This post is written in response to the post Gentrify Me on the blog Life and Law on 23rd Street. Gentrify Me was written in response to my piece in Weld for Birmingham called My View: Gentrification. In a nutshell, the author of Gentrify Me agreed with all of my conclusions, but insisted that gentrification was, in fact, good.
In response, I want to delve deeper into the underlying causes of such a view of gentrification - namely: the white savior industrial complex. Teju Cole coined this term in response to Kony 2012, a widely maligned video that thought to represent white people as saviors of Africans. I believe that this impulse is vividly shown in Birmingham, in which white gentrifiers characterize themselves as the saviors of Birmingham, and by extension the black people in it.
Using Cole's seven points about the white savior industrial complex and excerpts from Birmingham blogs and journalists, I will show that the white savior industrial complex is alive and well in the Birmingham area.
1. "From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex." Clearly, gentrification is the fastest growth industry in the Birmingham region. The city just constructed a 58 million dollar baseball stadium and a 20 million dollar park. Home values are rising dramatically downtown to the tune of 90% over the past 10 years.
2. "The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening." Clearly, white saviors are promoting policies of gentrification. REV Birmingham, a new joint venture combining Operation New Birmingham (a tireless promoter of gentrification) and Main Street Birmingham (also a promoter of gentrification; see work in Avondale) is a charity dedicated to revitalizing Birmingham. Main Street Birmingham won the Birmingham Business Alliance's nonprofit of the year award in 2012.
3. "The banality of evil transmutes to the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm." For evidence of this I turn to a recent blog post on Magic City Made by Avondale resident L.K. Whitney. In it, she shows how her concerns for Birmingham are rooted in sentimentality for a "community" experience of difference. She states that she is emotionally shaken when someone undermines the liberal utopia of different people all thinking alike. Rooted in this is the inability to understand how or why someone could have a difference of opinion, and how those differences are rooted in culture, race, and history. She believes, instead, that all the deep seated and profound issues of the region can be solved through enthusiasm for this liberal utopia. This sentiment also rings heavily in Gentrify Me, though less overtly.
4. "The world exist simply to satisfy the needs - including, importantly, the sentimental needs - of white people and Oprah." Same evidence as above. Furthermore, Dan Carsen's article on "reverse integration," whatever that is, and a recent article by Mandy Shunnarah in the Magic City Post, speak to the complicity of and promotion by the media of white saviors. Shunnarah's article seems to take the position that the conversation about Ensley needs to be shifted, and shifted by white people. Shifted to what? A nice place to experience sentimental diversity?
5. "The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege." REV Birmingham, Magic City Made, and almost every charity in Birmingham never mention, much less fight for justice. These charities exist to appease the needs of mostly white donors, funders and gentrifiers, to make them feel like they are participating in something good, no matter the effects. To claim to fight for justice would undermine the monetary basis of most charities in Birmingham. It is structurally prohibited.
6. "Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But, close to 1.5 million Iraqis died in an American war of choice." Naturally, part of this is irrelevant to Birmingham, but the feverish worry over that awful African warlord, ignoring other factors is quite prevalent. For instance, there was much journalistic concern over the corruption of Larry Langford - and no doubt, he deserved it. But at the same time, white journalists privileged this narrative over the much more important one, that banks screwed Jefferson County. It took Rolling Stone journalist, Matt Taibbi, to finally put the pieces together.
7. "I deeply respect American sentimentality the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it because you know it is deadly." While I don't think that the white savior industrial complex in Birmingham is at a deadly level yet, if the pattern of white saviorism and gentrification continue, it could lead to widespread displacement of poor, mostly black populations.
Let me be clear - my critique of the blogs and work of others in this article is absolutely not a personal attack. The aim is to point out blind spots and unchallenged assumptions about the nature of Birmingham and the world at large. Whites are not automatically owed the privilege of determining the direction of the city. Whites should seek out neighborhood residents and leaders and try to understand how they can help and what those leaders want, not plow forward with critically-unassessed ideas founded chimeric utopias. Justice - real, practical justice - should be the goal, not sentimental, feel-good experiences.
Showing posts with label main street birmingham. Show all posts
Showing posts with label main street birmingham. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Birmingham enters the 1980s: Gentrification, Hipsters, and the New Middle Class
I recently attended the PostScript blog launch party at 55th Place in Woodlawn. The event was well attended by Birmingham's cadre of hipsters and showcased musical talent from across the country.
What is so interesting about the event is that while almost all of the attendees were white, 70% of the neighborhood of Woodlawn is black. This immediately raises interesting questions like why are whites drawn to an event in a black neighborhood? What are the promoters of such an event trying to accomplish by hosting a trendy event in a black neighborhood? And why did blacks not attend the event?
The crux of the answers to these questions lie in the idea of taste. Bourdieu argued that taste is socially constructed by struggles among the upper classes over what is legitimate. In other words, art considered beautiful, food considered delicious, and books considered profound are not so because of their inherent quality but because of the struggles of taste-makers over these works. Gentrification, or the return of whites to inner city neighborhoods, is a similar field of struggle. Young, trendy, up-and-coming individuals struggle to produce a neighborhood as a trendy (or tasteful) destination by hosting events like the one I attended Sunday night. They work to remake the neighborhood in their image, and the desire here is for Woodlawn to become an artists hub. But this is not the end of the story.
Main Street Birmingham has worked tirelessly to remake Woodlawn in this image. They have promoted 55 Place Arts which is next door to Main Street Birmingham's main office. They have promoted local food in stores in the neighborhood, and they have marketed the area as a magnet for arts and entertainment - consumption-side development. Gentrification requires both the trendy hipsters willing to invest time and money into the neighborhood and government or quasi-government institutions backing neighborhood transformation.
All this seems well and good. A depressed neighborhood receives investment, whites move into the neighborhood, schools get better, jobs are created, and everybody lives happily ever after. However, what this story doesn't tell is that the people who pay the costs of this development are blacks, many of whom have lived in the neighborhood for years. In 2000, Woodlawn was 77 percent black and 17 percent white with populations of 9,657 and 2,086 respectively. In 2010, Woodlawn was 72 percent black and 23 percent white with populations of 8,284 and 2,656 respectively. Woodlawn lost almost 1400 black residents during the past ten years, meaning that many blacks were displaced by the white invasion, rising property values, and rising property taxes associated with gentrification. So while a Sunday night meeting of hipsters in a black neighborhood seems innocent enough, it is part of a larger process with dire consequences for blacks and black communities.
What is so interesting about the event is that while almost all of the attendees were white, 70% of the neighborhood of Woodlawn is black. This immediately raises interesting questions like why are whites drawn to an event in a black neighborhood? What are the promoters of such an event trying to accomplish by hosting a trendy event in a black neighborhood? And why did blacks not attend the event?
The crux of the answers to these questions lie in the idea of taste. Bourdieu argued that taste is socially constructed by struggles among the upper classes over what is legitimate. In other words, art considered beautiful, food considered delicious, and books considered profound are not so because of their inherent quality but because of the struggles of taste-makers over these works. Gentrification, or the return of whites to inner city neighborhoods, is a similar field of struggle. Young, trendy, up-and-coming individuals struggle to produce a neighborhood as a trendy (or tasteful) destination by hosting events like the one I attended Sunday night. They work to remake the neighborhood in their image, and the desire here is for Woodlawn to become an artists hub. But this is not the end of the story.
Main Street Birmingham has worked tirelessly to remake Woodlawn in this image. They have promoted 55 Place Arts which is next door to Main Street Birmingham's main office. They have promoted local food in stores in the neighborhood, and they have marketed the area as a magnet for arts and entertainment - consumption-side development. Gentrification requires both the trendy hipsters willing to invest time and money into the neighborhood and government or quasi-government institutions backing neighborhood transformation.
All this seems well and good. A depressed neighborhood receives investment, whites move into the neighborhood, schools get better, jobs are created, and everybody lives happily ever after. However, what this story doesn't tell is that the people who pay the costs of this development are blacks, many of whom have lived in the neighborhood for years. In 2000, Woodlawn was 77 percent black and 17 percent white with populations of 9,657 and 2,086 respectively. In 2010, Woodlawn was 72 percent black and 23 percent white with populations of 8,284 and 2,656 respectively. Woodlawn lost almost 1400 black residents during the past ten years, meaning that many blacks were displaced by the white invasion, rising property values, and rising property taxes associated with gentrification. So while a Sunday night meeting of hipsters in a black neighborhood seems innocent enough, it is part of a larger process with dire consequences for blacks and black communities.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Food access is not the answer
Today's LA Times article on food access and obesity confirms what I have been suggesting throughout this entire blog.
Eating healthy is a question of having money, not of having access to food outlets. Poor folks are going to buy the cheapest food even if a conventional grocery store with healthier options exists. The quickest way to improve people's diet is to increase their income.
The food movement up to this point has centered on technical fixes to obesity - namely, increasing access to healthy food - but what is needed are interventions that combine community economic development with increased food access. Main Street Birmingham and Project Hopewell are developing public markets in Southwest Birmingham for precisely this reason, but this project is only one piece of the solution.
Birmingham needs comprehensive community economic development beginning with food production through urban farms and possibly aquaponics cooperatives, proceeding to value-added products such as cakes, breads, and jams, and ending with the public markets that are being created. Comprehensive projects like these will increase access to healthy food, raise incomes, provide employment, and integrate food within every aspect of community life.
These projects are inherently political in the sense that they challenge dominant economic development paradigms that center on financial power, instead devolving control to individual entrepreneurs and in ideal cases, worker-owners of a cooperative. This stands in stark contrast to the ill-conceived and ineffective focus on access.
The pieces are in place to do real community economic development around food, and the time is now to shift the movement from technical fixes to revolutionary projects.
Eating healthy is a question of having money, not of having access to food outlets. Poor folks are going to buy the cheapest food even if a conventional grocery store with healthier options exists. The quickest way to improve people's diet is to increase their income.
The food movement up to this point has centered on technical fixes to obesity - namely, increasing access to healthy food - but what is needed are interventions that combine community economic development with increased food access. Main Street Birmingham and Project Hopewell are developing public markets in Southwest Birmingham for precisely this reason, but this project is only one piece of the solution.
Birmingham needs comprehensive community economic development beginning with food production through urban farms and possibly aquaponics cooperatives, proceeding to value-added products such as cakes, breads, and jams, and ending with the public markets that are being created. Comprehensive projects like these will increase access to healthy food, raise incomes, provide employment, and integrate food within every aspect of community life.
These projects are inherently political in the sense that they challenge dominant economic development paradigms that center on financial power, instead devolving control to individual entrepreneurs and in ideal cases, worker-owners of a cooperative. This stands in stark contrast to the ill-conceived and ineffective focus on access.
The pieces are in place to do real community economic development around food, and the time is now to shift the movement from technical fixes to revolutionary projects.
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