So, when I first found out that i was moving to des moines, I asked people that knew the area if they had any recommendations for cheap areas for a VISTA to live. And after running the list of comments and suggestions through my head over and over, what I realized is that all the areas I was supposed to avoid were low-income, historically non-white areas of des moines. The day my dad dropped me off, there are a group of black males outside my apartment building. My dad took one look around and said, Well, I dnt see bars around the windows so...I think youll be fine(just fyi, my dad spent his first few years in the US in Compton, CA). i found this interesting article about gentrification and it reflects a lot of what I see in des moines as an urban part of Iowa, and in many parts of LA and cities around the country. Hes a little snippet: And yes, there are many layers at play: When non-black people of color with class privilege, like myself, move into a historically black and lower-income neighborhood, the white imagination reads our presence as making the area a notch safer for them. The mythology of safety and racial coding regards our presence as a marker of change; the white imagination places higher value on anything it perceives as closer to itself, further from blackness. We become complicit in the scam; the cycle [of gentrification] continues. These power plays – cultural, political, economic, racial — are the mechanics of a city at war with itself. It is a slow, dirty war, steeped in American traditions of racism and capitalism [and hetero-patriarchical white hegemony]. The participants are often wary, confused, doubtful. Macklemore summarized the attitudes of many young white wealthy newcomers in his fateful text to Kendrick Lamar on Grammy night: “It’s weird and sucks that I robbed you.” But as with Macklemore, being surprised about a system that has been in place for generations is useless. White supremacy is nothing if not predictable. To forge ahead, we require an outrageousness that sees beyond the tired tropes and easy outs that mass media provides. This path demands we organize with clarity about privilege and the shifting power dynamics of community. It requires foresight, discomfort and risk-taking. It will be on the Web and in the streets, in conversations, rants and marches. We need a new mythology.
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 01:46:13 +0000
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