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There is no such thing as affluent blacks. Ask Obama, any Clinton or the media.
Nevertheless, those "affluent" blacks don't want less affluent blacks in their neighborhoods either. What they do want is to have their neighborhoods while less affluent blacks live in "hoods".
Why use quotes? There are black doctors, lawyers, business owners and such. What would YOU call them "higher income people of color"? I'd even venture to say that the socioeconomic tier below can be considered "affluent". Social programs don't help them one iota, yet interestingly enough I don't hear them complaining about it.
And people want people of similar class living next to them. Nothing new. The more dollars a minority earned, the least likely they'd want to live with underclass people, blacks aren't an exception.
I guess if you want to self-segregate, that's fine, but it sounds kind of hypocritical to be against diversity when you also demand it. Personally speaking, if the whites are of similar income and otherwise decent people, what's the problem? It's not gentrification, where lower income people find themselves now inundated with higher income people. This is a case of affluent whites moving into a similarly affluent Black enclave.
Neighborhoods don't need protecting from anyone moving in and driving up prices, that's the BEST possible scenario. The worst is government insisting that upscale neighborhoods create low income housing because of the ridiculous notion that everyone should get to live wherever they want despite their income. Forced diversity is so insulting since it's basically saying SOME people can't keep their neighborhoods nice and need to move into someone elses, and hopefully learn how to live the right way...correct? Yes, that's how I read it.
I think the one thing most Americans agree on is that when you have more money you get to buy better stuff.
It's their right to not like it, but if they want to "blame" anyone, blame the (presemably) affluent black folks who sold it to affluent white folks and probably put the money they made on the sale towards buying another upscale house in BH, Santa Monica, or West LA.
I swear it seems that the media only cares about blacks in this country nowadays. Black this black that. I honestly sometimes feel like I am living in Nigeria and not in a country with only 13% black people. Not only is the media trying to promote so much propaganda about how wonderful they are but they stick em in just about every freaking commercial (print ads and TV), they remake movies with blacks as the main characters, they promote race-mixing, they treat blacks as victims but unfortunately they are the main ones committing homicides in this country but they hide that fact. Something fishy is going on and it is brainwashing everyone to think blacks are the most special people on this earth. What a joke.
Mexicans-Americans are nearly the same share of the population (11% for Mexicans vs 14% for Blacks) yet you don't anywhere near as much about Mexican-American issues/goals/accomplishments etc as the media constantly does for Blacks....No 5000 Hollywood movies about Mexicans or the "First Mexican" Basketball/Baseball/Soldier/CEO etc.....
And Asians?? Forget it....They are even less talked about than Mexicans/Hispanics.
No doubt Blacks are a very iconic and important race here in America, but the constant sucking up to them 24/7 by the media does annoy me a bit....You would think the whole US was only Black and White the way CNN and others act...
I'm responding to this post chiefly because it is a great example of how white people really do not understand most black folks mentality. I'm speaking from the perspective of an upper middle class black man who generally agrees with the black View Park/Baldwin Hills residents who don't want to see their neighborhood demographics change. I hope those that read this will not make a value judgment based upon what I say and will just accept it for what it is. As a disclaimer, I don't live in LA, never have, and probably never will.
What all the people saying that it is racist of them to not what to see their neighborhood turn from predominantly black to white don't understand is the whole concept of blackness and why its so important to black people. Blackness is a product of American history. Back in the day, and I'm talking the slave days, blacks were slaves (or former slaves) and whites were predominantly of British decent. In those days, to white people, blacks were lower than a white persons dog. After 250 years of this, black people as a group had some pretty low self esteem. That said, a culture developed alongside white culture that was rich and complex, although it was generally denigrated by whites. After the civil war, white people from all over Europe flooded the US and joined the already existing white culture (at least, the second generation did.) This caused the formerly British oriented white culture to become diversified and, in a sense, watered down. Meanwhile, black culture continued on as it always had, without a similar watering down effect. This phenomenon was magnified by segregation, which contrary to popular belief, occurred all over the country, not just in the south.
Flash forward to the 1950's. Most black people at that time were meek and deferential around white people, but when they were around other blacks, they were like completely different people. They could express their blackness without shame. It was a miserable existence when they were around white people out in society, but warm, and lively in the hood. We all know what happened next, when the civil rights movement happened and black people found their voice. Blackness, at this point, was 350 years in the making and for the first time ever was not something to be ashamed of in America. Blacks had always been a cohesive group, while whites were really a mishmash of British, Irish, German, French, Italian, Scandinavian and Slavic peoples who had traded their distinct cultures for a more generalized white culture that had no deep roots like the parallel black culture. That's why whiteness isn't really a thing for most white people, aside from the white pride crazies. It's neither good nor bad. It simply is what it is.
Contrary to popular belief, there have always been affluent black people, even during the worst of the segregation years. But because of segregation, those people lived in affluent sections of black neighborhoods. Their distinct culture was preserved by proximity to each other. Integration turned this dynamic on its head. Many affluent black people rushed to buy homes in areas that were formerly denied to them, looking for the same things well to do white people wanted. Good schools and a safe neighborhood. But this had an unintended consequence. Their children, growing up in a mostly white community, were likely to not be steeped in black culture. They were a generation apart. To their white peers, they were "my black friend", but to other black people who were not fortunate enough to get out of the hood, they weren't really black anymore (try to understand that if you're poor and black in the hood, your blackness is basically all you have, and you take it seriously.) I know this because I was one of those children. I cannot begin to describe how embarrassing it is to visit your cousins in the hood and not be able to talk like they talk, and act like they act. And at the same time, back at your white school, you're never really accepted. People are nice enough, but you still suffer racial slights on a regular basis, and you are still, for the most part, "the black friend." This is confusing and demoralizing and it hard to be truly happy unless you "sell-out" (this is an ugly term and I hate to use it but I lack a better way to say it) completely and just avoid other black people.
I don't begrudge my parents for living where we did. I got a great education and I'm much better off than most black people as a result. I have a great career and a good life. But I'm missing blackness. Now I'm 40 and have a young son and one on the way. I want them to have the advantages I had, but I also want them to have blackness in their lives. That's why places like View Park, Baldwin Hills and Prince Georges County, MD are so valued by the black middle and upper class. I would like my kids to grow up somewhere like that so that they can have the blackness that is so important to us, but will still get a good education, and will be around people who share your values of hard work and keeping the straight and narrow. The problem is, those places are rare, and if they are gentrified, they will not exist at all. If that happens, then blackness will only exist among the poor and uneducated, which would be, in my opinion, a shame. Because those kids will only see ballplayers and rappers as role models because they cannot accept "white acting" black people as role models no matter how rich they are. And meanwhile, the upper middle class kids will be another generation apart, who are not comfortable in their own skin.
Like I said, I don't if this is good or bad. But I do know that its not born of racism against white people. It's just that black culture is really important to black people, rich and poor, and they want to preserve it, and they want their children to hold their heads high, do well in life, and embrace their own culture. I hope this sheds a little light into black culture for those of you that consider their desire to preserve their neighborhood demographics racism.
Great post, but I'm not clear of what your definition of blackness is. I "talk white", went to private schools, and I have a music life outside hip hop, but I think I'm doing a pretty good job teaching my kids blackness. We talk about history and we talk about current events. We talk a lot about various elements within black culture; how everyone living in the ghetto isn't "ghetto". One of my biggest goals is to not raise black children who think that being from a two parent home and having a little money makes them exceptional. Black kids like that become self haters, ready to throw the next black man under the bus to impress non blacks. I can make up for my valley girl voice and my eclectic taste in music by teaching them about the struggles other blacks deal with; the challenges, the accomplishments, the way things really are.
Mexicans-Americans are nearly the same share of the population (11% for Mexicans vs 14% for Blacks) yet you don't anywhere near as much about Mexican-American issues/goals/accomplishments etc as the media constantly does for Blacks....No 5000 Hollywood movies about Mexicans or the "First Mexican" Basketball/Baseball/Soldier/CEO etc.....
And Asians?? Forget it....They are even less talked about than Mexicans/Hispanics.
No doubt Blacks are a very iconic and important race here in America, but the constant sucking up to them 24/7 by the media does annoy me a bit....You would think the whole US was only Black and White the way CNN and others act...
There isn't an audience for those movies. The stories are important, but the majority (whites) don't care. They vote for the stories they'd like to see with their $$$. I would like to see, for example, George Takai (so) story of being a child in an internment camp during ww2 put on the big screen, who else is going to see it?
Also, if you guys want your stories told, make your own movies. Find the Mexican Tyler Perry or Spike Lee. It probably will happen soon.
The jealousy of the place blacks have in America is doing you guys no favors. Black and white Americans in the US are two sides to the same coin. We share a culture, anglo-American culture. We share music. We eat the same foods . We sing the same Christmas songs. We are the most a like of any group living in the US. And white America determines what issues go mainstream, what movies make money, what songs play on the radio, etc
They mean literally the exact same thing, so I don't really get what point your trying to make. If you're trying to appear snobbish, don't use contractions. You come off as either provincial or just American when you do. We love our contractions in America. Or should I say, when one uses contractions, he comes off either as an American or as provincial.
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