Honestly, no single issue has tormented my conscience more than the contentious nature of gentrification. Gentrification is a process. Contrary to common misinformation, gentrification is not a white or wealthy person moving into 912 Gates Avenue in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. It simply starts with this person, usually an artist, subjected to a life of semi-poverty and who's after the benefits of cheap rent. When that one person tells their friend about this “cheap, but cool and cultural” neighborhood they just moved into, their friend moves in. Then their friend’s friend. Then their friends, friends, rich friend moves in...
While I do believe that individuals migrating to certain neighborhoods have the right to live wherever they feel comfortable, and since I have long ago embraced my inner capitalist especially when it comes to neighborhood economic development and planning, I can’t help but cringe whenever these personal decisions become a gauge for developers on how ready a neighborhood is for whatever they determine “revitalization” to mean. It starts to get sticky when plans are drawn out by city planners, private developers, corporations, and even elected officials to plow through established communities without the involvement of the very people who helped to sustain these neighborhoods for decades in the first place.
The people who stayed are members of a community. Despite the implications of exclusive housing policies, the socio-economic phenomena of white flight, extreme poverty and lack of access to valuable resources, and a steady depletion of life chance, these communities of people managed to establish for themselves a common culture. They speak a common language, have elders who preserve the institutional memory of this community, and young people who wish to add to it through whatever medium their destiny forces them to choose. This to me is significant.
My concern with gentrification is the way, as a process, it starts with undermining what was already established thereby making it fairly easy for these new inhabitants to impose their will on people who call their neighborhoods not only home, but self.
I visited the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts's gentrification exhibit with this very thought process. Located in the Fort Green section of Brooklyn, MoCADA’s intentions were obvious: prepare for the public an exhibit showcasing the artistic community’s response to gentrification, make this art accessible, instrumentalize it for the purpose of community empowerment, make it art that is created by members of displaced communities, and make the subject matter one that is transparent by having experts come in discussing what gentrification means (both its definition and implications).
Advertisements for the event itself expressed open frustration about the economic, structural, and cultural changes taking place in their Brooklyn community. The pieces on display were ranged from passive aggressive and sarcastic, to openly angry. Some spoke of the "white washing" of formerly communities of color. One painting in particular was an advertisement for the exhibit. Called "Stinky Cheese", it poked fun at the pretension and disconnection found in bringing into poor neighborhoods things that poor people don't at all relate to, care about, or can't afford (like bringing into food poor communities gourmet shops when the majority of residents are on food stamps or where the rates of diet-related diseases are disproportionately high due to the overabundance of fast food, etc). It reaffirmed my concern about the cultural aspects of gentrification: it offends without empowering a community of people by refusing to work with the resources presently available. Instead, the tendency, whether intentional or not, is to wipe that resource out without bothering to assess its significance to people, places, and events.
