It's Not So Black and White

I know I already posted my obligatory H-Street-and-Gentrification musings, but I wanted to return to them for a bit to process some new experiences.

As I think I mentioned in the original post, gentrification on H Street has meant a lot of things. One of those is a new intermingling of races. But at the same time, intermingling might be the wrong word. During the H Street Prayer Walk last week (the one of anti-rainmaking fame), my students had great conversations with the residents about the changes to the neighborhood. One person said something new, at least to me: that gentrification had meant, for H Street, at least, a lot more racial tension.

Previously it was an African-American neighborhood, but now there are a lot of white people moving in. I guess it feels like a takeover, or an invasion, since the tendency is for the white people to replace the residents rather than mix in with them. So with those new residents, according to this shop owner, has come a lot of tension that just wasn't there before.

It's something I've noticed personally. One night at the bus stop, I was a bit rude to one man who was trying to ask me about my suitcase. He was on something, or perhaps just drunk, so I was trying not to engage since I was by myself and I'm really not the most dangerous person in the world to mess with! But because I didn't respond, he got mad and started walking around to the other people at the stop and telling them about that "snooty white girl over there" (he was African-American). I knew at that point I'd done the wrong thing, but it was hard to explain--or to convey through my actions--that my attitude had nothing to do with the color of his skin, but rather, his behavior. Instead I hopped on the bus and got away as fast as possible.

My group from Charlottesville took a bus for their Urban Plunge and on one leg of the trip, listened to a woman shouting about how the white people were taking over H Street like they took over the rest of the city and she didn't know why people just took it lying down. (They were, at the time, the only white people on the bus, so that freaked them out a little bit).

Last week Chris, my (white) director, told me that when he walks down H, he sees black people walk right by those on the streets and not get asked for money. When he walks by the same people, every single one asks him for spare change.

I come back to this issue because it's so frustrating to live with. You want color to not divide, but you see every day that it still does. You want the tension to leave, but how can it, when so much misconception and distrust and fear thrives on both sides, even in the modern day? I think in areas of gentrification it's especially bad because what's happening is fundamentally a replacement of the poor or middle class with the rich or upper class. But in DC, sometimes you can replace "poor" with "black" and "rich" with "white" and that sentence would still remain accurate. It's an imbalance of opportunity, of circumstance, of prestige and of power and it splits along eerily color-based lines. Kalorama, the richest neighborhood in DC, is 84% white. East of the Anacostia River, the poorest and most dangerous section of the city, is anywhere from 93% to 98% African American, depending on the zip code.

It's something I know I don't have the words to express well. These things that happened--well, I'm telling them how they happened. It's uncomfortable to think about because I analyze myself; how I reacted and then how I write about it. I find racism in myself as much as I find it in the world around me. But I guess mostly I find tension and fear that leads people to default--to let color define a whole lot more than what you look like.

It's easier to gloss over the whole tangle. It definitely is. Nine days out of ten I do it. I'm just praying that on that last day, I get progressively more honest with myself and the city around me than I was before.