I need your help here with a seemingly intractable problem. You see I'm reading a lot about the evils of White Flight which it seems is a Very Bad Thing, having a dreadful impact on the vibrants left behind. Whites apparently 'take all the jobs with them' while property prices and local tax revenues collapse with their departure. Meanwhile the unfortunate vibrants left behind "suffer from" all kinds of pathologies like collapsing infrastructure, murder, assault, robbery and drug addiction. Strangely enough the identity of those making the Left Behind suffer is never made clear. I wonder could it be the suburban Whites sneaking back in at night? Who knows?
So that's one thing. Now the other concerns gentrification. This refers to the practise whereby Whites, presumably touched by the suffering of the homeboys, leave their comfy suburbs and return to the city. You'd imagine, given the calamities of White Flight, its reversal would be greeted with joyous outpourings from the Left Behind. But no. It seems that gentrification is also a Very Bad Thing. Why? Apparently it leads to the "forced disenfranchisement and displacement of poor and working class people from the spaces and places in which they have legitimate social and historical claims and brings new standards in consumption, particularly in the form of excess and superfluity." And latte at $5 a cup.
Oh dear. So we have black 'community leaders' bemoaning the flight of White residents from their cities. And then bemoaning their return as well. I have to concede I'm puzzled.