How to Kill a Neighborhood and Make a Profit
i want you to pull up in your mind’s eye
your neighborhood
not just the buildings the streets the
trees but also the people
what do they look like
what race are they
have you ever wondered
why your neighborhood looks the way it
does
have you ever asked yourself why some
neighborhoods are ravaged by drugs and
violence and others are
not have you ever wondered why
neighborhoods that once had open air
drug markets now have upscale
restaurants and farmers markets
i have
because each time i visit the
neighborhood where i was raised
it has more and more upscale restaurants
and fewer and fewer black people
i grew up in a primarily black middle
class neighborhood in washington dc
called petworth
last time i was there i ate in a
restaurant whose specialty
was raw hamachi with pomegranate sauce
preserved lemon and satar
this was a far cry from the fried
chicken wings of mumbo sauce my best
friend matalaka and i used to get from
the chinese carryout
when i was growing up in pet worth
there was no rustic pizzeria no wine bar
no cider tasting room and apart from my
family there were a few white people
all this has changed
petworth is gentrifying
which is when the gentry middle class
people move into a neighborhood that has
low levels of public and private
investment
petworth has gentrified only
because it first experienced
disinvestment which refers to the fact
that petworth
lost public and private investment
you see real estate developers built pet
worth
as an all-white neighborhood in the
early 20th century
by the time my family moved to petworth
in 1976
nearly all the white people had left
petworth was still middle class
but now was primarily black
and experiencing disinvestment
when i enrolled in kindergarten in our
neighborhood school in 1978
i was one of two white children at that
school
the other white child my brother ian
when i was in second grade
i transferred to a new school
where there were only a handful of
students who were not white
my new school had carpeting
a library full of books and a beautiful
playground my old school had
linoleum floors
a sparse library
and we spent recess walking single file
around the block with our teacher
i spent the rest of my childhood taking
the bus from my primarily black
neighborhood east of rock creek park to
primarily white schools west of the park
i’d get on the bus across the street
from the corner store owned by mr coe
rice to buy big mama sausages
we’d ride past the liquor store where
monique and i used to buy cigarettes for
her grandmother
and later for ourselves
then we ride past the funeral home
where i attended erica’s funeral
after she was gunned down in a drive-by
shooting
on the other side of the park there
would be houses on tree-lined streets
and the occasional white person jogging
the bus didn’t turn onto connecticut
avenue
but if it did it would have passed by
the politics and pros bookstore
the bread and chocolate bakery and the
parthenon greek restaurant
one of my earliest memories
is of going to a mayday march with my
father and chanting
asian latin black and white workers of
the world unite with activist parents i
grew up well aware of the harms caused
by racism and capitalism
and you probably won’t find it
surprising to learn that i’m the founder
of the racism capitalism and the law lab
and a professor of sociology at the
university of california merced where i
teach classes on race and racism
despite my extensive anti-racist
education
i didn’t learn how racist policies had
affected the neighborhood where i grew
up
until i came across the work of the
historians at prologue dc i learned that
racial segregation in pet worth began
with the use of racial deed covenants
these covenants are lines in deeds that
read
this home shall not be sold or rented to
a negro
the real estate industry
and white homeowners use these covenants
to prevent african americans from moving
into pet worth until 1948
when the supreme court ruled those
covenants were not legally enforceable
with this court decision black people
could move into pet worth
one of the first black people to move
into petworth was a doctor
by the name of clarence d hinton
dr hinton knew his white neighbors might
try to prevent him from moving into this
all-white neighborhood
so he found a white person to negotiate
the sale on his behalf
once the neighbors realized
a black family was moving in
they put padlocks on the doors to try to
prevent the hindus from moving in
this did not stop dr hinton from moving
his family into his new home
within a generation
nearly all their white neighbors would
leave
when a black family moved into an
all-white neighborhood realtors
perceived an opportunity for profit
realtors used scare tactics to frighten
white families to sell their homes and
get out before the neighborhood turned
realtors would then buy the homes and
sell them to black people for a handsome
profit
this practice is called blockbusting it
happened across the city and created
white flight between 1950 and 1970 half
the white residents of dc left the city
as black families were moving to
petworth white families fled to the
suburbs the real estate industry and the
federal government worked together
to keep the suburbs white
the federal housing administration
advised banks not to grant loans in
areas where african americans lived as
these were not good investments
this practice is called redlining
because areas where black people live
were shaded red on color-coded maps
racial segregation was not an accident
it was a direct result of racially
restrictive covenants block busting
redlining and white flight
the fha’s notion that investing in black
communities was a poor investment choice
became a self-fulfilling prophecy
as the government divested from the city
so did the private sector
as white families moved to the suburbs
so did the jobs
by 1990
two-thirds of the jobs in the d.c
metropolitan area were in the suburbs
half of all black youth were unemployed
enter crack cocaine with high
unemployment and failing schools
young men began to sell crack in
open-air drug markets to make ends meet
crack was lucrative turf wars and gun
violence ensued
in 1991
washington dc had the highest homicide
rate in the country
the city’s response to this tragedy
was to double the police force
by the end of the 20th century
washington dc had the highest
incarceration rate in
the world
the capital of the nation became a world
leader
in incarceration
this devastation
touched the lives of my closest
girlfriends
monique
maralaka and tracy
as children
monique
her dog brutus and i spent our summer
splashing in rock creek’s
cool waters
monique’s first love was maurice
who lost his life
to a gunshot wound
every weekend in high school i’d walk
the two blocks from my house to
matalaka’s home to get dressed
to go out to the ibex the metro club or
the black hole to hear one of dc’s famed
go-go bands
her baby brother ollo always had
something to say about our outfits which
were invariably short tight and colorful
it was the 80s after all
i didn’t mind alo’s teasing as he always
teased us
as he did everything with a big old
smile
every memory i have of allo is of him
smiling
in my first year of graduate school
alo was brutally murdered
tracy was so proud of me when i went off
to college
two years after i moved into the dorms
her brother mark who was the smartest
and coolest dude i knew
was off to prison where he faced a life
sentence
monique sold her grandmother’s home
after she passed
maralaca’s family lost their six-bedroom
home to foreclosure
when tracy’s brother mark was arrested
the federal government used asset
forfeiture laws to seize the home
tracy’s grandfather had purchased in the
1950s
the dispossession of black middle class
residents made gentrification possible
it became profitable for investors to
purchase devalued houses foreclosed
homes and forfeited properties to create
new homes for new people
disinvestment
combined with low housing prices record
low interest rates and tax incentives
made pet worth attractive to investors
after decades of abandonment
disinvestment
made reinvestment
profitable in 2016 a real estate company
ranked pet worth first in the nation for
the profits investors could make from
flipping a home with an average profit
of over 300 grand per sale
reinvestment does not erase the violence
of disinvestment
are you ready for the six-point policy
plan that will
unfortunately there is no six-point
policy plan there are no policies
that can return the 4 000 lives lost to
homicide in washington d.c
there are no policies
that will return the human potential
stolen from our neighborhood when the
brightest minds were given life
sentences for drug offenses
today most people i grew up with cannot
afford to live in pet worth
they attended disinvested schools which
made graduated from high school
difficult
and finishing college even more
challenging
the loss of their loved ones to homicide
and the prison system
made thriving in young adulthood
difficult
there are exceptions of course
matalaka’s youngest sister ezewine is a
doctor
she was able to turn the tragic loss of
her brother into the motivation she
needed to finish her medical degree
it took an unfathomable amount of
strength for as a wine to earn enough to
be able to afford a home in petworth
when i was growing up
nearly all the residents of petworth
were black today
less than half are
when white people move in
and black people move out housing prices
go up
you know there’s one reason home values
increase when white people move in
racism
there is one reason homes are assigned
value at all
capitalism
replacing carryouts with upscale
restaurants does nothing
to dismantle racism or capitalism
racism and capitalism requires us to ask
a new and different set of questions
questions like
what if we invested in people instead of
prisons
what if housing were a human right
instead of a commodity
what if profits were no longer the
driving force of our society
i invite you to join me
and abolitionists like angela davis
ruthie wilson gilmore and miriam caba in
imagining
and building a movement for a world
where young women like ezewine can
flourish without needing deep wells of
resilience
or the potential
of young black men like marcus not
squandered
where lives
like aloes and maurice’s do not end in
violence
a world
where black
lives
matter
thank you