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Location: Formerly NYC by week; ATL by weekend...now Rio bi annually and ATL bi annually
1,522 posts, read 2,244,294 times
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Originally Posted by drive carephilly
Your personal example is an anecdote. All it "proves" is your personal observations.
But calling me biased because you disagree with me is a cop-out. If I'm wrong, if I said something that wasn't true, proving it would go a lot further than name calling.
From your narrative here, what I hear is entitlement. "I'm baller so wherever I live the amenities should follow and if they don't then it must be because I'm not white." But that's not how it works. I've worked for towns that have tried to attract retail and grocery for your run-of-the-mill suburban strip mall and the developers and financiers are all too happy to dump reams of spreadsheets on your desk showing you why the numbers don't work . . . especially in the era of online shopping and a real estate bubble that saw retail space particularly hard hit - because demand for it has been shrinking.
If you live in a neighborhood where the median household income is $100k but 12 blocks south the median household income is $160k guess where the new Whole Foods is going? Guess where the new H&M is going? It's not about your 6 figures when all of your neighbors are making mid-5's - it's about relative income.
FWIW - I don't begrudge Spike Lee and I don't have a problem with his delivery - that's just him. What I take issue with is that he has his facts and history completely wrong.
So here are some facts on Harlem, just looking at what's south of about 134th St. in 2000 you had 1,996 (2.8%) non-hispanic whites and 49,968 (69.7%) non-hispanic blacks. Household incomes for whites averaged $26k (1999 $) and for blacks it was $19k. The number of households bringing in more than $75k in 2000 was 2,538.
In 2010 you have 9,254 (12.1%) non-hispanic whites and 42,409 (55.4%) non-hispanic blacks. Per the 2012 Census ACS the median income for white households is $72k and for black households it's $31k. The number of households bringing in more than $75k in 2012 was 7,902. The number of households bringing in more than $150k is 2,513.
It's clear that the white population increased dramatically over that decade but it's also clear that the white people moving in were earning far more money than the people (both white and black) who were already living there . . . but then it's also clear that there's a demographic shift going on amongst the black people in Harlem as well with a much higher number of middle class and wealthy black households than what existed just 10 to 15 years ago.
So yes, the new retail in Harlem is every bit about the green - a 300% increase in the number of +middle class households - not about black or white.
Anectdotal? Truly you jest; please inform me as to how this fact is entertaining or amusing at all? Once again, your obtuse point of view skewed the message. How would it come across that I said I was a baller? Your dissension for others points of view, truly factual in every sense, leave you with only one form of rebuttal: tactless attempts of disproving real life experiences from anyone but yourself. Please post a source where you get these numbers from. I put no stock in them unless quoted from a reputable source (no studies from grad students at Penn State please). And to dispel your mythology, the areas above 120th street are majority minority and there are and have always been very expensive homes owned by individuals of color. The white population growth you speak of is between 110th street and 121st. If you lived in Harlem you would know that. Yet you would lead others to believe that it goes up to 134th street? Here are some real facts mon ami: Jewish people have always been in Washington Heights and small parts of Fort Tryon (161 and above to the 180's). You still have not addressed my personal experience/observation: The gentrification is below 125th, so if your numbers state that the gentrification has gone up to the mid 130's (which it has not), then why does the retail investment stop at 125th? As of now some believe that 125th is slated to look like 34th street at some point in the future due to new retail offerings. That census data is far from concrete and has been dispelled on the NYC board on CityData. Provide factual data refuting the example put forth in my prior post and then we shall discuss numbers.
Please advise....Thanks.
Last edited by SLIMMACKEY; 03-20-2014 at 02:41 PM..
"We" -- white people -- didn't simply decide to divest. "We" were chased out. Literally burned out, in many cases (as in Lee's "Do The Right Thing").
Lyndon Johnson's comment after urban riots:
"What did you expect? I don't know why we're so surprised. When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what's he going to do? He's going to knock your block off."
"What did you expect? I don't know why we're so surprised. When you put your foot on a man's neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what's he going to do? He's going to knock your block off."
To get to the point, this is a theory that is tenable only because we have decided to eliminate all other forms of racialized violence from our collective history. When we talk about “the riots,” context is unnecessary: it is understood that we are talking about blacks, in the 1960s (or, maybe, the early 90s in LA), burning and looting the neighborhoods where they lived. As a result, we don’t even have a word for the things that we don’t talk about. We don’t have a word to talk about white mobs burning buildings in Northern cities, or beating or killing innocent people, who wanted to move into their neighborhoods. We don’t really have a word for this
We have a lot of words for all those things white people did. Words like "lynching" and, yes, "riot". That white people did a bunch of horrible things too doesn't make the race riots go away.
We have a lot of words for all those things white people did. Words like "lynching" and, yes, "riot". That white people did a bunch of horrible things too doesn't make the race riots go away.
That's most of the problem with these types of discussions. "White people did a bunch of horrible things" or "black people rioted" as if 6 million african-americans ran into the streets smashing windows . . . they assign blame to an entire racial or ethnic group across generations for the actions of a few people.
Anectdotal? Truly you jest; please inform me as to how this fact is entertaining or amusing at all?
anecdotal - adjective
1. (of an account) not necessarily true or reliable, because based on personal accounts rather than facts or research. "while there was much anecdotal evidence there was little hard fact" synonyms: informal, unreliable, based on hearsay;
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Once again, your obtuse point of view skewed the message. How would it come across that I said I was a baller? Your dissension for others points of view, truly factual in every sense, leave you with only one form of rebuttal: tactless attempts of disproving real life experiences from anyone but yourself.
Tactless? Like volunteering your salary to strangers? Or name calling?
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Please post a source where you get these numbers from.
Census data is always available at census.gov
You can also use socialexplorer.com which will map the data for you (although some of it is behind a paywall).
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And to dispel your mythology, the areas above 120th street are majority minority and there are and have always been very expensive homes owned by individuals of color. The white population growth you speak of is between 110th street and 121st. If you lived in Harlem you would know that. Yet you would lead others to believe that it goes up to 134th street?
I have no idea what you're arguing here but I trust that you realize that making the boundaries smaller is only going to make the numerical shift even more dramatic.
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Here are some real facts mon ami: Jewish people have always been in Washington Heights and small parts of Fort Tryon (161 and above to the 180's).
Not sure what that has to do with anything here but OK.
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You still have not addressed my personal experience/observation: The gentrification is below 125th, so if your numbers state that the gentrification has gone up to the mid 130's (which it has not)
then why does the retail investment stop at 125th? As of now some believe that 125th is slated to look like 34th street at some point in the future due to new retail offerings. That census data is far from concrete and has been dispelled on the NYC board on CityData. Provide factual data refuting the example put forth in my prior post and then we shall discuss numbers.
Please advise....Thanks.
You can argue about the ACS and the 2012 income numbers, fair enough, I can use the 2010 numbers instead but it's not really going to change the outcome. On the other hand you can't argue about the decennial census - it's not an estimate - it's a count.
It doesn't matter where you the draw the boundaries . . . you claimed that wealthy black families have always lived in Harlem. And that's true. In 2000 there were around 2500 of those households.
But then you claimed that new retail popped up because white people moved in with the subtext I'm guessing something along the lines of "retailers don't like black people with money" and then I showed you, with census data, a 300% increase in middle class and wealthy households between 2000 and 2012 as an explanation for why there's a lot of new retail there.
So, I already provided you with factual data and I told you where you can find it yourself. If my numbers are wrong you have the floor.
Last edited by drive carephilly; 03-21-2014 at 08:03 AM..
That's most of the problem with these types of discussions. "White people did a bunch of horrible things" or "black people rioted" as if 6 million african-americans ran into the streets smashing windows . . . they assign blame to an entire racial or ethnic group across generations for the actions of a few people.
We don't have a language to discuss the systemic racism that still persists.
We have a lot of words for all those things white people did. Words like "lynching" and, yes, "riot". That white people did a bunch of horrible things too doesn't make the race riots go away.
You didn't read the article I posted. The author's point was that many people view the urban riots of the 1960s as the "beginning of the end" of American cities. That's the common narrative. What's notably omitted from that narrative is white violence and how that also contributed to the degradation of inner cities.
That would be like us working jointly on a school project, and then after receiving a failing grade, me turning to you and saying, "Man, you really messed that up." Whenever we discuss the present-day conditions of inner cities, it's always about what "the blacks" did wrong with little introspection by the other side.
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