About

This blog is an article collection, written by me, on modern Jim Crow and Black urban relocation with a concentration on the major Black destination cities and states of the Great Northern Migration.  The essays also examine solutions that promote economic progress while maintaining Black presence and economic diversity within our communities as we prepare for white development and encroachment.  Time is of the essence.

Blacks deserve an equal share in real estate- equal property prices and a chance to increase Black homeownership everywhere, including coastal cities. Blacks deserve to enjoy urban amenities as local residents.  How do we fully participate in pursuing and enjoying economic riches and progress without sacrificing our communities and people? How do we benefit from the changes without engaging in the same self-fueling cycle of greed and racism engaged in by whites in these cities with shrinking Black populations? All Blacks should be given access to economic prosperity, not just ones who think they are special. It is an economic and moral issue.

One sure way is Harnessing Black Consumer and Economic Power As An Agent For Social Change. Ensuring Black communities receive credit for positive factors is necessary as well. Figuring out real solutions for renters is paramount. Providing resources, assistance and units for both low and middle income persons must happen. And of course, implementation.

As an Inglewood, CA, resident, most essays focus on California.  The disappearing Black populations of New York, Washington D.C., Seattle, San Francisco, Oakland and Los Angeles are also examined.  The extreme disparity in housing prices due to modern Jim Crow in these cities resulted in whites over-running local Black communities looking for affordable housing and profit in the fixer-upper market of “urban renewal”.

Beginning over 15 years ago some of our most cherished neighborhoods like Harlem, the Fillmore District in SF, the Central District in Seattle and Washington D.C. were targeted for relocation.  The methods included intentional property devaluation during Black residency, extreme increases in rents/housing costs, white population surges, police brutality and incarceration.

Now these cities rank among the most expensive cities to own homes, to rent and to live.  Now they are mostly white.

Black communities are being and have been devalued in order to provide cheap reserve housing to feed the new urbanites’ and developers’ urban dreams of white cities- the new American white supremacy (NAWS).

I hope to share information with the Black community on both the economic aspects affecting relocation and the interplay between the economic stimuli and police brutality in this white supremacist  society.  In a media and political context full of groups exploiting Black oppression for their own agendas, it is important that the Black community as a whole understand the definitions and policies affecting our prosperity and happiness.  Until we address all aspects, police brutality will not decrease.  Indeed, relocation efforts appear to be driving police brutality. We will survive only through discussion and information sharing among all Blacks.

This blog was inspired by fellow Blacks’ accounts about relocation and by my personal experience with relocation and economic Jim Crow.  I’ve seen great stuff out there and real concern amongst Blacks regarding relocation.

I read over 40 newspaper articles spanning many years and studied the US Census to compile an account of what is happening across the country.  These sources focused on certain areas.

I hope to show the breadth and urgency of the affordable housing crises and its effect on Black communities.  For example, in California, Black numbers are dangerously low per capita compared to the rest of the nation. San Francisco County’s Black population has dropped by over 11,000 persons to the current 5.6%.   The national average is 13%.  California’s total Black percentage is only 6.2% which is also far below the national average…we are literally disappearing from the entire West coastline- the state’s Blue area.  Blacks in the Los Angeles metro area are literally the last major group left on the entire West Coast.  We are not being spared either. We will not survive this hypocrisy… no joke.

The Black American northern dream should not end as cheap housing for whites.  The Harlem Renaissance is literally a memory in the history books.  Black numbers are decreasing in traditional areas, resulting in cities even less Black than before the end of segregation in covenants.  In addition, the Black vote is being diluted from urban cores and is being dispersed across counties.  It’s gerrymandering without redrawing district lines, i.e, if there are no Blacks then there is no Black vote- period.

The lack of affordable housing crises due to the new urbanites’ and developers’ push into the urban cores affects everyone actually.

The articles/posts can be dense but they are full of info 🙂  My apologies if they are too long..

Katherine V. Burns, essays790, KVB

Ps. The header picture: Los Angeles California Skyline by Micheal Tompsett  and can be found at photowall.co.uk.

The pics of the plants and monarch butterflies are for your viewing pleasure…they are my plants and the monarchs hatched on my milkweed plants.