White Flight. White Return
My Day
By Dr. J. Ester Davis
Right after the Dallas Post Tribune printed My Day “Dallas Worldview Resume” (April 11, 2019 Editorial), we received emails from around the nation from our populous network. The Guardian, May 2019, headlined “What Will Happen When Harlem Becomes White?”. . . leading with Harlem is gentrifying. (Gentrification means that demographics are changing) . . . and Harlem is getting whiter. Rose Hackman in New York writes that “when it comes to economic development, the story is much more complicated than white people moving in, black people moving out”. Off 125th Street’s Subway is luxury condominiums, bars and restaurants along Frederick Douglass Blvd, now renamed “restaurant row”.
Today, benchmarking the shift in residents boldly is the “Red Rooster”, Harlem’s new renaissance restaurant, a few doors down from the global historic soul food diner, Sylvia’s. The owner, celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, born in Ethiopia, lived in Sweden, settled in Harlem years before opening this restaurant in 2010, defining and gift-wrapping a new chic, upscale Harlem. The “Red Rooster” clientele is “quite white” and non local. Ginny’s Supper Club, another new restaurant and bar is within walking distance.
In Raleigh, N.C., African American neighborhoods near downtown Raleigh is the arrival of white homeowners in places they have forever avoided. In Houston’s traditional legendary Dowling Street, home to the night life for African American for decades, white women are walking their dogs. In Dallas, off Pennsylvania Street, South Dallas, white soccer teams have games at night. This wave across the country has remarkable consistency affecting predominantly African American neighborhoods most measurably in terms of value of land, culture and mortgage hiccups. The one common denominator is that these neighborhoods are not only poor, but located within a stone’s throw of picturesque downtown skyline lights.
White flight across America has a long audacious history which stands in a category all its own.
Please be aware and recognize that white flight and white return are opposite and generations apart. There was never “white flight”. The imitation “White Flight” was replaced with absentee landlords, fast foods establishments, insurance denials and bank redlining narrowing the rightly investment that should have taken place in inner cities where African Americans remained.
An Awareness Notice: Please find and read “Do you see a For Sale Sign in my Yard”. My research and reporting yield that the volume of mailer to longtime residents in Southern Dallas has increased. A serious scam exist which comes as a “THIRD NOTICE”. . . disguised as a bill going soon to collection. The optimum words here are “scam” and absolute intimidation of the highest order.
To be continued.
Ester Davis can be reached at
BlogTalkRadio, CFN, BPENTV
214.376.9000 or
Email: estyler2000@aol.com
