Do Generalizations About Harlem Hold for Brooklyn Nabes?
It was hard to read this weekend’s NY Times story about the changing demographics in Harlem without considering the extent to which the article applied to some of the predominantly black neighborhoods in Brooklyn that have been attracting waves of white newcomers in recent years: In the past few years, the Village of Harlem, as…
It was hard to read this weekend’s NY Times story about the changing demographics in Harlem without considering the extent to which the article applied to some of the predominantly black neighborhoods in Brooklyn that have been attracting waves of white newcomers in recent years:
In the past few years, the Village of Harlem, as older residents still call it, has become a 21st-century laboratory for integration. Class and money and race are at the center of the changes in the neighborhood. Lured by stately century-old brownstones and relatively modest rents, new faces are moving in and making older residents feel that they are being pushed out. There have been protests, and anger directed as much at the idea of the newcomers as at them personally.
While this particular story focused on what it felt like for the white, middle-class arrivistes trying to make a home in a place that has been predominantly black for decades, it also touched on an aspect of gentrification that often gets overlooked— Middle-class black gentrification— as well as differing attitudes depending on generation. Older blacks didn’t have any choice but to live in a black neighborhood, said Mark Thomas, a 29-year-old African American man who recently moved from Atlanta to Strivers’ Row. So they get nervous when a white person wants to move in. But if you talk to young African-Americans, they want the neighborhood they live in to be integrated. Do you think that’s a fair generalization to make about neighborhoods like Clinton Hill and Bed Stuy?
In an Evolving Harlem, Newcomers Try to Fit In [NY Times]
Photo by rfullerrd
East New York is correct. He’s hit that right on the head.
East New York. Good points on all. I agree that a level of communication is necessary to happy integration of neighborhoods. In some places for some reasons this seems to happen (Clinton Hill say) more successfully than in others.
Bed-Stuy and Crown Heights (and Harlem to a lesser extent) are filled with middle class black homeowners who are not being displaced and do quite well with their homes. You guys don’t know about them because most of them (unlike me) don’t post on Brownstoner. It’s ridiculous to say (as that black guy from Atlanta said in the Times), that these folks “get nervous” when white people move in. Several of my neighbors (for example, an older lady whose late husband was a Tuskeegee airman) are older middle class blacks who have welcomed white newcomers on our block. Mostly, they want to see what you are about on an individual basis. I think problems occur when white folks move in and are reluctant to engage their new neighbors on a personal basis. You don’t need to become best friends or anything, but walking about avoiding eye contact won’t cut it, nor will the attitude that you’ve arrived in “the ghetto.” Despite whatever problems exist, I can assure you that middle class blacks don’t think of their community in this way.
I have lived in Hill for 50 years,growing up my block was mostly Caribbean and Italian and everyone knew each other. Today I don’t see less diversity with more white people moving in everyday–where’s the diversity in that. Clinton Hill has definitely lost it’s charm, and it is way too over populated.
Armchair–I am white but the diversity I was talking about was not just a black/white thing. Clinton Hill is truly multicultural neighborhood and in the playground my daughter plays with children who are indian and chinese etc etc as well as black and white. I only mentioned the older african american population because they are the oldtimers and as such they are the ones most threatened by newcomers.
Totally reductionist statement and not helpful.
“when white people talk about “diversity” its only black and white diversity, not cultural etc…”
armchairwarrior’s statement makes no sense- what would diversity be referring to if not the cultural, economic, religious etc. differences that exist? Skin color- add that in, but that’s just one aspect of “diversity.”
Perhaps he meant that white people only consider differences between Black and White Americans, neglecting Hispanic, Asian, etc?
using the term “suburbanization” is incorrect when speaking of any part of NYC. Its a generic dumb term much like calling everyone under 30 a “hipster”. It shows a lack of understanding about the United States and a disconnect from reality.
also the few times I have eaten in Harlem the restaurants were filled with upper middle class black people. Its affordable compared to the rest of Manhattan and a nice area with great buildings.
“when white people talk about ‘diversity'”
Well forgive me for thinking this was some blanket statement.
George Will wrote this the other day: “We do, unfortunately, live, as Edmund Burke lamented, in an age of “economists and calculators” who are eager to reduce all things to the dust of numeracy, neglecting
what Burke called “the decent drapery of life.” In this supposedly rational and scientific age, the thirst for simple metrics seduces people into a preoccupation with things that lend themselves to quantification.
Selfconsciously “modern” people have an urge to reduce assessments of their lives to things that can be presented in tables, charts and graphs personal and national economic statistics. This sharpens their minds by narrowing them. Such people might as well measure out their lives in coffee spoons.”
Seems very relevant to the discussion .The rest of te column is about how we define the words “are we better off”
The link is here if anyone is interested: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/05/AR2008090502974.html