One of the main inferences I made when reading Fullilove’s descriptions of the devastation urban renewal caused within the African American community, was that blacks are in a constant cycle of coping with PTSD. PTSD reverberates through generations, as parents display behavior that affects kids, and so forth. And given that blacks as a group have gone from being first brutally captured and enslaved, to discriminated against, beaten, and stigmatized, with little or no rights and the oases of community they created destroyed by developers under the guise of helpful urban renewal, it is little wonder blacks have demonstrated slow social mobility growth. Psychologically damaging events occur generation after generation within the black community.

I agree wholeheartedly that urban renewal was devastating—the only possible argument I can think of in its favor is that of fire safety, because the ugly boxy cement buildings put up in place are perhaps less of a fire trap then the haphazard wooden ones that made up twisted streets full of history and stories—however the current issue that comes to mind is gentrification. Is gentrification just a slower form of urban renewal? The developer’s bulldozers replaced by the yuppies whole foods? Its almost as if, when anything is deemed to “bad,” too much of a slum it will be destroyed by developers or government programs, whereas if it becomes to “good,” the yuppies will come like sharks smelling blood in water. Fullilove seems to imply there is some ghetto “sweetspot,” a mix between edginess and community love, which would be the ideal place for African American renewal and revitalization. I would ask, how has gentrification root shocked your neighborhood?

-Jesse Geisler