Photo: Google.com
“Gentrification is no big
deal.” More often than not, when the topic arises, this is the
response I hear from people (white and non-white) who move into urban
neighborhoods and gentrify them. This past summer, when I’d heard
that there was a movie about the
gentrification of Oakland (Blindspotting), I just about jumped out of my
skin. Since this
controversial topic had made it into mainstream theaters, it meant this view
that gentrification was somehow insignificant, wasn’t quite true. While
I’m from East Palo Alto (EPA), California, I identified with the gentrification
of Oakland, a city much larger in mass than my own, but similar in its
demographic make-up, its history of marginalization and its fight to not be
overshadowed by big tech companies such as Uber (in Oakland) or Amazon (in
EPA).
At one point in its history, EPA was
a predominantly black town, whose movement to incorporate, gained momentum in
the 1960’s and culminated in 1983. This summer, while doing my
family tree, I learned that my maternal grandparents met at Ravenswood High
School and my grandfather, Andrew Lane, was the first of three black families
to move into EPA. This means that my family’s roots to this city
predate the incorporation movement. While I kept this information to
myself during conversations, many people (both white and non-white, recent
gentrifiers and long-time residents alike) assured me: that (1)
“gentrification was inevitable”; that (2) the process of gentrification “wasn't
that bad”; and/or that (3) the gentrifying of my community was the fault of
black “homeowners for selling their homes.” While I wondered if
there was some merit to the third statement, these answers seemed
unsatisfactory.
This is because they were each predicated on a social problem
(gentrification) which had no point of origin, no ill-effects and/or a baseline
assumption that all black people in EPA who sold their homes (in the early
2000s) and moved out of the city, did so voluntarily,
(and certainly not due to other factors such as direct discrimination
via predatory lending). To put it another way, the answers seemed unsatisfactory because
they failed to identify the causes of gentrification, in a city where its
effects were noticeable. For example, there were Tesla charging stations
located across the parking lot from where Ravenswood High School once
stood. For me, people’s sentiments about the gentrification of East Palo
Alto, only brought about more questions. For example: What
does it mean for entire ethnic groups to be displaced or pushed out of cities
which they helped to build? What does it mean when privileged
groups within our rapidly gentrifying communities become dismissive of the
difficulties of the most vulnerable groups within the equation—or are we only
interested in embracing topics which bring us ease? My hope is that
we, as a changing community, are interested in addressing the harms that
gentrification can cause and not just uplifting how some aspect of a new
development project within our city might bring us some form of
happiness.
For this reason, I strayed away from the fallacies that tended to
surface when discussing this topic. I moved from the fallacies to the
evidence. And based on the evidence, it seems that in the
Bay Area, shrinking historically black communities (namely, EPA, Oakland and
San Francisco) are the price we pay for expanding technological advancement. But
it doesn’t have to be this way. Not only this, it is also my
position that if rapid gentrification is impacting the black
community in EPA, its only a matter of time before it starts displacing the
Latinx and Pacific Islander communities as well. Just recently, I'd read
about the eviction of a long-time Pacific Islander family from EPA (http://extras.mercurynews.com/housingsaga/),
who I protested on behalf of, just two years earlier! Moreover, this
pattern of displacement isn’t just happening in California, it’s happening all
over the United States.
Photo: Courtesy of Eileen Fuentes, NYC
Simply stated, I was looking for a
conversation which did not make people gentrifying the city saints who were deserving and
people being displaced from the city sinners who were undeserving. The
conversation is more nuanced than that. I was looking for balance. And
struggling to find it. Since I’ve mentioned a church metaphor, let me
just say that if you’re reading this post, and you’re a newer resident in an
urban community who has called the police on a Sunday morning, because the
worship music was too loud at the church down the block (https://mic.com/articles/126871/a-black-church-in-gentrifying-oakland-faces-a-3-529-fine-for-being-too-loud#.XBDAZxGJw),
sorry to break it to you, but you might be a gentrifier.
With all of my questions, I was sure that
there was another way to approach discussing gentrification. And for me, Blindspotting offered
some guidance. What we, in my experience, are missing in the
conversation around gentrification, is the unapologetic way in which we create
a space for tension which allows people to wrestle with what
is happening to their communities. Only then can we find ways to engage in
meaningful conversations which point us toward more equitable solutions. But
dismissing the experiences of those most negatively impacted by the expansion
of big tech and their subsequent displacement, won't do it for us.
In an era where there’s no shortage of political divisions which
further separate the haves and the have nots, I submit that we can think of
different ways to run our communities which don’t demonstrate a “Make the Neighborhood
[insert name of gentrifying neighborhood] Great Again” mantra. This mantra/mindset assumes that nothing which
exists in the neighborhood pre-gentrification, make it great (this includes the
people). And that the only way to measure greatness or progress
within a city is by how many white people OR upper class people have moved into the
community. Also, if you're a long-time resident and decide to set up
shop on the sidewalk and sell water to a white jogger you see running through
your neighborhood, and #PermitPatty reports you to the police for not having the proper
paperwork, (https://abc7news.com/society/video-woman-calling-cops-on-8-year-old-for-selling-water-near-at-t-park-goes-viral/3648576/) you might want to switch to a lemonade
stand. Apparently, lemonade is less of a threatening drink than water,
and selling it won’t result in your eventual displacement from the
neighborhood.
Blindspotting is
prophetic, in that it shows us what can boil over, if we keep sweeping the
topic of gentrification under the rug. If we
aren’t able to discuss the tension in community, in real time, with real people
(those threatened with displacement and those new to the neighborhood), where
else can we do it? Where do we go to discuss these matters? Where
do we sit with the tension?
Oakland is the birthplace of the
Black Panther Party and WIC programs. EPA is the home of Nairobi Day
School and College and a community having been redlined into
existence, yet seeking to govern itself so much so that the case went
to the Supreme Court (file:///Users/kyra/Downloads/Stanford_Daily_19830624_0001.pdf). Yet
many of the children of these generations are being pushed out of town. This
is not to say that communities should only have low-income people who reside in
them. However, it is to say that both cities (Oakland and EPA) are home
to marginalized groups within our society, and as these cities grow, we cannot
forget this fact. If we do, shame on us. The
movie Blindspotting, in addition to challenging us to sit with the
tension of what gentrification means to us individually, I offer that it also
urges us to pull up our chairs, close down our computers, and figure
out what we are going to do about it, collectively.
#BlindspottingMovie
#BayAreaBlindspotting #Amazon #Uber #Oakland #EastPaloAlto #Gentrification
