gentrification is “negro removal”: a parasitically vicious attack against poc communities

By Kwame Shakir, AFROPUNK Contributor

One of the biggest misconceptions about gentrification today is that it’s the “revitalization” of urban communities which is not true because in reality, gentrification is really the forceable negro removal from urban communities by any means necessary.

Historically and today, there’s a more vicious version of “urban renewal” taking place in urban areas across the country and it’s called gentrification and it comes in several different forms.

James Baldwin, a popular figure in the 1960s once famously said that “urban renewal is negro removal” and his famous statement is so true today in the modern day age of social media and YouTube.

Urban areas historically and today across this country have been reduced to ash in the form of “urban renewal” aka gentrification and big development in the form of highways, sports stadiums, parks, etc.

Gentrification is also reflective of The Two Americas in which the white community is living at the expense of the poor and oppressed black community and this is reflective of the parasitic relationship between the parasite (whites) that suck the blood, labor, resources, and wealth from its host (black people) under the current social system.

One example of “urban renewal” in the form of gentrification was the destruction of a prosperous urban community here in Montgomery, Alabama in the early 1960s by state government officials w/ the complicity of the city government to pave way for The I-85 Interstate.

This prosperous urban community had urban owned business, schools, churches, and community centers and it was reduced to ash by the construction of The I-85 interstates that ran right through that particular urban community and many of the people that helped organized the year long Montgomery Bus Boycott were forcibly dispersed throughout the city as a result.

Gentrification isn’t just happening here in Montgomery, Alabama through “code enforcements” and police containment, but it’s also happening in other major Alabama cities like Birmingham and Huntsville. Gentrification is extremely vicious and it requires an extreme amount of violence to carry out the negro removal scheme because it parasitically devours urban communities and kills urban people.

These big real estate developers and and predatory gentrifying schemers insultingly call our community “untapped resources”, so they buy up all the land in our community, then build in our community and then they think, “How do we remove the victims of the looting away from the parasites that have the stolen loot, so they puppet master the corrupt city officials to push more police containment and police violence in our community so that they would feel comfortable living in our community and this is why police containment and gentrification go hand-to-hand and that’s why Freddie Gray, Mike Brown, Rekia Boyd, Korryn Gaines, Tamir Rice, Dominque Battle, Laniyah Miller, Ashaunti Butler, Laquan MacDonald, Rekia Boyd, and even here in Montgomery, Alabama, Greg Gunn had to die to clear the way for gentrification.

Gentrification is a parasitically vicious attack on urban communities across the country that comes in many different ways.

1. When an urban homeowner sees that their rent is going up so much that they can no longer afford to pay it, they get forcibly kicked out of their own home.

2. When an elderly urban people who have been living in their homes for decades can’t get certain portions of their home fixed on, they get slapped with code enforcements which also facilitates the process of getting them out of their home. And many elderly urban people here in Montgomery, Alabama have been kicked out of their homes because of these “code enforcement” violations.

3. When schools in urban areas that are deliberately underfunded, understaffed, and have poor education closed down by city governments, this also helps facilitate the process by city governments of allowing big developers and predatory gentrifying schemers to come in and gentrify those urban areas out of existence. An example of this is that over this past decade, more than a total of 100 schools in urban areas in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit we’re deliberately closed by those city governments that will allow big developers and predatory gentrifying schemers to come in and gentrify those areas out of existence

4. Police containment is also part of gentrification because with the increase of gentrification also brings heavy police containment in urban communities that have also led to police violence against urban people that causes some to be demoralized then later being kicked out of their own communities by big developers and predatory gentrifying schemers so they can buy abandoned homes and lots on the low and sell it high to other big developers, parasitic white business owners, & white homeowners. This is the why gentrification and police containment go hand-in-hand. An example of this happened recently to an 11 year old African child that was viciously assaulted by the pigs down in Troy, Alabama which is about an hour away from Montgomery, but another example was the recent vicious police violence against “The St. Pete 3” in St. Petersburg, Florida. Not only did these two incidents happen to continue the vicious and brutal police containment of our community, but specifically to clear the way for gentrification.

5. One of the common forms of gentrification that’s going on right now is in the form of gerrymandering and it’s when city/state governments deliberately remove urban areas from a particular district and replace it with suburban areas which in turn strips the political power away from our community.

6. Urban residents are also being forcibly removed from their homes in order to obtain so-called “affordable housing” that mayors deliberately try to paint over as a “decrease in poverty” when in fact, it’s moving urban people to different cities so that city governments won’t have to account for them.

7. When urban people are policed more, ticketed more, harassed more, stopped n’ frisked more, incarcerated more, and gunned down in the streets more, that’s all because of the rise of gentrification in urban areas across the country.

8. Along with parasitic white businesses, parasitic petty merchants are beacons of gentrification in our community because they are notorious for disrespecting urban women, having nasty stores, having food that’s just as nasty as jail/prison food, and they are also very notorious selling drug paraphernalia to underage urban kids. Also parasitic white businesses and parasitic petty merchants are deliberately put into urban communities with the intention of increasing property values of urban homes so that they they can’t afford to pay the rent anymore, so they get deliberately priced out of their homes.

9. Some of the main reasons why I’m against the white LGBTQ flag is because it not only represents the police containment and police violence, but it’s also been used as a cover by them to also gentrify our community because the white LGBTQ community are very notorious for their role in the gentrification of urban communities across the country by coming into “bad neighborhoods” and turning them into upscale “gayborhoods”.

10. How does horizontal violence a part of gentrification? The answer is this: It’s a part of gentrification because it’s colonial state imposed violence against the urban community that gets wiped out through the guns and the illegal drug economy imposed on the urban community and then that allows for big developers, land speculators, and gentrifiers to come in and gentrify those areas out of existence to make it more appealing to the rich colonial elitists via lavish upscale gentrified neighborhoods.

Gentrification is like a deadly parasitic virus that enters your body and then sucks the life out of you.

When you hear the terms “urban revitalization” and “urban redevelopment”, just know that those are code words for negro removal.

The Conclusion – Some of the main ways that this parasitic attack of gentrification in urban communities can stop is to not only put rent control measures in place, but also reclaiming our communities by buying up as many empty homes and lots as possible.