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Barack Obama Eased My White Guilt For White Flight |
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 by Marty Beckerman, March 28, 2008 |
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TAGS:
As a straight white guy with a
propensity for boozing, I feel qualified to observe that not only is everyone
(at least) a little bit gay; everyone is (more than) a little bit racist. It
doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, brown or tangerine; if you are a human
being, you hold a few conscious or subconscious prejudices. And you’re a little
bit gay.
Sen. Barack Obama’s speech on racial tension seems to have rescued his campaign from the liability of his radical pastor. He criticized whites for ignoring racial injustices such as our prison population and unequal public schools, but also hammered black leaders for their simmering resentments against Caucasians who have rejected bigotry for generations. It was a major break from conventional identity politics, and has received widespread praise as the most forthright commentary in decades, but a complete abandonment of America’s racial tensions might exceed our limited human capacity.
The speech came at an especially
meaningful time for me. Over the last ten months
Yes We Can Stop Gentrification? I’ve lived in a mostly black
neighborhood in Brooklyn, which has prompted a large degree of soul-searching.
Although I lived in Washington, D.C. for six years, I spent most of the
time in the “affluent” northwest quadrant. (Oh, there are so many fun words amongst
real estate professionals that substitute for illegal ones: “young
professionals,” “trendy,” “middle-class,” “lots of families,” “safe.”)
When I moved to New York, I only had
two days to find an apartment. Rents in “affluent” neighborhoods with numerous
“young professionals” are considerably higher than in “up-and-coming”
neighborhoods. Whereas I lived in a luxury building in D.C. with a gym, pool, doorman,
deck, chandeliered lobby and (most lavish of all) dishwasher, I was
suddenly—thanks to my desperate rush and journalist’s budget—in a
neighborhood where the only appetizing-looking restaurant is a McDonald’s, save
for a Mexican eatery that gave me a gastrointestinal holocaust.
The real estate agent assured me
that the neighborhood is “safe” and “middle-class,” but since I moved a few
people have been murdered around the block and numerous delis have been robbed
at gunpoint. Police sirens and car alarms blare throughout the night. Even the
graffiti is graffitied. Drug dealers sometimes hang out at the self-service laundry,
which might be okay if A) I hadn’t stopped smoking marijuana after college, and
B) the drug they’re selling were marijuana.
Although I have not been threatened
or mugged, I have notified my landlord that I am not renewing my lease. I will
soon move to either a “nice” part of Brooklyn or “Manhattan below Harlem,”
despite the exorbitant rents. Except here’s the thing: “nice” and “below
Harlem” are fancy ways of saying “white,” or at least “whiter.” I don’t like to admit this; it makes me feel dirty,
which is saying something.
Of course, I’m leaving because of the crime, and there’s nothing discriminatory about wanting to stay bullet-free. If the gangsters were white, I wouldn’t want to live around them either—and Little Italy is too touristy anyway.
But I can’t deny that part of my
motivation for leaving is that I feel like an outsider. It’s not that I feel
endangered walking down the street, or at least not most of the time, but I can
feel eyes staring at me in the grocery store and subway station. I frequently
remind myself that it’s a matter of class instead of race: poor whites are just
as likely to commit crime as poor blacks, and it’s not like anybody wants to be poor. And it’s really not that bad here—a little “shady” (yet another word)
but hardly an urban war zone, as Hollywood would have us believe. I play Martin
Luther King, Jr. quotes inside my brain, trying to reassure myself that it’s
important—for the good of my character and my country—to challenge my comfort zone. This
is exactly what Obama urged last week.
When I first moved here I hoped
that I would make a ton of friends, understand another culture and transcend
the social barriers that have segregated our country long after the demise of
Jim Crow. Unfortunately I haven’t gotten to know anyone, and have felt
increasingly isolated. I could have tried harder, I suppose, but there’s an
awkward cultural gulf between us. The neighbors are very nice people—they
always offer to help if I’m carrying too many groceries or packages, which I
would never expect of “affluent” snobs on the Upper West Side—but I can
sense the tension in the air.
The tension stems from this, as
some of the longtime residents have explained to me with a tone that is (usually)
kind and patient, but frustrated: just as “young professionals” tend to prefer
neighborhoods with other “young professionals,” the people who live in ethnic neighborhoods—and
mine is largely Caribbean—are very proud of their cultures, and don’t
always view Starbucks and luxury condos as signs of progress.
Often they view such things
as harbingers of skyrocketing rents and dissolution of their tight-knit
communities. I’m not the only “young professional” who has moved here recently,
and many longtime residents fear the cultural onslaught of gentrification. Some
believe there are positives, for example an influx of cash into local
businesses and (supposedly) more police protection.
However, they don’t necessarily
want their jerk chicken stands replaced with organic vegan restaurants and
sushi fusion; they don’t necessarily want their churches replaced with $1,000
per month fitness clubs; they don’t necessarily want their way of life replaced
with yoga-practicing,
smoothie-sipping, insufferable bourgeois bohemian freakiness, which has
happened over and over in this city. Just as “young professionals” don’t want
to live in a “certain kind” of neighborhood, we aren’t always welcome in the
first place. (Yesterday I heard one resident say to another as I walked by:
“more white people—not a good sign.”)
Segregation was one of the most
horrendous evils of our history, and Obama’s words are beautiful as usual. It
might be harder for us to embrace one another’s culture, however, than to simply ignore one another’s skin color. We
are all afraid of something and weak in some way—everyone gravitates
toward the familiar—but human nature isn’t always the problem; sometimes
it’s the limits of our nature.
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naftali
Could You Clarify Something, Please?
Is the neighborhood you are describing Black or is it Caribbean, primarily? I'm curious because in one paragraph you talked about Jim Crow, and the next is about Caribbeans. You're not lumping them together because of skin color, are you?
Cavanaugh
Using gay as a way to say bad...
...is totally breederville. ;)
Good writing... But why do poor neighborhoods of color resent white people moving in, and view them as harbingers of skyrocketing rents? Because it's true. The more white people live there, the more other, wealthier white people will feel that it's "safe" and "trendy" and has "lots of families," and the more they'll be willing to pay to rent in that neighborhood. Then rents do skyrocket, and the people who lived there before can't afford to live there anymore. It's not just blind whitey-hating or an aesthetic dislike of starbucks.
Cavanaugh
Naftali
A friend of mine who is a Black Bahamanian pointed out to me a couple of years ago that Black refers to skin color, but Black Caribbeans are not "African American." I put my foot in it but he was nice enough to forgive me. Sometimes these fine distinctions are lost on me.
naftali
Yo Cav
I think that's the antidote to racism, to look very closely so that you notice the fine distinctions. Which can be done by talking, eating together, joking about your differences (I think this is very important), playing music together. And just seeing clearly.
It's odd, but take your average racist, someone who doesn't like Blacks. They have to keep it abstract so that they actually don't see any Blacks. And if by chance they do, and they like the person, well then he or she is different from the rest.
One of those paradoxes, that in order to not see differences you have to see all the differences.
Cavanaugh
Yup. I couldn't have said it
Yup. I couldn't have said it better with five hundred pages of social science jargon. :)
zbird
about those sky-high rents....
It's more a question of simple economics and bad public policy than racism:
If average landlord in New York were able to develop property and make a profit without going through 4000 bureaucratic hoops (not to mention rent control), then self-interested landlords would develop more residential housing, supply would meet demand, and there'd be enough housing in New York without sky-high rents.
As things now stand, a huge proportion of housing is rent-controlled, which means landlords cannot remove existing tenants in order to upgrade their housing (i.e.: by adding more floors). And even in non-rent-controlled buildings, you have to go through so many levels of bureaucracy and face off against so many entrenched "preservationists," and development opponents that only large corporations building luxury condos can afford to build anything.
The result: a private good (housing) that physically could easily be increased (if only by building up) becomes unnaturally scarce. Suddenly finding housing becomes a zero-sum game, where if you find a house, someone else can't. Because housing is a zero sum game, the people in the game naturally compete against each other. Of course the poor always lose these types of games, and when the winners and losers can be divided among racial lines, all hell breaks loose.
The bottom line is no white person should feel guilty because he wants to live in NYC and can afford to put a roof over his head. The people who should feel guilty are the preservationists, the development opponents, the anti-traffic crowd, and various other NIMBY groups who stifle development of more housing.
--Z
Marty Beckerman
Cavanaugh -- "using gay as
Cavanaugh -- "using gay as a way to say bad" was completely ironic in context, but I suspect you picked up on that.
Naftali: The neighborhood is a mix -- Jamaicans, Haitians, and non-Caribbean "African-Americans."
DeathToAllCheerleader's Fan
Culture Clash
It really has a lot to do with the way people's around the world have been affected by White migratory movements, be it through imperialistic exploitation or sanctuary from their own conflicts abroad. But really, can you blame them?
May I ramble for a moment? I've never been quite good at collecting my information into worthwhile editions, but I hope you don't mind.
Before the 'white man' came to the Americas, there was a population of 125 million (estimated) Natives. Now there are, what? 25,000, maybe? Now, yes, I know that the term"Natives" is not the preferred nomenclature, but then again, what is these days? The Canadians call them First Nations, we call them Native Americans, and they call themselves by a myriad of names. Who's idea was this Political-Correct division anyway? If it was a way to NOT offend people, it's certainly reminding them why they are to be offended in the first place.
As for Africans (all-encompassing, those descended from "black" Africans), how many millions were displaced through the slave trades? Sadly, by comparison, the British colonies imported only a minuscule percentage of total slaves trafficked across the Atlantic. Brazil has the 2nd largest black population of any country in the world (Nigeria is the #1). The French and British colonies of Haiti and Jamaica, respectively, along with other Caribbean isles saw their own flow of Africans. Most of these slaves came from the West coast. Do you know how many ethnic groups of Africans there are in that region? Or how many their were before Europeans came along? It's a patchwork puzzle-quilt knitted by a blind woman missing a hand. So it's no wonder that all of these Africans were mixed so thoroughly. In some places their cultures survived, to some degree or another, but in many places it became a blend of something old and something new. Hence the distant tension you mentioned, Beck.
I live in the Southeastern United States, one of those places where the slave population was something to keep White men up at nights, either by fear of rioting slaves or in later years of emancipation and struggling equality. I've personally had only a few black friends, though my town of 40,000 has a sizable community. The "West Side" of town is a place that I, as a pizza delivery boy (go me!), am actually advised against delivering to after dark. Who advises this? The local police department. Not prohibited (that would be racist), but advised. What's sad about that is, though I am from the North side of town nearer some of the "middle-class" and "spatial residential" (there's one for you!) clusters and subdivisions, I would rather go to the West side than the run-down, underdeveloped East side where you're likely to see bands of barefoot white kids torturing small animals or beer-swilling, phlegm-hacking, balding white men beat their 8-month-pregnant wives.
But then. That's just me.
DeathToAllCheerleader's Fan
Typos
Do forgive the typos, our education system here is lacking. But then, that's perfectly alright so long as we can continue our war in Iraq, right?
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