Quote:
Originally Posted by Encolpius
Thought I'd share a link to a short video produced by Ifanyi Bell about the displacement of black communities from N and NE Portland. It's inspired by an essay Bell wrote for Oregon Humanities magazine, which addresses the same subject from a more personal and individual perspective. Bell doesn't use the word 'gentrification', but it's worth noting here that Portland was recently deemed by Governing magazine to have gentrified more rapidly in this century than any other major city in the country.
[As a housekeeping matter, I'd suggest a moderator merge this thread with this one.] |
The gentrification debate necessarily occurs in a broader kind of cognitive dissonance. That is, we are taught that all people are equal, that integration is good, that exclusion is wrong. The Ifyani Bell video, on the other hand, explicitly states that "community" trumps those broader ideals, that feeling comfortable with people like yourself matters more than a society that memorializes equality and justice as abstract ideals. You can see how this becomes a briar patch. Discrimination was wrong when it forced blacks into certain areas. It's still wrong when it's used as a justification to preserve an area's racial demographics.
The Portland Mercury recently ran an article on this subject, which was about the the $20 million PDC hoped to ameliorate the problem of gentrification (or perhaps buy off the complainers).
http://www.portlandmercury.com/portland/a-leap-of-faith/Content?oid=15109659. The marketplace, however, is calling the shots here. It's doing similar things elsewhere, from Harlem to Brooklyn to Adams Morgan to Roxbury to Baldwin Hills. Is it possible to say that old injustices require new injustices? Not if we value the rule of law over the rule of feeling comfortable with people like yourself.
As a liberal, I believe in a color-blind social democracy. That is, we need much greater income redistribution. We need more social mobility, equal education access, a tightly woven safety net, and a society that values everyone regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation, or place of birth. I want these things not because I feel guilty about our checkered history but because it's the only way to make a decent society that is not mesmerized by old prejudices and traditions. I want black people especially to get ahead, to make a decent income, to be treated with dignity by society at large and by the police in particular. But there is simply no way to legally attack gentrification without damaging basic freedom and justice. If law rather than feelings are to define our society, we have to behave as if these are the facts of our nationhood, not just lofty ideals we quickly forget when we start to feel uncomfortable.
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