Gentrification: Racial Issues: Neverending

I want to share with you an interesting discussion that I had with someone today at the busstop on my way home which resulted in the guy catching the bus with me to continue the discussion.
The discussion started out by discussing the new developments that are occuring around the Denver area, and he wanted to know my opinion about the newer developments around the Five Points area. Well for anyone that is familiar with Denver, Five Points has always been a rather controversial area in Denver's history. To break it down, during the 40s through 60s, black were only allowed to live in a certain area in Denver. Five Points throughout the years became Denver's ghetto (although it never compared to New York's ghettos) it was still crime ridden and run down.

During the time of our Mayor (who was black and a very well respected member of the community) (his name was Wellington Webb) put together a project to clean up the urban areas and even do a sweep to rid the neighborhoods of the gangs and crimes. What resulted was gang members being ousted out of Colorado and the project development of Five Points began.
The newly developed Five Points no longer contains just black people but a great number of upper and middle class white families. Now Five Points has more white families than black families... Black families were offered money to move out of their homes. Of course they were offered less money than what their homes were really worth, and some families willingly moved because of their hardships, but they did not realize that they contributed to what I'd like to call "gentrification." (Simply put, gentrification is a process where upper and middle class families buy homes in urban areas, thus improving the property values while dislocating the lower income families and businesses).

Now unfortunately my grandmother fell victim to this (I begged and pleaded with her, but it was my aunt that decided to sell the home underhandly under my grandmother). Why? Because they were offered $185k for their home which was valued at $385k. My aunt snatched that up! Now my grandmother lives in a townhome on the other side of town and she is absolutely miserable! That was the family home that the grandkids played and stayed and knew as their own.

So I was explaining this to this guy, and he was really surprised that I was quite open about gentrification and stated that he had went to a community meeting where it was quite obvious to him that he was not accepted because he was not caucasian, and yet they were in the community that he grew up in! He said questions were asked about why they decided to live in Five Points, when it was quite obvious they were too scared to even be in the community. He said it was stated that they were trying to make the community better by removing the lower income families! Another community meeting he attended he said was all black and he said they were pleasant until they were asked how did they feel to live with white families. Then he said everyone was in an uproar!

Quite interesting...

So then the question came up about how I personally deal with racism. How do I keep myself from hitting rock bottom from it. So I had to explain to him that while growing up my father made it a point to have racial topics discussed in the household. He wanted us to understand what we would have to deal with, once we were out in the "real-world." He didn't want us to go out into the world "blind" when racial matters exist. Now this does not mean he was teaching hate, by no means, we were given the best of all worlds through our DNA. So we had full understanding of all races, he just wanted to make sure we were not ignorant to what would happen to us.

Now to answer his question (this he found interesting) ... I said usually when it is covert/overt racism from others I just choose not to get into heated battles and ignore them altogether, because if not, I would be just as ignorant as the people spewing the words, it is when I have to deal with being shunned from my own people that I have issues...

His question? So what do we have to do to unite our people and have them stand in unity with all shades of black?

It was time for him to get off the bus, but he said think about it...what can we do in the community to change our people? And what will it take to get them to understand that although money is being offered for their homes, they are giving up their generations of families that stayed in that home for just a few dollars. How can we make a difference?
He left me with a deep thought, so I leave you with one...

How can we make a difference?