Yet another anti-gentrification rant

“Usage Note: Irregardless is a word that many mistakenly believe to be correct usage in formal style, when in fact it is used chiefly in nonstandard speech or casual writing.”

I think any writing in this setting should be considered casual.

I am almost guessing that Miguel is Joe Zekas having fun. Almost. That might be my whitey mind playing tricks or trix on me. Than again, trix, are for kids. Irregardless of me eating them.

I guess the attitude toward people like you is to suffer bigots gladly. You are on the way out and will be buried on the dust heap of history.

IrishPirate,

I’m just back from a week at the beach and picking up where I left off – reading speculation that I’m posting under another identity.

I lived in Miguel’s neighborhood and owned and developed property there – two of them in his back yard, at the corner of Armitage and Fremont. I don’t doubt that he heard comments similar to what he reported – I heard them from area Realtors years ago. I doubt you’d hear them today.

Assuming Miguel is telling the truth, he hasn’t reported anything that justifies his anger or his hatred. If, as he seems to suggest, he’s spreading his poison to young children in his classroom, he should be fired. If he had any sense of decency or professionalism, he’d resign. Every kid deserves better than what Miguel is offering.

The bottom line is that there is an inexolerable demographic transition taking place in U.S. cities, including Chicago in which higher income people (predominently, but not exclusively white) are moving into the centers of the cities, closer to where they work and lower income people are moving out to the suburbs where most of the jobs are. The increasing price of gasoline will further hasten this process. As much as Miguel may fume and rant, he is spitting in the wind. He may annoy his neighbors as much as he likes, but he can no more stop the process than King Canute could tell the tide not to come in. It is only a matter of time until there is a Starbucks on the Paseo Boricua.

THE MYTH OF REVERSE RACISM

REVERSE RACISM?
“Why is it so difficult for many white folks to understand that racism is oppressive not because white folks have prejudicial feelings about blacks, but because it is a system that promotes domination and subjugation? The prejudicial feelings some blacks may express about whites are in no way linked to a system of domination the affords us any power to coercively control the lives and well-being of white folks. That needs to be understood” (bell hooks 1995: 154).

SEPARATISM?
“Concurrently, all social manifestations of black separatism are often seen by whites as a sign of anti-white racism, when they usually represent an attempt by black people to construct places of political sanctuary where we can escape, if only for a time, white domination” (bell hooks 1995: p155).

BLAMING THE VICTIM
“People who have not thought about or refuse to acknowledge this imbalance of power/privilege often want to talk about the racism of people of color. But then, that is one of the ways racism is able to continue to function. You look for someone to blame and you blame the victim, who will nine times out of ten accept the blame out of habit” (Gloria Yamato 2001: p93).

References:
hooks, bell. Killing Rage: Ending Racism. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995.

Yamoto, Gloria. “Something About the Subject Makes it Hard to Name” in in Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology, 4th Edition. by Margaret L. Andersen, and Patricia Hill Collins, eds. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001.
Brought to you by Claremont SCRAP – Students Challenging Racism and (White) Privilege. http://www.canopyweb.com/racism

I understand your larger point Miguel, but it still doesn’t explain how it’s anyone’s best interests to shoot themselves in the foot on an individual basis (or for you to alienate your neighbors, who might actually be receptive to learning/listening to you if you didn’t assume they were all bigots).

for example, when I taught at LPHS, I heard plenty of kids from Cabrini say things like “man, school is a joke, the white people around here hate us, so forget it, I might as well just do what I want.”

So, even running with the assumption the system has been rigged (and it clearly has on some levels, although IMO not the level you believe), how is it in that kid/kids’ best interest to simply drop out of school or to join a gang (and to engage in the violence that comes with that)?

At what point do you have to say there’s some individual responsibility for your choices that comes into play?

There’s a book out called “The Making of a Latin King” – have you read it? I could throw you quotes all day from that book which might present a much more nuanced analysis of why things often go wrong in the lives of poor, minority kids.

Parody or fact or combination thereof….you may never know. But, at the very least, what I have said may make you remove the “blinders” that white people wear their entire lives, if only for a couple of minutes.

“Concurrently, all social manifestations of black separatism are often seen by whites as a sign of anti-white racism, when they usually represent an attempt by black people to construct places of political sanctuary where we can escape, if only for a time, white domination”

The chief source of death of young blacks is other young blacks. Blacks who live in predominantly white areas, like Oak Park, are much less likely to be killed than blacks who live in predominantly black areas, like Austin.

To Carter:

I do agree with you that there is a point where blacks and Latinos have to take responsibility. But it’s very easy for a white person to say that when you have no conception of why blacks and Latinos feel that way. An analogy would be someone who has been raped not wanting to be touched by a man or someone who was hurt by gun violence insisting on the handgun ban even though it has been found unconstitutional. The people in those situations may be wrong, but you cannot blame them for feeling the way they do. You have to try to understand what they went through.

I have visited LPHS on several occasions, mostly
to pick up materials and chemicals from their science lab (which they were giving away to other CPS schools the last few years) I have been in the lunch room there on many occasions as one of the science teachers is my friend Be honest with yourself and take a good look around. Black students only sit with eachother, there is a Latino section, and a foreign/Middle East section. See who’s hanging around at eachothers lockers. It’s like this in every “multicultural” school in Chicago, this I know.

In fact, the next time that you go out to eat, to a Cubs game or to the movies, take a look around. See who’s sitting with each other. If you see a white and black guy together, 10 to 1 they are gay. Another oppressed community who gravitates towards eachother, live in the same neighborhoods and have their own institutions. Unfortunately, they usually are contributing factors in gentrification. I said that to say that true multiculturalism will never be possible until THE MAN cedes some of his power and privilege. Until white can accept blacks and Latinos they way they are and not try to “whiten” or “mainstream” their speech and culture.

In general, white peoples’ notion of “multiculuturalism” is purely superficial. You need to see just enough “multiculturalism” to placate the white guilt that you feel. To be able to claim that you are tolerant. To feel like you are being the liberal that you always wanted to be. You support Barack because you like the “idea” of a non-white president. But would you want Barack’s black cousins and friends shooting hoops in your alley or sitting on your front porch.

Give minorities some of the power and wealth that you have. Saying you want a multicultural world is a good first step but it’s not enough. Do you realize that as you sit in your “multicultural” most white world sipping your cafe mocha and ordering tapas that the “Gini Coefficient” (measure of inequality of income distribution) in the US is more closely resembling that of the third world. The unequal income distribution in the US is getting worse by the hour. That the only restarant many of us can afford to eat as is McD’s and the only coffee we can afford to drink is Folger’s.

And with regards to minorities wanting neighborhoods and institutions of our own. It’s not because we don’t want you there. It’s because we want a place of refuge, where we can get away from racism and find support for each other. And we know that when we see you coming we will lose what little we have. Whites can only cry racism when they don’t realize that we don’t have a choice in the matter, you do. You can live where you want, work where you want, and go to school where you want.

Just because you may not want to live in a certain area because of crime or whatever reason, it’s still a choice for you. You want to take every last thing from us and then accuse us of racism for trying to keep what little we have earned. Accusing us of being racist is blaming the victim.

I don’t claim to know exactly what white people are thinking but I can say that blacks and Latinos do not think in the same terms. It’s inappropriate for whites to judge us by their standards, by white definitions of words like “multiculturalism” and “urban renewal”. No matter how much progress you feel is being made, you will always judge these things according to your standards.

Your statement regarding the “neighborhood you claim to have lived in for 40 years”. I wouldn’t be so bothered had you not told me that you went to St. James Lutheran School. Otherwise I could have dismissed your comment as being unfamiliar with the hood. But if you grew up here then you should know by what I have said that I did too. I know Dayton, Fremont and Bissell, my immediate vicinity like the back of my hand. Maybe you are angry because your parents sold and mine did not. Believe it or not, I am met with hostility from “regular” working class whites who lived here with us Puerto Ricans and come back to reminisce. They can’t believe that a Puerto Rican family has managed to stay. They are angry that they sold when they did. Some of them giving up their homes by not paying the tax bill. That the $28,000 that my dad paid for this home has appreciated to over a million.

Perhaps you just never interacted with the Puerto Ricans who lived here. Maybe you remember things differently. That’s not hard to believe.
There is no interaction between the remaining boricuas and the white folks who live here even today. Go attend 10:30am Spanish mass at St. Teresa of Avila. Check out the looks of some of the white people’s faces when Puerto Ricans come back to the old hood for church. See how many of them interact or even say hi to the Puerto Ricans filing in. In fact, they complain about the Sunday bulletin still having some Spanish sections in it.

I don’t have blinders on, in fact, I see things more deeply that the superficial way many people may see them. I do respect your comments as you don’t seem to be talking out of your ass like some of these bloggers. But, as a white person, you will never be able to understand the plight of your Cabrini students until you intimately (not in a sexual way) spend time with them, in their neighborhood doing the things that they do.

Research has shown that most white people would not call themselves racist. But if you asks blacks or Hispanics whether we think most whites are racist, well, you can just about guess the answer. Most do. In fact, this was a topic on Oprah several years ago.

To Zekas:

Oh Shit. A copyright infringer. I have never been labeled as that by the MAN or my own people for that matter. I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep tonight.

But serioursly, I will refrain from pasting long quotes into my post for fear of being censored. I realize that you are not only THE MAN in the greater sense of the world. You are also THE MAN on this website.

Miguel, I actually grew up by the meatpacking plants at George & Lincoln. Not saying it wasn’t there, but the friction I recall had little to do with race, and everything to do with class (ie, the plants closing down where many people worked, etc).

However, many of my friends went to LPHS, including my best friend who is Puerto Rican/Mexican (I was his best man at the wedding).

Our friend circle even back there was every color you could find on a scale between white and black, and we weren’t all that unusual.

Spend a little more time at LPHS, I’m not saying the place is all hunky-dory and it looks like a McDonald’s commercial version of multiculturalism, but at least in the city, kids have been growing up in an integrated atmosphere for a few decades now, go on facebook and do a scan of a LPHS class and see who the friends are (you can see thumbnail images of the people even if you don’t know anybody) and it’s pretty easily proven, IMO.

Miguel,

I’m glad you enjoyed your time here. It’s clear that a number of people enjoyed the dialogue with you.

It’s disorienting to me to be called THE MAN. It says a lot about how little you know about the white people you mistrust and dislike.

I haven’t participated in this discussion much since I’ve been at the beach the past week for the annual weeklong family gathering I host. The African-American, Latino and Asian attendees at my family gathering will doubtless find your comments amusing.