by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Vast changes in urban demographics don’t just “happen” – people in power seeking profits cause them to occur. Just as government, developers and banks created the white suburbs and Black inner cities, these same forces are engineering the gentrification and whitening of New York and other major cities. “Black, Latino and immigrant groups are steadily being pushed to suburbs,” some of which “are now themselves ghettoes.
Freedom Rider A Whiter New York City
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
“There is a plan, well underway, to make New York City livable for moneyed white people only.”
Census reports have confirmed what anyone with powers of comprehension have witnessed with their own eyes. In New York City, neighborhoods which had majority populations of color for decades are gaining white residents and losing their black and Latino populations. Central Harlem, which had no white population to speak of, is now 9% white. Brooklyn communities such as Fort Greene and Prospect Heights have lost black population in double digits. These demographic changes have not occurred by happenstance, but instead are direct the result of government policy that works hand in hand with the dictates of finance capital.
For decades, residents of these communities have lived in a state of fearful anticipation. While individuals may not know the details of the interactions between City Hall and big developers, they know that ultimately the system does not work on their behalf. “White people will take over Harlem again,” has been a rallying cry and conversation topic for years, even when that community was allowed to disintegrate until it had as many vacant lots and derelict buildings as habitable spaces.
When those vacant lots were suddenly filled with new construction, and buildings that were mere shells were rehabilitated into luxury housing, those words, which were long dismissed as idle conspiracy theorizing, were revealed to be all too true. There is a plan, well underway, to make New York City livable for moneyed white people only.
“These demographic changes are direct the result of government policy that works hand in hand with the dictates of finance capital.”
The real estate bubble existed and continued for many years for the simple reason that it made a lot of people a lot of money. The New Yorkers who suffered for years with high crime and substandard government services were not among those who profited. Their needs were never important, and when their neighborhoods suddenly became places where other people could profit, they became expendable and were judged unfit to stay where they were.
When that ugly truth is revealed, government policies that are seemingly inexplicable make perfect sense. The stop and frisk policy which turns every black or Latino New Yorker into a target for police abuse, becomes logical when it is clear that official policy is to drive these men and their families away. The destruction of the public school system through privatization makes sense. The new school system is not meant to serve poor people of color anyway. Mayor Bloomberg’s decision to appoint as school’s chancellor a publishing executive with no experience in education, also makes sense when seen through this lens.
The story of New York is the story of population change. New York’s position as a beacon for immigrant groups means that the city is constantly being remade. New York has several Chinatowns and Mexicans are supplanting Dominicans and Puerto Ricans in many Spanish speaking neighborhoods. Black communities may be American or Caribbean. Change is a constant, but in recent years those change have taken place because of decisions made from above.
The power brokers have decided who will stay and who will go. Luxury housing is constructed with the help of tax abatements for developers, a process which simultaneously deprives the public of needed revenue, and displaces long term residents.
Not only is housing being built for well heeled newcomers, but the system of rent protections in existence since World War II have been severely weakened. Regulations now disappear when rents hit the magic number of $2,000 per month. Eventually there will be no more rent regulated apartments in New York, and the completion of the “luxury product,” as Bloomberg calls the city, will be complete.
“When their neighborhoods suddenly became places where other people could profit, they became expendable.”
Black, Latino and immigrant groups are steadily being pushed to suburbs. Suburbs were once the path to upward mobility, a government creation mean to benefit white people. Some of those cities and towns are now themselves ghettoes, meant to hold the masses pushed out of the city because of government and moneyed interests working hand in hand.
The same people who have an inside track with local and state government obviously have an inside track with elected officials as well. Those officials dare not buck a system that decrees who does and who doesn’t get needed campaign dollars. The cost of a New York state gubernatorial victory is at least $25 million. The billionaire mayor of the city has upped the ante and pushed away all opponents with his bottomless pit of campaign cash.
The weaknesses of local politics are evident in these accelerating trends. The ongoing great recession has driven away those jobs in government that provided secure employment to unskilled people. Laying off public employees is seen as a sign of political gravitas and acumen, but it means that those whose position is already tenuous, are one step closer to being driven out.
New York City was always a place where low and middle income people resided with some degree of stability. It was a city that always had a large amount of rental housing and jobs for working class people. Now none of these things are true, and the unmaking of the entire country by ruling class dictates is on view for all to see.
Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgandaReport.com.
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