Evaughn Foy…
Basically I feel like it’s wrong. Our Black people out here, our community, we shouldn’t have to go through that as far as taxes being raised on our properties and forcing us to move out of our communities, relocate. That is what they’re trying to do, so I don’t think its right. But I don’t believe it will ever diminish our culture.
Shamseddin Williams…
I don’t think it’s diminishing as much as it is changing from what it was when we grew up. The Black community used to be located in the inner city, we use to have a very vibrant and flourishing community that they use to call a village and now the Black community is pushed out in a way its being moved and put out into the outer areas where we have less of a say in things. We have less of a presence and those that are trying to hang on and have property are slowly being pushed out. So it is definitely changing the way the Black community is and where it is. How we respond, how we turn around and approach this is how we will survive. We are an adaptive people. We are able to overcome a lot of things.
Robert Johnson…
Yes it does diminish our community, but it doesn’t affect our culture, because if you raise the taxes in our community usually people end up selling their property or they can’t pay their property taxes so they end up losing their house making them sellout and then they’re pushing us out, way out of our communities. We’re moving way out and other cultures are moving in our community and taking over our property. But culture resides in the people and that can never be erased.
Tianna Fisher…
Yes I do think it is diminishing the Black community because our younger children are not able to see role models within the city or our community and so they don’t really have anyone who looks like them that they can relate to. And so, that’s problematic because they need know that they can do and be as effective in the community as African Americans. Role models make our culture.
Jullian Matthews…
Gentrification has been in play for a long time as long as the power structure is in need of property. Victimized by such greed are usually the poor or people of color occupying lands in which are convenvient to downtowns or city centers. Some like to say it’s the renovations of deteriorating properties when I think in reality it is moving people of color out of desired locations. You can even go so far as to say the efforts to take the land from the Native American was the first form of gentrification, I would even say colonization is a form of gentrification. But culture stems from the people you can’t take that away from us.
Kylia Spears…
I do believe that gentrification is diminishing the current Black communities which in turn dimimsh culture. But at the same time, I believe they’re also just moving them, their like pushing Black people to different areas of the city that we weren’t in before. Whether or not this is done purposefully I believe it is done purposefully.
Images by Aaron Allen
