Response to the Gentrification Series

Over the last six months, Weld for Birmingham has produced a series on gentrification from an oral history standpoint.  Overall, the series is good and puts a human face on the changes we are undergoing in Birmingham.  No fewer than three of the articles have focused on the Avondale/Crestwood area, which, due to the completeness of downtown gentrification, is ground zero for neighborhood change in Birmingham.

This post looks at Weld's approach to gentrification, points out some blind spots, critiques the response by those promoting gentrification, and provides some data that highlight the downside of neighborhood change.

First, there seems to be little in terms of displacement in census tract 24, home to Avondale and parts of Crestwood.  There has been only a 5% change in terms of the demographics in the census tract.  However, property values have risen dramatically, to the tune of 61% over the past ten years.  This is more than the increase in property values of Homewood and Mountain Brook, but less than the increases in downtown Birmingham.  If this trend continues, widespread displacement will be inevitable, particularly of low-income residents.  One of the Weld series' largest blind spot is the lack of voices representing low-income renters.  They have almost exclusively interviewed privileged white residents.  Are low-income residents' rents increasing, are they contemplating moving to a cheaper zip code, and are landlords attempting to push them out?  

(In fairness, I'm not under any illusion about how difficult it may be to develop the connections necessary to get an interview with renters who may not want to get caught up in a political fight.)

As an artifact of this blind spot, the response to the most recent gentrification series post "Leaving Crestwood" displayed an incredible amount of privilege and entitlement.  Posters wrung their hands and navel-gazed about a privileged white resident leaving the community- all of these lamentations coming from other privileged whites.  

In an earlier article by Nick Patterson, "New Students, New Parents, New Reality, and Change," the author documented how white residents make decisions about school choice.  Tellingly, the residents highlighted in the article consulted other whites when deciding about which schools their children should attend. (The Bigas stated that they changed their mind after consulting with Reverend Brandon Harris, a white man.)  

Does this really look like integration, a situation in which white residents' community looks not unlike the community that s/he would have in Homewood or Mountain Brook?  Maybe this is untrue, but the articles, with a dramatic lack of black protagonists, portray a lily-white community within a larger black neighborhood.  The articles give the distinct impression that gentrification and neighborhood change are driven by a small cadre of privileged, white advocates of a type of economic development that can best be termed municipal trickle-down economics.

I'm quite pleased with the gentrification series from Weld, and this critique is just an attempt to make it better.  The series has spurred conversation in Birmingham that otherwise never would have happened. However, there are blind spots that need to be addressed in future articles in the series, and the number one blind spot is "are there people experiencing displacement pressures?"

John Archibald and Colorblind Ideology

Probably the most prominent columnist in the Birmingham region if not the state is John Archibald.  He is well known for his folksy, but critical take on Birmingham politics.  Archibald can be described as the mouthpiece of Birmingham progressives; he certainly speaks their language and style and covers topics in ways beloved by these white progressives.  However, as will be shown, Archibald's work displays a profound thread of colorblind ideology.

The beacon of radicalness, Psychology Today, describes colorblind ideology as a form of racism stating that "colorblindness creates a society that denies (people of color's) negative racial experiences, rejects their cultural heritage, and invalidates their unique perspectives."  Archibald promotes just such racism in three recent articles in the Birmingham News.

In an April 2013 article, Archibald argues that City Councilor Steven Hoyt's push for diversity at Barber Motorsports Park is not about "inclusion," but about being divisive.  Archibald seems to miss a very pertinent point about Birmingham - the fact that it is divided.  It is the most segregated city in the Southeast, it has a downtown plan directed almost wholly at affluent whites, and there are two separate institutional structures, one black and one white, that exist completely apart from one another.  The latter is documented in my dissertation which is available from UC Berkeley or from me upon request.  Not talking about those divisions, as Archibald suggests, will not make them go away, and in fact, the only way that they can begin to be addressed is with courageous, critical talk and action much like Hoyt's critique of Barber Motorsports Park.  Pointing out that a group is not diverse is not divisive, it's the truth.  Refusing to fund them on those grounds is consistent with an anti-racist ethic.

Last week, Archibald took aim at Birmingham's neighborhood associations.  The neighborhood associations are one of the few reservoirs of working-class black power in the city.  They provide a voice  at levels very close to the people and initiatives by neighborhood presidents to get residents involved in politics should be lauded not denigrated.  Is it political?  Yes, but so are the board rooms at Regions, Harbert, BBVA, and every other corporation getting tons of subsidies and consisting of mostly white people.  Furthermore, the $2000 dollars a year that go to each neighborhood is paltry considering the price tag of Regions Field ($58 million) and the entertainment district ($57 million), both of which cater to a white audience.  Archibald criticized the entertainment district only to suggest that the money be moved to another location downtown and seems to be gung-ho about Regions Field.

Speaking of Regions Field, Archibald furthered his colorblind rhetoric by casting the council's fight for a Negro Leagues Museum as "divisive."  (On a side note, I know that Archibald doesn't write the headlines, but to think that he's the teacher when it comes to black history is beyond the pale.  The Birmingham News should probably put a little more thought into their headlines.)  Archibald is right in to say that Larry Langford wanted a Southern League and Negro League Museum at the park, but the council passed the park plan with the assumption that it would be Negro League Museum.  Reworking the museum to include the Southern League is a capitulation by Mayor Bell to white Birmingham and probably more than a number of consultants.  Still, the argument that celebrating black history at Regions Park is divisive belies the belief that "objective" history has to include white people and white exploits.  It is white history month 365 days a year, and celebrating black history and only black history is a push back against Eurocentric readings of history.  And why is it the assumption that black history is not for everybody - that somehow the history of black baseball players is not also the history of us all.  Plus, white people got their park, why can't black people have their museum.

Archibald's colorblindness argues that if we just don't talk about our divisions, they will go away.  Race-consciousness, anti-racism are being promoted by the Cultural Alliance and my organization Magic City Agriculture Project.  There are people with ideas and plans for finally healing the racial wounds of Birmingham and achieving real, meaningful integration.  None of them are colorblind.

Driving While Bipolar

Kentuckian Hunter S. Thompson characterized the South as "closed and ignorant" in his article "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved."  He went on to say this, "In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught."  I've spent the last five years away from the Deep South, whether it be in Berkeley or in the relatively progressive Birmingham, but this past week I got a resounding welcome home from the Tupelo Police Department on my way back from filing paperwork for my new job with the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi.  The encounter reminded me of my 'perp' encounter with the brilliant Auburn Police Department about eleven years ago.

What one must always understand when dealing with police officers is that to the police brain, everybody's guilty.  They are merely looking for evidence as to what constitutes guilt.  For the Auburn Police Department, my guilt was predicated on my clothes - some baggy raver pants the most notable signal of my perp hood.  The description of the actual perp was quite exact - about six feet tall and wearing "dark clothes."  After public humiliation in front of my Camp War Eagle colleagues and counselors (of whom I was older by a good two years), the genius APD let me go, but not before making it clearly known that I was on the outside of their closed society.  I never wore those raver pants again.

Flash forward 11 years, I've graduated from Auburn, and received my PhD (which stands for piled up higher and deeper) from the University of California, Berkeley.  I've also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.  I take lithium carbonate and risperidone to manage my moods, of which I have done well since my diagnosis.  But, the lithium makes my hands shake; in fact, it is the first side effect on WebMD.  Apparently, it is also a sign of being a perp, or as the Tupelo Police Officer noted "the last time I had someone's hand shake like that, he was on meth.  Are you on meth?"  First, sign that I'm a perp. (Full disclosure: I was pulled over for flicking a cigarette out the window, which I fully admit that I did.)  Second sign, I stated rather forcefully that no, in fact, I take medication that makes my hand shake and I'm not particularly fond of confessing that to perfect strangers, particularly cops.  I even showed them my medications.  Not showing enough deference to the high office of police officer is another sign that you're a perp.  What is misunderstood here is that there is no "book" that determines who is and isn't a perp.  It is based on years and years of hard won experience protecting innocents from evil-doers like myself.  So, here's this guy with a California driver's license, an out-of-state tag, has shaking hands, and doesn't show enough deference.  Gotta be a perp.  He's just not normal.  The third cop car arrives and that officer gives me a field sobriety test in the KFC parking lot, which I of course pass.  By this time, I'm shaking with rage.  I'm being accused of a crime because I have bipolar disorder.  

As a parting shot, the arresting officer asked if anyone had "smoked weed" in my car in the past couple of weeks.

I would like to genuinely thank the three officers involved in this incident.  One was a white woman, one was a black man, and one was a white man, no doubt owing to the TPD's robust affirmative action program. (Note: I am not against affirmative action.  I am absolutely for it.  But without work on institutions and culture, it is quite piecemeal as evidenced by this experience.)  I would like to thank them for reminding me that I'm not normal, that I take six pills a day just to function in everyday society.  I would like to thank all police officers for being the enforcers of Thompson's closed society.  And I would like to thank them for welcoming me back to the Deep South; it's great to know my place.

For those of us that love the South, why do we stand for stuff like this?  Why don't we write letters, march in the streets, scream at the top of our lungs, and refuse to participate?  Why do we allow blacks, Latinos, women, feminists, communists, the mentally ill, LGBTQ people, and a million other non-mainstream people to be treated as second class citizens?  Why do we stand by and watch?  Trust me, it doesn't have to be this way.

Gentrification and the White Savior Industrial Complex

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.