Annotated Bibliography
Harlem has been known to contribute a large portion to black culture. It gave way to things like the Cotton Club, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Harlem Renaissance, and of course the Apollo. Big names in black culture and history like Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker or Langston Hughes all were tied to Harlem. The culture of Harlem is a colorful one. Culture are the arts, music, mannerisms, food, slang, and overall way of life of a group of people. It flows throughout communities and empowers them. Culture can be categorized as an energy that is created by the people of a particular area. Harlem’s culture is black culture which means its Hip Hop, R&B, jazz, graffiti, poetry, dialect and so much more. The culture of Harlem is one that is very black and proud. Harlem attracts people from all around and is part of what makes New York so culturally diverse. In recent years, however, gentrification coming from businesses and developers have threated that culture. Gentrification changes neighborhoods and drives the people of those communities out destroying the culture of those neighborhoods. Gentrification threatens the culture of Harlem and threatens all of New York City as well, whose culture would also be affected seeing as New York culture includes the cultures of each borough.
Clear signs of gentrification haven’t been around in Harlem though they became clearer about 10 years ago in 2007. Around my neighborhood in Harlem, which is called Sugar Hill, I started noticing small changes like certain businesses closing down that have been around for years and more and more people who looked nothing like me moving in around my neighborhood. I realized that prices for certain things that I was buying at my local bodegas started getting a bit pricier. Even the icey lady that used to sell iceys on the corner during the summer raised her prices from 50 cents for a cup to a dollar for the smallest size. Snacks in the stores got more expensive as time went on and I kept seeing white people from out of town moving in little by little. By the time I got to high school gentrification had already gained a small foothold in Harlem in the form of a couple of bars and new restaurants. Businesses trying to advertise themselves all throughout Harlem has happened for years though there haven’t been any businesses that would disrupt the culture of Harlem. It wasn’t until this year (2017) when a Wholefoods opened up. Since then there have been a much larger influx of white people than usual. The opening of Wholefoods was a major catalyst to the gentrification of Harlem. Wholefoods gave white people more of a reason to visit and/or live in Harlem. In photos taken by Camilo José Vergara of a corner in Harlem on 125th Street and Lenox Ave, which is usually filled with a lot of people, it is shown how that corner has changed since 1989 to 2017. (Bonanos, NYMag)
I’m not entirely shocked that this happened. Change happens everywhere, but even more so in a city. There are always so many people who pass by that corner in Harlem which means that more people would know about it and probably there would be a better chance at getting more customers to shop there. This was a smart business strategy putting this Wholefoods there. This would also attract more white people into the neighborhood, one whose old buildings are getting refurbished and getting ready for the right out of town customer to live in. Wholefoods being put in Harlem is all part of a ploy to get rich white people into the neighborhood. All of these things have been put into place for them to be attracted to Harlem and come and take it over. Through these pictures, we can see how gentrification works. That corner at first looked like a regular Harlem cornerback in 1989 and throughout the years we see how companies start to put their ads up for a few years but not steering too far from Harlem’s aesthetic. The Wholefoods completely fails to fit the look and feel of Harlem. Wholefoods, which is usually found downtown, being made in Harlem takes away from what Harlem’s culture is because of how Wholefoods is branded and perceived. These people coming into Harlem do not care about what culture or community Harlem has. They only care about money. If gentrification keeps infecting Harlem, 125th will soon become indistinguishable from somewhere like West 4th or any other place downtown.
The New York Magazine is a magazine that covers things like politics, fashion, entertainment and news. It mostly talks about things happening in New York. The magazine is said to be more left winged meaning they’d be more liberal. The writer of the NYMag article “From Alligator Shoes to Whole Foods: Watching One Harlem Corner Over 28 Years” Christopher Bonanos got his education at the John Hopkins University. He is an editor and was the author of Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous and Instant: The Story of Polaroid. He has a vast amount of experience in magazine making. The photographer Camilo José Vergara is also a writer who got his B.A. in sociology from the University of Notre Dame and M.A. in sociology at Columbia University. Some well-known pieces by him are The New American Ghetto, or American Ruins.
There are some people who say that gentrification can help neighborhoods. They say that gentrification helps “diversify” communities or make them more welcoming to all types of people. This doesn’t really help anyone, but the white gentrifiers. Gentrification makes areas more welcoming to white people and at the same time destroys the already existing culture of these now gentrified communities. As said by Malika Giddens, writer of the Ithacan opinion article Urban Gentrification Destroys Cultures and Communities,
“White gentrifiers want ‘Sex in the City.’ My culture is too much for them. Participating in a Puerto Rican community and learning the history behind the people that have always lived in the area is such a difficult a task that it has to change for those who can’t understand it. Gentrifiers want the authenticity of “exoticness” when it comes in a sushi roll or street cart empanada. Gentrification does not want me, personally.”
In this quote Giddens exposes gentrification for what it really is. She shows how gentrifiers don’t truly care or respect the culture of places. They only pick and choose what they like from the culture to keep. They’ll throw away whatever they feel is bad or not needed fully taking the power over the culture of the community away from the original denizens which is a sign that shows that the culture has been stripped from the area.
The Ithacan is a journalism website for Ithaca College students. It is also used as a platform for student journalists. The author of the article Malika Giddens received her Bachelor’s degree at Ithaca College for English Language and Literature was also a teaching assistant and was the Manager of Content and Social Innovation at Color of Change.
The reformation of Harlem is not for us. Us being the denizens of Harlem who originally lived here. It never has and it never will be. This thing with Whole Foods is a very big problem that a lot of people who aren’t from Harlem don’t get.
“For so many privileged New Yorkers, like James, Whole Foods is just the corner store. But among the black and working-class residents of Harlem, who have withstood red-lining and neglect, it might as well be Fortnum and Mason. To us, our Harlem is being remade, upgraded and transformed, just for them, for wealthier white people.” (NYTimes)
The reformation of Harlem isn’t something that could really help anyone who lives in Harlem for too long. A place like Whole Foods isn’t really cheap. So, the fact that people think that more things like it could actually help Harlem is ignorant. There may be some who can afford it in Harlem, but most can’t. If everything starts becoming just as expensive as a Whole Foods, it’s not going to benefit anyone but the gentrifiers.
The New York Times is a newspaper that covers the media, business, sports, movies and news. It was founded in 1851 and won 122 Pulitzer Prizes which is more than any other news organization. The author Michael Henry Adams is an expert with the architecture and culture of Harlem. He studied at Columbia University. He also wrote a book titled Style and Grace: African Americans at Home.
The gentrification of Harlem would destroy its culture completely. Everywhere in Harlem that is becoming gentrified looks nothing like what Harlem actually is. The culture of Harlem doesn’t. Each of these new bars and restaurants stick out in Harlem because they don’t fit Harlem’s aesthetic at all. A great example of gentrification completely changing an area’s aesthetic and culture is in Hoboken. Hoboken used to be filled with many tenements. When gentrification started, however, these tenements were set up in flames. This made more space for the developers to gentrify Hoboken. As said by Jorge Newbery of the Huffington Post:
“Historic townhouses are coveted by Wall Street tycoons and celebrities, with one residence recently selling for $6.5 million. The waterfront, which was once industrial, is now the hub of Hoboken’s nightlife. With clubs and restaurants overtaking Sinatra Drive and parks built atop the Hudson River, Hoboken’s shipping industry has been replaced by entertainment.”
Gentrification completely changes communities. It shows no mercy and helps no one but the upper class, gentrifiers and developers. In the case of Hoboken, it is seen that the culture and everything that once made the area what it was is now gone.
The Huffington Post was founded in 2005 and covers politics, news, and entertainment. Its articles are written by many people one of them being Jorge Newbery. Newbery is from Chicago, Illinois and is the Founder and CEO of the American Homeowner Preservation which helps Americans who have unaffordable debt. He is also the author of the books Burn Zones, Debt Cleanse, and Stories of the Indebted.
Gentrification in Harlem has been around for a while and its changed it for the worst. I only started noticing gentrification in my part of Harlem, which is known as Sugar Hill, around 2012 or 2013 when certain bodegas started closing and trendy bars started opening up. But apparently, it’s been happing for a while according to a Harlem denizen:
“When asked whether he remembers when white people started to move into the neighborhood, Carroll does not hesitate. ‘That happened in the 1990s. You started to see white women pushing their babies on the street. That’s when you knew it was changing,’ he says. ‘That was right around the time that Giuliani introduced his quality of life campaign,’ he says.
‘That’s when the chasing started. We would be chased around by police vans like apes and arrested. Have you seen Planet of the Apes? Yes? Just like that.’
With newly enforced loitering and vagrancy laws and the activation of the broken windows theory of policing, Carroll found that he could no longer do something that had been a signature of his everyday life on the block: sitting on the stoop and congregating outside with neighbors.” (The Guardian)
With Carroll’s testimony, it is seen that even small things like white women walking with their babies through Harlem can be seen as a sign of gentrification. With gentrification, there is no compromise as seen with this Harlem denizen. Gentrification the way it is now has no mercy. The goal of gentrification is to erase, rebuild and profit off of the area’s history and aesthetic. No matter how much people or gentrifiers more specifically, say that gentrification helps neighborhoods, it doesn’t. In the same article from the Guardian, this is shown.
“…the headquarters of the 26th police precinct are holding a community meeting: a representative of the New York City Department of parks and recreation highlights changes in Morningside Park: flowers growing, bushes being cut down to address an occasional nighttime population of homeless drug users, surveillance cameras installed, police monitoring.
“But what about the basketball courts,” one exasperated community member asks. “When are the basketball courts going to be done up? That’s what the kids want, they don’t care about flowers,” he says, referring to the vast community of children living in the nearby housing projects.
He is met with a blank stare and a muffled response. “You see what we have to deal with?” he says, turning to me, ushering his companions to the exit.” (The Guardian)
If gentrification were a joke places like Harlem and its denizens would be the butt of the joke. The gentrifiers never have and never in the foreseeable future will care about the original people who lived in the places that they gentrify. They only want to profit off of it. The way that gentrification works is very selfish seeing as gentrifiers and developers don’t take the integrity of places like Harlem into consideration. Most gentrifiers like the ones mentioned in the Guardian don’t even want to contribute or even think of contributing to the needs of the community already there. They would much rather clean things up in their own way by ridding the community of the little shops that have been around for years or kicking the lower class out of the only place they call home.
Gentrification is a virus to culture and it needs to be stopped. It’s obvious that culture is a part of every society. You can’t have a community of people without culture arising. Even though culture will always be in New York no matter how gentrified it gets, it won’t be the same culture as it was before. It won’t be a culture that everyone would be able to take part of because it will all be too expensive. It’ll be a culture that only the rich can enjoy. To keep this from happening we need to look after the culture of places that make New York what it is like Harlem for instance. Harlem gives flavor to New York and has a lot of black history such as hip hop, jazz, and art. People like Jelena Pasic work to help keep the culture in Harlem alive.
“As a business owner, she said, she sees it as her responsibility to contribute to Harlem’s culture. Most of her staff and managers live in the community, and Ms. Pasic, a native of Rab, Croatia, lived around the corner from the restaurant before a rent hike forced her to move to New Jersey. ‘I really try to live with the community that feeds me,’ said Ms. Pasic, who co-owns the restaurant with her business partner, Dardra Coaxum. ‘I have that respect just because I think it’s the right thing to do.’… ‘We as business owners have a big responsibility for cultural preservation,’ Ms. Pasic said.” (NYTimes student journalism)
The New York Times, which is a newspaper that covers the media, business, sports, movies, and news, has a journalism institute that is held once a year for students who are members of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists or the National Association of Black Journalists or students at HBCU’s. It is to help these students better themselves as journalists. The author of the aforementioned article Tyler Blint-Welsh is an Investigative Reporter at The Bangor Daily News. He got his education at Northeastern University for journalism.
Pasic serves as an example to how we should be bettering our communities. Harlem is being gentrified and instead of adding to that she helped bring back some of that Harlem flavor. If more people were to do stuff like this and invest their time and money into actually bettering the Harlem community, gentrification wouldn’t be able to do much to Harlem. The culture of Harlem is under attack and if more places like Harlem Shake were to arise, Harlem would have a fighting chance.
It is clear that gentrification is a problem and that it would change everything for Harlem and New York. But what is anyone doing about it? Many people aren’t doing much to keep the culture intact though there are some. If people from these communities that are at risk of gentrification were to band together, fight against it and find ways to prevent it like the artists in Oakland did, then gentrification won’t be able to do as much damage as its doing now. If left unchecked gentrification will eat up Harlem and what’s left of its culture. There are only a few places left that really make up New York City’s diverse culture and Harlem is one of them. Everywhere else is gentrified, getting gentrified or will be gentrified like Queens for example where there is talk of renaming Astoria “Astor” or 42nd street which has been gentrified for almost a century now or Brooklyn which was once a place that many people didn’t want to go to, but is now a place where hipsters are dying to visit and live in. The people from these gentrified areas and affected communities need to take action. In East Harlem where gentrification is at work, people are actively working to stop the spread of gentrification. It’s a movement called Landmark East Harlem.
“Now a group of concerned citizens is taking action to preserve the neighborhood’s vibrant Latin American spirit. While many are also involved in local coalitions and demonstrations and are vocally expressing their opposition to the city’s rezoning plans that would further gentrify the neighborhood, Landmark East Harlem is working quietly and methodically, seeking historic district and landmark status on properties across the neighborhood……The advantage to landmarking—aside from preserving cultural heritage and putting developers on hold for what could be years—is that a building’s exterior is preserved and renovations must adhere to the original look…Kathy Benson stresses that Landmark East Harlem also wants ‘to call the attention of the city, state, and national preservation entities to the other architectural, historical, and cultural treasures of the neighborhood. And we want developers to be aware that we value the look and feel of the neighborhood as it is, that we are actively seeking to preserve its treasures and that we invite well-designed, contextual new development that will enhance rather than destroy the community we love.’” (AlterNet)
AlterNet is known for being a news magazine that talks about news and politics like most news outlets do. It was a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute and is known to be left-wing biased. The author of the AlterNet article “How One Community Is Using a Surprising and Successful Tool to Fight Gentrification” Valerie Vande Panne is an award-winning journalist who founded an organization that gives out books to Detroit literacy programs. As said by her self-titled website “Her work has been featured in the Boston Phoenix, Columbia Journalism Review, Harvard Gazette, Harvard Law Today, Politico, Reuters, and Salon, among many other publications…She has served as a non-attorney member of the Drugs and the Law Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. She also managed the campaign office of Robert Morgenthau’s successful, final run for re-election as New York County (Manhattan) District Attorney.” (About Valerie Vanne Panne)
Things like what Landmark East Harlem is doing is what these places like Brooklyn or Astoria need to be doing to make sure that they stop gentrification. Gentrification eats away at culture and just proves that things in this society are made to please the upper-class. People take culture from the lower class to benefit themselves but don’t try to help lower class communities. Gentrification if not stopped will destroy Harlem’s culture and change New York City for good.
Citations
“About.” Valerie Vande Panne, 14 Aug. 2017, valerievandepanne.com/about-2/.
Adams, Michael Henry. “The End of Black Harlem.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 May 2016, www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-black-harlem.html?_r=1.
Blint-Welsh, Tyler, and Mariana Alfaro. “How Three Harlem Entrepreneurs Are Fighting Gentrification | The New York Times Student Journalism Institute.” New York City 2017 – The New York Times Student Journalism Institute, 1 June 2017, nyc17.nytimes-institute.com/2017/06/01/gentrification-harlem-entrepreneurs/.
Bonanos, Christopher “From Alligator Shoes to Whole Foods: Watching One Harlem Corner Over 28 Years.” Daily Intelligencer, 13 July 2017, nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/harlem-gentrification-whole-foods-vanishing-new-york.html.
Hackman, Rose. “What Will Happen When Harlem Becomes White?” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 May 2015, www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/13/harlem-gentrification-new-york-race-black-white.
Newbery, Jorge. “The Downsides of Gentrification: Displacement, Cultural Dismemberment, Death.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 25 Aug. 2016, www.huffingtonpost.com/jorge-newbery/the-downsides-of-gentrifi_b_11700476.html.
Panne, Valerie Vande. “How One Community Is Using a Surprising and Successful Tool to Fight Gentrification.” Alternet, 28 Sept. 2017, www.alternet.org/culture/housing-preservation-gentrification-east-harlem.
Webmaster. “Urban Gentrification Destroys Cultures and Communities.” The Ithacan, The Ithacan, theithacan.org/opinion/urban-gentrification-destroys-cultures-and-communities/.
