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Old November 7th, 2014 #1
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Post (#1 Gentrification Thread): Gentrification: "Triumph of the Williamsburg"

The descent of Ferguson into chaos, the bankruptcy of Detroit, and the arrest of yet another black mayor on corruption charges might lead one to question whether or not civilization in America can be salvaged. One commenter threw out “Rebel’s Guide to the Collapse of an American City,” which, if taken at face value would suggest that all American cities are doomed to become mega-Camdens, or worse American Port-Au-Princes. The commenters on the article largely agreed, lamenting that their city centers were stolen by mobs of rampaging blacks. From where I sit, however, the forces of civilization are fighting back in cities and neighborhoods across the country, and winning. Take one specific neighborhood, Harlem’s 28th Precinct. Just 23 years ago, the epicenter of black culture in New York City had 41 murders, 71 rapes, and 1050 robberies. The same neighborhood last year experienced 2 murders, 12 rapes, and 211 robberies, a staggering decrease in crime. Like Harlem, neighborhoods that just ten years ago were considered “no-go zones” are now attracting white settlers by the tens of thousands. America’s murder rate, once the highest in the developed world has fallen to a fifty year low.

The essay that follows is a very brief history of the conquest of many American cities by a predominantly black underclass, the nascent Reconquista, and an examination of the strategies and tactics in use. I choose to look at gentrification through the lens of total war. For gentrification to be successful, it requires mobilizing disparate elements of society: individuals, families, businesses, governments, and civic organizations. Like war, the strategy and tactics best suited to reclaim a particular neighborhood are highly context dependent. The ideal strategy for the Malaya Emergency (anti-communist counterinsurgency) is very different from the Battle of France (maneuver warfare with combined arms). Similarly, the ideal strategies for reclaiming West Oakland and Harlem may differ significantly.

Any foreign visitor to America who is not steeped in our history would likely visit a city like Chicago, St. Louis, Oakland, or Detroit, and wonder, “How is it that the wealthiest country in the history of the world has allowed some of its nicest cities to become smoking craters?” The answer is complex, but certainly the most common answer is “White Flight.” According to this narrative, once upon a time, nice blacks moved to predominantly white cities to work in the factories. Racist whites were aghast at the thought of black neighbors, so taking advantage of FHA subsidized mortgages and vast freeways, they all moved to the suburbs, taking their wealth with them. Then, starved for tax money, the now 90+% black inner cities became the hellscapes we know them as today. One question that is rarely raised is this, “How did predominantly German, Italian, Irish, Polish cities like Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis come to have enough blacks to alarm the whites in the first place?” A large part of the explanation is the “Great Migration.”

Between 1910 and 1970, roughly 6 million (mostly rural) blacks moved from the American South to the cities of the North and West. This deluge produced radical changes to the ethnic makeup of Northern cities. The blacks mostly moved to the poorest parts of Northern Cities putting them into direct conflict with poor, relatively recent immigrants, often Irish or Italian whites. While many places tried to contain the situation using racially restrictive covenants, change was coming to America. That change was Progressivism. One after another, federalism replaced localism, anti-discrimination trumped freedom of contract, and mass democracy became the law of the land. The death knell for white urbanism in America was the Supreme Court decision to integrate public education. Soon enterprising Real Estate agents began blockbusting, essentially the practice of selling blacks homes in overwhelmingly white neighborhoods with the goal of encouraging whites to sell their home immediately, before property values fell further. Mapping the decline, a University of Iowa project, painfully demonstrates the destruction of one American city: St. Louis, Missouri. Following the abolition of racial covenants in 1948, blacks began to take control of St. Louis proper before marching on in inner-ring suburbs like Pine Lawn, Normandy, and Jennings.

Seeing the rising crime, decline in school quality, and coming terrible governance, most whites made the rational decision to make a tactical withdrawal to adjacent suburbs. Certainly some of the decision to move en masse was a result of rising post-war prosperity, the “baby boom”, and the desire to live in single-family dwellings, but those factors were transient while “White Flight” continues today in places like Ferguson, MO and Conyers, GA.

While Progressives were certainly shocked that newly black cities became mired in crime, corruption, and poverty and sought to blame their problems on the departing whites, some Progressive politicians tried to slow or reverse the collapse of civilization occurring in America’s inner cities. Unfortunately, guided by incorrect ideas, their proposed solutions were often doomed from their inception. Many of their programs have been lumped under the umbrella term “Urban Renewal.” One sociological theory suggested that black misbehavior was a result of the abysmal conditions of the slums in which they lived. In the 1930’s through 1960’s the Federal government provided large sums of money to municipalities like Chicago, St. Louis, and New York. The cities took the money, razed ghettos and build massive Modernist monstrosities like the Pruitt-Igoe and Cabrini-Green housing projects. Concentrating thousands of poor and violent blacks in high-rise towers created a civilizational black hole, a place in which any amount of money could be poured without raising the standard of living one iota. Other top-down plans such as “tax increment financi

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read full article at source: http://www.socialmatter.net/2014/11/...-williamsburg/
 
 

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