According to Google’s dictionary, gentrification is the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste, or, the process of making a person or activity more refined or polite.
I don’t know about any of you, but that sounds a little wrong to me.
Gentrification is the buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, thus improving property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses.
In simplest terms, gentrification is kicking out people, who can’t afford to live in their neighborhood anymore, by raising property values, and letting richer people move in.
The definition google gives for gentrification is problematic, but also a constant theme that we see on the internet.
It’s a lot easier for rich people to kick lower- and middle-class people out of their homes when they feel that they’re “refining and improving a house or district”, rather than destroying families and communities. Just like it’s easier to discriminate against a group of people when you have moral “justification” for it, via the bible.
Euphemism of the word gentrification is almost as bad as Ben Carson saying slaves were immigrants….almost.
In the city I live in, Detroit, gentrification has taken over our downtown area. It started slowly at first, and throughout the past four years, I haven’t even been able to recognize my city. Downtown is seen as the new Detroit, which is quite ironic because I see it as the white Detroit.
Detroit is 83% black, so why is it that the part of Detroit that’s glorified? What about the rest of the city?
Still, nothing beats the crime of gentrification downtown. For a city 83% Black, you would think that Black-Owned businesses would be taking over the “new Detroit”, right? Wrong. In a report by NBC News, we see 5 of MANY stories regarding Black business owners forced out of their buildings because of the losses of their lease. It makes no sense that white people are able to come in and thrive off a people being kicked out of their own city!
So no, gentrification isn’t the “refining of a neighborhood”. Gentrification is the criminal act of putting a group of people out of the neighborhoods they worked so hard to build, in order to make money. It’s raising their cost of living/staying, so they HAVE to leave, and then giving it to richer people who can afford it. It’s completely disgusting and whitewashing it to make it easier to do is atrocious.
