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Yeah, I'm familiar with the Boyle Heights activist in East LA. I support them based off principle. But, I'm talking about African-Americans in Houston.
And even still their case in LA isn't as strong as ours in Houston. LA wasn't built off the chattel slave labor of Hispanics, like Houston was of African Americans. There aren't as many Mexican communities literally founded and built from the ground up by Mexican immigrants in LA as there are by the African-American freedmen in the Houston area.
The racial scars in LA with mexicans aren't anywhere near as deep as they are with AAs in Houston. The zoot suit riots can't compare to the Camp Logan riots or even the TSU riots or the Carl Hampton police execution. Though racist whites and white supremacy were the cause all of them.
The ugly legacy of racism in no way justifies government anti-intervention in gentrification by private market actors. The government should remain agnostic as to the phenomenon. No ethnicity or cultural group can lay claim to a particular portion of any city on a permanent basis regardless of its history of suffering, oppression and victimization. Your support of the Boyle Heights activists is condemnable. My state of privilege in no way invalidates the correctness of my position.
You want to discuss economic measures to help AAs in Houston stay in their historic neighborhoods, fine. But those measures should not consider ethnicity nor family location legacy in any form or fashion.
The ugly legacy of racism in no way justifies government anti-intervention in gentrification by private market actors. The government should remain agnostic as to the phenomenon. No ethnicity or cultural group can lay claim to a particular portion of any city on a permanent basis regardless of its history of suffering, oppression and victimization. Your support of the Boyle Heights activists is condemnable. My state of privilege in no way invalidates the correctness of my position.
You want to discuss economic measures to help AAs in Houston stay in their historic neighborhoods, fine. But those measures should not consider ethnicity nor family location legacy in any form or fashion.
Gentrification is a part of the ugly legacy of racism. Think about it--there have been hundreds of years of displacement of people of color in the US, and you want to say that now, with gentrification, it's not related?
Gentrification is a part of the ugly legacy of racism. Think about it--there have been hundreds of years of displacement of people of color in the US, and you want to say that now, with gentrification, it's not related?
The concentration of people of color and sexual orientation in particular neighborhoods and their lack of financial means (more for people of color) is directly related to racism and homophobia and related history in this country. Did this set the stage for these communities to be vulnerable to gentrification today? Sure. Does this mean that certain ethnic or cultural groups should be given some sort of particular preference to live in certain areas that might be subject to real estate price increases? Absolutely not. There is no justification for that if we're going to abide by free markets and 1960s-era civil rights legislation (not to mention the Constitution). Those who claim otherwise are othering themselves to a position of rightful exclusion from policy discussion.
South Africa, despite gaining independence from Britain later, and being under an apartheid system all the way until the 90s has consistently had a stronger economy and higher standard of living than Nigeria.
Therefore colonialism and apartheid are clearly better for Africa and Nigeria. The benefits are obvious- Higher GDP per captia, modernized infrastructure, less abject poverty, higher life expectancy, less human rights violations etc etc. After all you don't see many SAs, black or white, desperate to migrate to the west like Nigerians are. Clearly what they have works.
Nigerians in the delta need to stop fighting Shell corporation from "exploiting"...err I mean *utilizing* their resources and embrace global unregulated free market captialism.
Nigerians need to completely delegitimatize the use of it's indigenous languages in schools, higher education, and government, as they serve no purpose in the modern world with English being the lingua franca and the language that business, academia, global politics, and media runs on. Ban the use of the broken english you call 'pidgin' in public. The economic benefits are more important than your feeble symbolic attachment to your indigenous culture. Western culture works. African culture doesn't. Period.
In fact you should to invite these good ol gentrifying white americans to your home country and let them use their weaponized disposable income to build their million sqaure foot tourist haven on top of your grandparents village. As for the locals- Send them to a shanty town on the outskirts of lagos.
Cost of business right?
Honestly I know your joking/trolling but 90% of what your saying is right. Because the Brits had a vested interest in South Africa they invested significantly more into the infrastructure which benefited the South Africans today when compared to Nigeria. It's not really though because the Brits stayed longer but it's because their colonizations where fundamentally different. South Africa is far south enough to be "temperate, so Europeans didn't die from tropical diseases on contact, hence the Brits tried to invest into America part 2 essentially in SA, this was also proven by the Dutch who like to move generally to the places they colonize enmasse compared to some of the other ethnicity.
Now Apartheid didn't lead to infrastructure benefits,and gentrification is the exact opposite of apartheid fundamentally. Also on Human rights violations- SA and Nigeria are pretty bad, i'm not sure whcih one is quantifiable worse but your point still stands. SA's especially White SA's have left their lands in droves significantly more in percentage than Nigerians and maybe even more in sheer population, this is with SA being 1/4-1/5 of the population of Nigeria, so you were completely wrong on SA's moving to the west.
Nigerians in the delta, if their smart, should lay down their weapons and instead politically punish their leaders for being corrupt. Shell is in dozens of countries but their only"exploiting" Nigeria? B.S the corruption is just so palpable it looks like a good company in my eyes (My mother worked for Shell for over a dozen years) is taking the blame for Leaders being corrupt to look the other way. Shell is in America you don't see Americans complaining about their corrupt practices, Shell essentially created the middle class/upper middle class in the Niger Delta region, the politicians are just too greedy to use the money to benefit the local economy more than the occasional road and school. Chasing Shell away through violence is useless if a Nigerian company can't properly manage the infrastructure they have in place or improve on it, and destroying pipelines and ravaging the local ecosystem is just my fellow Nigerians promoting idiocy.
Africa has no shared culture/ outside of the modern black experience. Their are several aspects of various Nigerian cultures that work and should be improved upon, and Rwanda has the same. Western culture is generally a good thing, I think Democracy is generally a great idea and concept, although some dictatorships like China and Rwanda are also working well, I generally believe their should be a fusion of cultures. But it should be African enough to still attract tourists, from Architecture to political systems their should be certain elements kept, others erased. For example the ethnic group that kills twins in the middle belt and the other ethnic group that could call a baby a witch and abandon it should be culturally cleansed of those practices, the ethnic groups that put on beautiful Yam festivals as well as the one that revers twins so much that they have a genetic propensity to give out more twins per capita than any other large ethnicity (Ironically also in Nigeria) should stay.
On your pidgin comment you act like pidgin is taught in schools or it's considered a cultural staple of Nigeria, while it's prevalent in the street/ movies and entertainment no one with any credibility teaches a school in pidgin, it's not an official language and 90% of it's speakers know how to speak proper Nigerian English and do so. Also the indigenous languages are already ignored and disappearing only the major ones are staying, and while it's a bit sad, to connect Nigeria the lingua franca is English and we have no time for different regions to be speaking different languages en-masse as Nigeria modernizes we don't want a Canada situation developing where one part of the country is essentially mired in tribalism (The Quebecois of Canada is basically tribalism but since it's a "modern" country they don't use that term). It's either English dominates all aspect of social and political life like it's continuing to do or Nigeria splits up into at least 3 countries, simple as that. Regional languages can and should stay as that in itself will bolster the tourism industry to have the country be culturally unique across the board, but their still needs to be a unified ethos for the country to last. Now pidgin shouldn't be banned in public use, but BBC pidgin should, pidgin is too close to English with occasional slang compared to say Jamaican Patois that written pidgin should really just be proper English with borrowed terms from other languages, instead of the "attempt" that BBC calls Pidgin English. For example no one writes in a Boston or London accent for the news so why would ANYONE with any sense think the right idea was to write in Pidgin. The only reason it should stay is because it employs people in Lagos, Nigeria.
Actually Nigeria would love to have tons of white gentrifying Americans as it would embolden the tourism industry and reduce some of the stigma of Africans in American culture, while I want all Americans regardless of race to travel to Nigeria or maybe Ghana at least once. Nigeria is in dire need of some economic diversification and the argument that tourists in anyway are bad for Nigeria is preposterous. Sure people like to point out oh, look at the Bahamas and how the wealthy tourists come in and the workers are exploited labor, but how would the Bahamas look without any tourism from the wealthy westerners? Their would be less of a gap between the rich and poor but that's because the whole populace would be even poorer than it currently is...
If tourists wanted to come and raid my grandpa's Village the architecture there is generally shoddy except until oil money improved the area as many middle class Nigerians have origins there. As long as it isn't the House that my Grandpa is buried in or other people's relatives where buried, their is tons of space in the Village they could build and entire tourist center, using the architecture of the original village and improving on it stylistically, refurbish the whole village and employ them so they don't have to beg anymore or sell food on the highway, maybe the majority of kids could get proper clothing instead of running around half-naked. Then with the tourist money coming in, the oil money is less important and the corrupt politicians could easily be routed out instead of controlling everything through oil...
Also the outskirts of Lagos are starting to look more like America, generally better infrastructure and road development and more planned communities, the slums are growing but their nicer than the central slums generally, and the way they absorb villages is actually pretty nice in development, Lower density as well. Which would be generally a bad thing if Central Lagos wasn't ridiculously dense.
Gentrification is a good thing, Prince George's County is a mecca of black excellence because of Gentrification not despite it, if D.C blacks hadn't left the city and made a good name for themselves in Maryland we could have had a Harlem in D.C surrounded by Brownsvilles and South Bronxes. So a neighborhood while urban and probably beautiful compared to suburbia in the grand scheme of things an entire county is better. It's not like PGC is all roses either like I said the architecture can't compare to D.C, the commute times are worse and their is still crime and ghettos 10 murders per 100,000 isn't even comparable to it's fellow suburban counties but overall the people are in a much better situation, and were able to build a shining example to the nation of what black people can do with the proper resources. Their's a reason that all the urban hoods that used to be filled with ethnic whites disappeared these guys moved out to the burbs, hit the economic jackpot and integrated into greater American society. Now I'm a product of an Ijaw and Yoruba person so maybe i've been brainwashed to think cultural integration is good for America, because my parents are from two very different ethnicities.
I'm telling you if Baltimore and Saint Louis today got completely gentrified and their population moved out to the suburbs and integrated with the suburban whites/exurban whites whether in starter home neighborhoods or apartment complexes and eventually middle class America, America would be better than the situation now where beautiful historic black neighborhoods are unlivable, and have no chance of getting real investment and changing.
Gentrification is a part of the ugly legacy of racism. Think about it--there have been hundreds of years of displacement of people of color in the US, and you want to say that now, with gentrification, it's not related?
Because it's not. Any "racial strife" that comes with modern gentrification is pure happenstance. Things were much more deliberate in the past.
On top of that, the types of people who would have been the racists of the past aren't the types of people that would even think about moving into the central city to begin with.
I'd be interested in reading these papers, particularly if they have sections dealing with what you are talking about. Unfortunately I don't have access to them.
The CUNY link says that people have harder times finding affordable housing in New York City, which is already a much more expensive housing market than Houston. However gentrification can be harder in Houston because we don't have the transportation system NYC has. The way Houston should deal with gentrification is increasing public transportation in the areas between 610 and Beltway 8, especially in the Sunnyside, Acres Homes, and North Forest areas. The METRO bond had passed, so there is an opportunity to do this.
Re: the NYT link: "What happens in a scenario like this one is that the poor are not simply competing with wealthier newcomers for limited housing; the poor are competing with one another." - Houston is less dense and in Acres Homes and Sunnyside there are still plenty of empty lots for new housing.
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The reality is that neighborhoods and communities do change, and structural inefficiencies and problems emerge if we don't allow central Houston to become wealthier and better connected; there is a reason why central Paris is expensive and sought after. We should encourage wealthier people to move into Houston, and the natural consequences of higher taxes and lower income rented housing being removed (due to the sellers selling it) need to be accepted by the African-American community.
However we need to attach conditions to gentrification; acknowledge that many lower income African Americans will, as a consequence, have to move to other neighborhoods, but give them the infrastructure they need to succeed in the outerlying neighborhoods, and put pressure on politicians and the wealthy to add the infrastructure. If more African-Americans come to North Forest, for example, we need more bus lines and more rail. If more African-Americans come to the area south of Sunnyside and north of Beltway 8, we need more development there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JYHTOWN
There are many more credible scholars that conclude that gentrification is a key factor in creating homelessness. What race are the vast majority of homeless people in Houston?
The concentration of people of color and sexual orientation in particular neighborhoods and their lack of financial means (more for people of color) is directly related to racism and homophobia and related history in this country. Did this set the stage for these communities to be vulnerable to gentrification today? Sure. Does this mean that certain ethnic or cultural groups should be given some sort of particular preference to live in certain areas that might be subject to real estate price increases? Absolutely not. There is no justification for that if we're going to abide by free markets and 1960s-era civil rights legislation (not to mention the Constitution). Those who claim otherwise are othering themselves to a position of rightful exclusion from policy discussion.
Because of the legacy of racism, we are still advantaged by our ethnic status. It seems like you've conceded this. But if that's the case, then isn't gentrification itself an instance of "certain ethnic or cultural groups" being "given some sort of particular preference to live in certain areas"? Isn't gentrification an instance of white people in particular being given this preference? If it's not, what I am I missing?
Because of the legacy of racism, we are still advantaged by our ethnic status. It seems like you've conceded this. But if that's the case, then isn't gentrification itself an instance of "certain ethnic or cultural groups" being "given some sort of particular preference to live in certain areas"? Isn't gentrification an instance of white people in particular being given this preference? If it's not, what I am I missing?
There's no "concession" - I was always fully in agreement that the conditions for gentrification in neighborhoods of color stems in part from the legacy of legislated racism (as well as informal racism and xenophobia). You're the one who seemed to think that I denied this, when I never did.
Gentrification, as a generic phenomenon, affects all sort of neighborhoods of all ethnicities and even most income levels - the Houston neighborhood that I grew up in, which was Anglo upper middle class in my early youth, has become very much an upper income neighborhood that my household cannot afford to move back to, at least without drastically sacrificing our nest eggs. We've already discussed the Heights. The economic status of the legacy populations in gentrifying areas may, or may not be, directly tied to the U.S. history of racial discrimination - there's no 1-to-1 correspondence.
Houston neighborhoods with long-standing African-American populations around the region face gentrification. Fulshear, which was a rural town dominated by lower and middle income Anglos and African Americans since the 1800s, is now priced for the affluent, and the rural AAs are priced out, and that community's rural AA heritage is disappearing. Redevelopment and gentrification of the Energy Corridor has recently resulted in the loss of older apartment complexes that allowed a working class AA population to live in the area for decades - those complexes have been torn down and those tenants have had to move to other areas.
Given the widespread nature of the gentrification phenomenon, how do you equate it with racial discrimination? Are you including Energy Corridor and Fulshear? I'm not denying that there's probably more than a few Anglos who are happy to see a decline in the AA population in these areas, just like there's many who would like to see low income Hispanics gone from Spring Branch. While such an attitude is certainly offensive and condemnable, is that alone some sort of reason to tie gentrification to discrimination generally? Of course not. To me, it's just another attempt to tarnish free market capitalism, which seems to be in vogue among wayward Americans these days.
I'd be interested in reading these papers, particularly if they have sections dealing with what you are talking about. Unfortunately I don't have access to them.
The CUNY link says that people have harder times finding affordable housing in New York City, which is already a much more expensive housing market than Houston. However gentrification can be harder in Houston because we don't have the transportation system NYC has. The way Houston should deal with gentrification is increasing public transportation in the areas between 610 and Beltway 8, especially in the Sunnyside, Acres Homes, and North Forest areas. The METRO bond had passed, so there is an opportunity to do this.
Re: the NYT link: "What happens in a scenario like this one is that the poor are not simply competing with wealthier newcomers for limited housing; the poor are competing with one another." - Houston is less dense and in Acres Homes and Sunnyside there are still plenty of empty lots for new housing.
---
The reality is that neighborhoods and communities do change, and structural inefficiencies and problems emerge if we don't allow central Houston to become wealthier and better connected; there is a reason why central Paris is expensive and sought after. We should encourage wealthier people to move into Houston, and the natural consequences of higher taxes and lower income rented housing being removed (due to the sellers selling it) need to be accepted by the African-American community.
However we need to attach conditions to gentrification; acknowledge that many lower income African Americans will, as a consequence, have to move to other neighborhoods, but give them the infrastructure they need to succeed in the outerlying neighborhoods, and put pressure on politicians and the wealthy to add the infrastructure. If more African-Americans come to North Forest, for example, we need more bus lines and more rail. If more African-Americans come to the area south of Sunnyside and north of Beltway 8, we need more development there.
It will NEVER be accepted by the African-American community. We were here before you and your people. We built this city under the harsh conditions of chattel slavery, not you.
And we the PEOPLE will continue to develop organically WITH and in our neighborhoods, not be replaced in them. Our lives and our fate will not be determined by entitled white dudes drunk off this bs concept of "free market capitalism" that their slave owning ancestors were.
Houston isn't Paris. Houston is Houston. If you want to live in a European city, then go back to your ancestral homeland, live there and gentrify one of the rural villages there or something, and leave us alone. Anything else is a declaration of war.
Besides if you people are so enterprising and productive then why can't you make your suburbs and outskirts where you're already the majority into highly sought after places to live so that you can attract all of these "wealthy people" who look like you to live among you in your neighborhoods?
It will NEVER be accepted by the African-American community. We were here before you and your people. We built this city under the harsh conditions of chattel slavery, not you.
And we the PEOPLE will continue to develop organically WITH and in our neighborhoods, not be replaced in them. Our lives and our fate will not be determined by entitled white dudes drunk off this bs concept of "free market capitalism" that their slave owning ancestors were.
Houston isn't Paris. Houston is Houston. If you want to live in a European city, then go back to your ancestral homeland, live there and gentrify one of the rural villages there or something, and leave us alone. Anything else is a declaration of war.
Besides if you people are so enterprising and productive then why can't you make your suburbs and outskirts where you're already the majority into highly sought after places to live so that you can attract all of these "wealthy people" who look like you to live among you in your neighborhoods?
That's quite some chest thumping there. The main reason AA neighborhoods get gentrified is that property there is less expensive, and well located, than other neighborhoods. Lots of the properties are in poor repair, and have owners willing to sell, especially if the owner was their deceased parent, with the heir living in a neighborhood they prefer - they don't want to move back to the old neighborhood, they worked too hard to get away from there. So, they sell the property to a developer, or someone else who is looking for reasonably priced property, and gentrification increases by another small increment.
No one is declaring war on you, they are just taking advantage of good economics. At least you have the coward Garnet Coleman forcing the Midtown TIRZ to lock up a bunch of property in his racist effort to keep white folks from living in the Third Ward.
The folks doing the gentrifying have little interest in living in the suburbs, regardless of how attractive they are. They want to be in town, near the athletic events, the Downtown and Montrose scenes, etc.
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