Back in the day, the phenomenon of so-called "white flight" from cities to suburbs was bemoaned as horrible and racist.
Today, gentrification is bemoaned as horrible and racist. When it comes to the melanin-deficient, everything they do, no matter what, is somehow horrible and racist. They can't win, as CNN demonstrated yet again.
Sunday night's "United Shades of America" on CNN brought host W. Kamau Bell to Portland, where he explored the city's reputation for being "cool," the invasion of hipsters, Portland's overwhelmingly white population and how gentrification has priced out members of Portland's African American community from neighborhoods they once dominated.
In the early 1970s I rented a place in the heart of Portland's Black community, on N.E. Tillamook St., just off N.E. Williams Ave. I was the only white guy for blocks. And let me clue you in on a little secret: there wasn't much going on. The people in the neighborhood were friendly folks, but poor - so the homes weren't exactly well cared for. There was a shotgun shack across the street that was just boarded up and abandoned, as were many of the businesses in the area. Gang activity was nonexistent; no guns, none of that stuff. Still, you couldn't really call it a Black community.
Bell writes on his blog regarding the Sunday episode:
"On this episode, I tried to remind the mostly white hipsters of Portland about the black residents whom their presence had pushed out. And almost to a person they had the same type of reaction when I brought up Portland's (to me) shocking lack of diversity. It was something to the effect of ...
Hipster - 'YAY, PORTLAND!'
Me - 'Where are all the black people?'
Hipster - 'Oh yeah...'
Hipster looks down at their feet until I go away.
Of course, he's a comedian, but he doesn't get it: the black residents were not "pushed out"; developers offered them a lot of money for their run-down homes, and the residents took that money and moved. It's what is known as "the free market". Not once did a developer hold a gun to their heads and demand that they take the money and run.
Sure, once they left, the developers bulldozed the homes and built condos and apartments and such, but the point is that nobody got "pushed out".
Still, scattered throughout Portland are black people like Beverly, who has lived in her house most of her life. But she has seen the block near her house that used to be filled with several local black-owned businesses transformed into one giant Organic Grocery store that is far too expensive for her to buy her groceries there, plus the addition of an eight-story apartment building. And the black neighbors — who used to surround her home, watching out for each other — are now long gone. And those black neighbors have been replaced by new white neighbors. And many of these white neighbors won't even look Beverly in the eye. Damn.
Clearly, the show was racist - and as always, it's the fault of white folks. Damn. Oh, and as for those black-owned businesses? Remember, I lived there; I know what it was really like, and the only black-owned business that seemed to be doing fairly well was the barber shop. There were no black-owned businesses that sold groceries that Beverly could afford to buy; that didn't happen until an Asian guy opened his place. Me, I hoofed it a mile and a half or so to the Safeway at Lloyd Center. That's where I bought my groceries, and for two reasons: they had a broader selection than the Asian guy - and lower prices. But Safeway's owned by white guys. Damn.
