a friend recently sent me an article form the Washington City Paper about black gentrification and asked me what i thought. here i go:
1. first off, the way i see it a black gentrifier is of similar value to a black racist. i do not believe that black people can be racist. racism is a system of material based oppression that situates itself on the notion of race. so in order to be a true racist you must have the power to subjugate. you must be able to marginalize an entire population of people (the way “whites” have done historically to “blacks” in the US and around the world”). because black people are not able to do this (subjugate/marginalize) other races then they cannot be racist. black people can hold prejudices against people of other races, they can harbor self-hate reflective of centuries of negative interactions with other races, but they cannot themselves be racists. calling a black person racist is blaming the victim- like saying a female victim of rape was asking for it because she wore skimpy clothes. so i think that premise of the article is faulty.
2. however, i like that this article spoke with mr. ngongang. he is more representative of what the so-called black gentrifier should be: he did not move into the neighborhood to live in a bubble and recognizes that he has a social responsibility as a resident of the community to the little black boys around the way. especially as it comes up that the black youth in the neighborhood know exactly what is going on. i also like mr. wallace’s story of renovating a family home and his return to dc after college. both moving stories.
3.the author mentioned quite a few times that the stories of black gentrifiers are never told and that news reports are too hasty to focus on “whiteness” where gentrification is concerned. this makes me laugh. it sounds like the bougie black people just dying to be included. “there are black people who like classical music and coffee shops!” is what that sounds like.
4. excerpt: “Soon enough, “D.C. will be majority rich people,” Ngongang says. “The statistics of D.C. will match what corporate America looks like.” It stings for a minute, because I’m not quite sure which side of that statistical warning I want to identify with.”
Thought: Isn’t corporate America an old white boy’s club?
Thought: Isn’t corporate America an old white boy’s club?
5. there is a film, Flag Wars , which i have blogged about before that can illustrate much clearer than i why race matters when it comes to gentrification (author implies this is a class problem more than anything else) and why black gentrifiers are essentially of no consequence.
Zahra Gordon 
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