Is gentrification the new manifest destiny?

Manifest Destiny, what is it? Manifest Destiny was the belief of 19th-century settlers that US expansion across the American continents was both justified and inevitable. The colonists believed that it was God’s ordained desire that all of North America, from ocean to ocean, including Mexico and Canada, would soon belong to them. This was used as justification for domestic US policy towards the natives as they moved west. It was used as a justification to violently seize control of California and Texas from Mexico. It was also used as a justification for invading and attacking Canada after 1812, something many Americans were never taught about. It would seem a bit harsh to compare this to gentrification.

Many see gentrification as the revitalization of poor inner-city areas into prosperous middle-class urban communities. However, when examined with a closer lens, it can be seen that gentrification and revitalization are not quite the same thing. Gentrification has a price. Gentrification is the process in which high-income investors purchase low-income urban neighborhoods in an attempt to capitalize on low property values. This process results in an inflation of property values ​​that displaces low-income residents who in their entirety can no longer afford to live there. It also displaces the culture and character that held the community together. Displacing people and erasing the culture of entire communities is the price of gentrification.

It would be a mistake to see gentrification as a racial problem. Those who mention gentrification as reversing the “white flight” of the 20th century do not have a full understanding of the problem. However, due to the fact that gentrifying low-income urban neighborhoods are often filled with black and/or Hispanic residents and replaced by white middle-class residents, race finds its way into the issue. The elimination of race is the result of gentrification, but not the cause or reason for its initiation. Racism is not a heavy factor when it comes to the issue. Black people often oppose gentrification because their neighborhoods and cultures are being erased and dispersed through it. Neighborhoods like Harlem, Washington DC, Brooklyn, and Atlanta are losing their black population as we speak. As well as many other cities in the interior.

I myself am an Atlanta native and can remember around 2008 when the city forced thousands of Black families to relocate without providing them with an alternative low-income housing option. They just kicked them out and told them to find another place to live. Housing projects such as Bowen Homes, Bankhead Courts, etc. they were emptied and razed to the ground. His plan was to turn Atlanta’s ghetto, Bankhead (a long highway on which these housing projects were located), into a middle-class neighborhood in the near future. The city even renamed the street from Bankhead Hwy to Donald Lee Hollowell Pkwy to make it unrecognizable to those who knew it as home. Instead of building poor communities for the less fortunate who live there, public and private investors are building neighborhoods and forcing the poor who live there to find another home somewhere far away.

How does this change the culture of Atlanta? Simple, Atlanta for the past 20 years has been known as America’s “black mecca,” much like Harlem was known during the Harlem Cultural Renaissance. Atlanta has also been known as the international headquarters for this new music called Rap and Hip Hop, just like Harlem with Jazz during the Harlem Renaissance. With current gentrification trends, it is sad to say that this will not be the case 10 years from now. Atlanta’s black population in 2000 was 61.4% and dropped to 54.0% in 2010 and is still falling. In 2009, Atlanta fell 714 votes short of electing its first non-black mayor since 1974. Downtown Atlanta neighborhoods like East Atlanta and the Old Fourth Ward are being gentrified, ghettos being replaced by luxury homes. Whites are moving into these luxury homes and this is causing a movement of blacks into rural cities and the adjoining suburbs. Atlanta’s black hip hop culture will be unrecognizable, maybe even non-existent for the foreseeable future.

What is even more devastating than losing a culture is the disinvestment that will soon come as a result of gentrification. We can take a quick look at history and it will give us an insight into our near and far future to come. In the mid-20th century, blacks began to move out of the South and into the cities in search of work and better opportunities in the American dream. This was the cause of the “white flight”, which was a migration of whites out of racially mixed urban areas. As a result, divestment began in racially mixed inner-city communities. This was the time, as Spike Lee says, where trash wasn’t picked up every day and police weren’t making sure communities were protected. Now, through gentrification, these neighborhoods are being reinvested and are protected and have daily garbage collection, but the poor no longer live there. The poor are now homeless or are being moved to the suburbs and back south. As a result of such a focus on inner city communities, it is disinvesting in suburban and rural areas and this will be the trend for decades to come. The suburbs will now become ghettos with high crime rates and poor schools that receive no investment from the public or private sectors. The same mistreatment of the poor simply continues in a new location. It is important to understand this. Gentrification is not doing any good for the low-income inner-city families it claims to be helping.

What about the few households that don’t rent, the urban landlords? Doesn’t the increase in property value benefit them? Before investors can rebuild a neighborhood, there must be a plan years in advance. These years before the matter are usually the time that investors spend buying the property in the planned area. Most of the properties owned by the area’s natives are purchased before gentrification begins. The last stubborn minority are those who are aware of the property value increase that is to come. However, what also comes with higher property values ​​is higher prices on everything else. Gas, clothing, groceries, property tax, utility bills, and even daily lunch become more expensive while income stays the same. They find themselves in a situation where they can no longer afford to live in the area and the property is sold before the full potential for increased property value is realized. Not even the minority of inner-city homeowners benefit from gentrification.

What does all this mean and how does it relate to manifest destiny? As I said before, gentrification is not a racial problem, although it may seem that way to many in America. It is more a problem of Western ideology. Gentrification is happening throughout Western civilization. San Francisco, East London, Berlin, Soho, Barcelona, ​​Rio, Portland are just a few other cities to name. Many call this problem an effect of “Columbus syndrome”. When you supposedly discover something that the natives there already knew, you have Columbus syndrome. Symptoms of Columbus syndrome are infiltrating the land the natives live on because you care, forcing them out, making it your new home, taking things from their culture and calling it your own. If you experience any of these symptoms, call your doctor. In all seriousness, it sounds a lot like what happened to the natives of our country. At the same time, it looks a lot like what happens through gentrification. Manifest Destiny was the violent and consistently evil removal of the inhabitants of the newly discovered land. Gentrification is the incoherent economic removal of inhabitants from reinvested land. In this way, the two are not compared, but the similarities are striking. I leave you with this question. Do the benefits of gentrification outweigh the consequences? If not, let’s fight to regulate the gentrification process.