Gentrification and Politics

As of our most recent reading of  Tagi Smith's "What Happens When Your Hood is the Last Stop on the White Flight Express?" brought to my attention the question of "where does gentrification come from?". Often groups of minorities suffer from being displaced by the "majority" of Caucasian Americans in various neighborhoods. This has more recently happened in areas such as San Francisco's Mission district, Bedford Stuyvesant and Bushwhick in Brooklyn and several others. My personal question is "why?" why such sudden interest in the areas of the minority communities? Specifically the ones  that where once labeled  as areas of high crime? What is so attractive in urban communities that wasn't before? Why now ? There is a multitude of questions to ask as to why minorities are being pushed out of their residence. Gentrification itself  lacks reasons as to why is occurs , though Tagi Smith simply defines it as "the displacement of poor women and people of color. The raising of rents and eradication of single, poor and working class women from neighborhoods once considered unsavory by people who didn't live there."- "What Happens When Your Hood is the Last Stop on the White Flight Express?",Smith,pg 58. Clearly to residents and people of the community it's the destruction of their community , but to those outside the community it is simply seen as acts of renovation. As to what will occur as a result of this and recent events in the news and media, it doesn't seem as though their will be cooperation between minorities and the majority much longer.  

 

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