Gentrification as a Threat to Identity
“We seen all those factories and now they’re turning them all into lofts for yuppies that are moving into the neighborhood and taking the neighborhood over step by step.”5 Tony rarely talks bad about people, especially in a categorical way, but he is quick to point to the developers and the rich hipsters who are making the gentrification machine churn and call them greedy, or bad, or selfish. Public sentiment around gentrification is overwhelmingly bad – as in, I’ve never encountered someone truly defending gentrification on its face. I imagine developers just avoid the g-word altogether. And rarely are people flippant about the topic; no, they are out in the streets with banners, bullhorns, and petitions. The near hysteria that surrounds gentrification is especially peculiar considering the seemingly lukewarm intensity of commentary on the displacement of white ethnics in the South Bronx.
At first, I chocked this lack of emotion up to the race of the displaced: as the contemporary narrative of displacement concerns people of color, I thought that perhaps there was less empathy for this exception to the rule – white people being displaced by Puerto Ricans and African Americans. But then I encountered the empathy of Tony and Father Bob who recognized the circumstances of racism, disenfranchisement, and a desire to progress socially that were pushing people to the South Bronx. Neither Tony’s nor Father Bob’s account mentioned redlining or capitalism or anything like that. No, I think their empathy stemmed from a much more organic connection: class. The white ethnic in America’s history is one of being poor and othered by the upper class; this common history with African Americans and Puerto Ricans, whether recognized, or just felt, is what I believe caused this seemingly cordial turnover of land.
As an extension of this line of thinking, if we are to believe that, as Doreen Massey says, “The characteristics of any place are formed in part through the location and role of that place within a wider structuring of society,”10 then perhaps the white ethnics projected an identity onto the South Bronx in line with their own history of blue-collar work, of being discriminated against, and being poor. As a large number of those white ethnics did save money, they effectively altered their position within the structuring of society – outgrowing the place – and as another ethnic group came along that more closely resembled the identity of the South Bronx, it only made sense to pass off the torch to them.
Considering the public sentiment around gentrification in relation to this concept of the South Bronx having a distinct identity, one tied to class, seems to answer the question of why gentrification is nearly unanimously considered an egregious act. The processes involved in gentrification all seem like personal affronts to this identity. For example, “using selected bits of the past – from street names, to warehouses, to the docks themselves – as bric-a-brac for decoration”10 is to invalidate the history of a place, to discount the unique productive capacity of its residents. Further, gentrification shamelessly ignores the economic plight that drove residents there to begin with; the gentrifier has money, so why no live somewhere that won’t displace people?
The gentrifier who responds that those under threat of displacement should have worked harder and lifted themselves up is perpetuating the narrative of capitalistic success, of survival of the fittest as the best moral compass. As William Beinart puts it, “The new environmental history has in certain respects run in parallel with trends in African history because it shared many well-established Africanist moral concerns and perspectives: an essentially corrective and anti-colonial approach which emphasized African initiative in the face of European conquest and capitalist exploitation.”2 Those who are historically marginalized and institutionally discriminated should not have to live a life in response to the whims of the privileged.
For Tony, the synergy that he feels with people in poverty, who are struggling but persisting is palpable. A belief in quality of life regardless of class has always bound him to the South Bronx. This conviction is what led the Internal Revenue Service to audit him, in total disbelief that of the $20,000 he was earning from elevator repair, he was spending $18,000 to fund the work he was doing with the needy people of the South Bronx.6
Tony now lives in the largest apartment he ever has: a big one-bedroom in an assisted-living home, still just two blocks from where he grew up. Inside, a large living room is full of seats and two beds with plush mattresses. Last time I was there, he remarked, “I never use this room.” I commented on how it was funny that his own bed is nothing but a stack of milk crates and a two-inch thick piece of foam – the same elements that comprised the beds that he and two friends made for the homeless shelter they started in the South Bronx. He told me, “Yeah, well, I have to do what I say.” When I asked him to explain, he told me, “If I say I’m gonna work for the poor, gonna care for the poor, then I’ve got to ground myself in that. I’ve gotta ground myself in the poor.”5