Pros and Cons of Gentrification
I am posting two articles that relate to our discussion about gentrification, and provide some additional perspectives:
1. http://nymag.com/news/features/gentrification-2014-2/index1.html
2. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/02/spike-lee-amazing-rant-against-gentrification.html
To summarize: in response to the first article I posted, this guy went on a rant against gentrification. My favorite part is when he equated Whites moving into Harlem to Columbus and the Europeans settling America.
Thanks, Emily,
You are getting us ready for our week on gentrification later in the semester! Here’s a link that explores Spike Lee’s argument in detail.
http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-spike-lee-hyper-gentrification.html
While I can appreciate Spike’s feelings of resentment and disdain towards those who trivialize established cultural norms, I felt that his condemnation of gentrification was, in this instance, somewhat misdirected. Rather than focusing on the various political and economic inequalities that give rise to gentrification, he concentrates his tirade on denouncing white migrants, as if the phenomenon was a direct result of their individual malicious desires to displace blacks.
On the other hand, there is a significant overlap between political and economic inequalities and racial inequalities in our country. Hard to talk about them separately when inequality is so much about the legacy of slavery and oppression of racialized others.
A different criticism is that he himself has played a role in gentrifying Fort Greene by flipping some properties.
I sympathize with Spike’s view but I think he is being too extreme in his view of gentrification. Clearly the topic is a hotbed for confrontational episodes like the spike lee rant. Spike seemed to have the same issues with gentrification that I have, it is not alright to move into a neighborhood and expect everything to change for and around you. It is not alright to displace members of a community and it is not alright to close down shops to open a boutique store. It is not okay to build up schools like St.Anne and make it a private school unattainable to the poorer members of the community. I suppose the sentiment can be described: the success of a few does not atone for the suffering of many.
I understand his general feelings towards white gentrifiers as it was primarily the white college educated demographic that was intentionally gentrifying various neighborhoods across NYC. It was these people who came with the intention of changing. And so change did come. The pros of gentrification – better schools, job opportunities, public spaces – are meaningless if the original members of the neighborhood do not benefit from the change. This meaningless/selfish/uneducated gentrification is the gentrification Spike is against, I believe.
Gentrification is one proven way to raise a neighborhood and its inhabitants out of poverty, the goal then should be to limit its costs culturally and economically on a neighborhood. Gentrification is not inherently bad, but when it’s done Willy-nilly the affects Spike talked about will invariably happen.