in which a lily-white harlem resident waxes philosophical on diversity and gentrification

At UW-Eau Claire, there is a lot of verbal wankery on the subject of diversity — why there isn't any, how they can get more of it, how they can change around their educational requirements to get students to think about it. But even so, the student body is still 93 percent white.

Well, now I live in central Harlem, in a neighborhood that 85 percent black, 14 percent Latino and 1 percent white. I *am* the diversity. It's a wee bit of culture shock.

When I came here, one of the movers asked me why I had decided to move to *this* part of town. (Well, because it's probably the only place in the city I can afford a nice 1-bedroom apartment in a well-maintained building and still make it to work in about 30 minutes door-to-door).

"Well ... usually certain groups of people live in certain areas of the city," the mover said.

Not being part of said "certain group" of people is definitely a new experience for me. Say you are a white person, living in a typical midsize, mostly white Midwestern town. You probably deny this to yourself, but when you walk down the street and you pass someone from a minority group, your eyes glance that way for a fraction of a second and a voice in the back of your head says, 'look, a black/Latino/Native American/whatever person.' Now imagine living on a major city street, going to the store, walking to the train, whatever, and getting that not-really-looking look from practically everybody that you pass. It's an adjustment if you've never been a minority. Actually, it's a lot like being in Spain was — minus the catcalls every five seconds.

It's not so much a question of safety, other than the obvious reservations I have about walking at late hours of the night through the neighborhood where "American Gangster" was filmed. I've been assured that all things considered it's a safe enough neighborhood. According to police precinct reports, it's more on par with the bulk of downtown Manhattan than with the Bronx, which is just across the Harlem River. And the super says in the eight years he's been in my building there's never been a break-in.

But there is a certain amount of racial tension involved, and that is compounded by the fact that people who are priced out of richer neighborhoods tend to equate "ungentrified" with "undiscovered," see the neighborhood as dangerous and rundown and in need of being fixed, and slowly push out the locals as if they were just in the way. (See the Village Voice piece The Second Battle for Bushwick if you really want to understand how this plays out.) Adding to that, in Harlem at least, Columbia University is buying up a bunch of real estate. From what I've gathered in my short time here thus far, the gentrification battlefront has effectively been pushed up from 96th street to 125th street.

Truly it's a double-edged sword — popularity of a neighborhood equals investment equals better facilities and often lower crime rates and the like. I'm not in the best situation to opine on gentrification because a. I haven't lived here before it took off and b. as a tenant of a management company that's buying up huge chunks of Harlem and upper Manhattan I'm part of the problem. But isn't there a way to improve a neighborhood and accommodate new residents without pushing the old ones out?

It's capitalism run amok, really. I don't think you can fight basic supply and demand without a. more people owning instead of renting, therefore not having to pay someone else skyrocketing amounts of money just to stay in their apartment and b. a serious crackdown on the kinds of unethical property management practices in the aforementioned Village Voice story, and/or c. regulations on landlords and businesses that many people would consider profoundly un-American. In that way I can see Manhattan as a microcosm of how the American free-market system will eventually cannibalize itself if left unchecked.

What boggles my mind about European urban development is that in so many places it manages to balance the past and the present — you can go to school in the very same building in which Inquisition prisoners were held 500 years ago, and big wealthy business chains can't swallow up the smaller ones just because they can afford to break the rules that confine their competitors.* Which requires not only some intervention from -- gasp -- democratic socialism, but the squelching of the colonize and conquer, destroy and rebuild, darwinist mindset that has fueled American history since the first white dudes set foot on this continent. Europe has a few centuries on us in the western-civilization business, and we could take a few hints from them on pacing ourselves.

*In Spain, for example, most businesses aren't allowed to be open on Sundays, and I believe there's some kind of regulation on closing for siesta. Though that made life a huge pain in the ass at times while I was in Valladolid, I think it was a small price to pay for keeping the city as close-knit as it was ... with the side effect of legislating a more relaxed way of life.

Your WTF for the day

There are no words for this:





Totally made up? That would be my guess, but Ellen DeGeneres proved me wrong.

I'm back ...

Welcome to the new and improved Hoty Takes Manhattan. I'm here for the long haul, and so is this blog — at least when I feel like updating it.

As a warning, this blog will not only be all things New York but my general-purpose ranting blog as well. So prepare yourself.