all the people that have endured through my overtly "Angry Black man Spiel", FIGHT GENTRIFICATION, the key here is education. Chances are if you are online and able to understand what I'm saying you aren't one of the people I'm talking about. But many of OUR mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, people that have been living in their neighborhoods for decades aren't educated enough to understand what gentrification is and how it's hurting them. Let's face it; many of us (now 22, 23 years old) are in many cases the first to go to college or in the case of our Latino brothers and sisters the only ones to even speak English. White people have learned how to oppress much more effectively since the 40's 50's 60's and 70's.. They no longer give us overt things to rally around like water hoses, and "Whites Only" signs. They have gone underground. Doing things like buying us out and raising rents and systematically feeding us things like, BET and Reggaton (so sad...). The problem with that is they have started using a language that most of us aren't educated enough to understand so we become caught in the back draft. What I propose to my generation, to all of mi gente, is that we take what we know and explain it to our elders translate it into whatever language they need it to be in for them to understand it, for them to get mad and angry, and to motivate them to action! Whether that be Spanish, Ebonics, or just "Southern Talk" (Black people know about that... it's what your grandmother speaks... "Wrench around and wrench it off!!!" LOL). They are getting away with this because we don't understand what's going on and by the time we figure it out it's too late... we need to come up people!

Finally, to all the white people in the hood talking about "I didn't do it." "It was my ancestors" "I have 5 black friends...” Realize this, just your PRESENSE is too much. You living in an apartment in Harlem means that, probably, 5 residents that can't afford to live anywhere else are now homeless. Furthermore realize that those five residents were probably old people that have been living there for DECADES! Now, because some honky landlord decided that your white college student, bohemian dread lock (I HATE WHITE PEOPLE WITH DRED LOCKS!!! THEY STEEL EVERYTHING FROM US!!) ass, could pay more than a grandmother living under rent control could they moved her out and your ass in. so yes YOU are the problem... LEAVE!