I've seen this way too often, and I've said this way too often.
"I can't wait to take my family out of the hood". A phrase said every second in every ghetto (America & Worldwide)
I remember the first neighborhood i grew up in, Broadway/Memorial Drive In Buffalo NY, I lived right in front of an abandoned trained station. Years later I found out that it was the Buffalo Central Terminal. This is the BCT in its golden days (
here) and This is the BCT as i remember it (
here). The second neighborhood i grew up in Central Park was once a prestigious community with shopping and entertainment centers and it was also a huge tourist attraction according to my late great grandmother. This is the Central Park i remember growing up (
here), depressing right? I hear these tales alot, desolate low income poverty stricken neighborhoods once being prestigious, safe and middle class areas.
My grandmother and her children where one of the first 2 black families who moved to the central park area in the 1950s. They moved there to escape the "hood" they came from. We all know what happened in those times, most of the country was still segregated and whites and blacks had yet to be fully integrated as we are now. When black families began to move into middle class neighborhoods "White Flight" began. (White flight is a term that originated in the United States, starting in the mid-20th century, and applied to the large-scale migration of whites of various European ancestries from racially mixed urban regions to more racially homogeneous suburban or exurban regions. It was first seen as originating from fear and anxiety about increasing minority populations via
wikipedia). Once whites abandoned these communities they became predominately black neighborhoods that remained prestigious until the "Crack Era" that i believe was government organized to intentionally castrate Black Communities and destroy the Black Nationalism that reached its climax in the previous decade and we have yet to recover.
Basically what i'm trying to say is what's really our purpose of trying to leave the "hood" only to migrate, re-populate perpetuate white flight (as blacks are "leaving the hood" to more suburban areas whites are repopulating the inner cities "gentrification") and eventually destroy another neighborhood? Then when that neighborhood is destroyed or becomes "the hood", you will seek refuge in another suburban neighborhood and the cycle will continue.
There's also a myth that we are safer in the suburbs because of the distance from our people, when we are really not, look at Trayvon Martin's situation. Black Male in a nice neighborhood "looks suspicious"
It starts at home. do the best you can to cultivate and invest in your "hood". Because when you don't, other's will (for example Asian Restaurants, Nail Salons, Beauty Supplies, Liquor Stores and Clothing Stores In Black Neighborhoods, meanwhile we have no ownership of nothing except maybe a hair salon. or urban centers such as 125th st in Harlem removing its famous vendors and replacing them with starbucks, corporate stores etc). It's easier said than done, but there is a continuous cycle that is not going to end unless we make the changes at home, In the hood. We seem to have all the money in the world for Gucci, Louis, Fendi and Prada, we can take those same funds and develop our home front, bring jobs, culture and love to our own communities.
I'll end this with a famous quote....
"What you resist... persists"
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