The Racists Fucks in my Building
Sun_Fortune
1,374 Posts
About a week ago I noticed a sign in the lobby of my building that said the following:
"Summer is here again and so are the criminals. If you see anything, call the cops. Let's keep the Hoods in the Hood." Mind you, I live a block a way from the Marcy projects in one of those converted loft buildings in Bushwick. We moved into to their hood.
Then last night, I saw that someone wrote "KKK" in black marker in the hallway on the wall. I circled it in red paint pen and told the person to reveal himself. Then this morning, I see another "KKK" grafito. Next to it, the same person wrote "Practice Racism." I cant handle this kind of shit in my building and am ready to stab somebody. This ironic hipster racism is so bad it fucking hurts me to the core. Don't they teach you history at Bennington???
"Summer is here again and so are the criminals. If you see anything, call the cops. Let's keep the Hoods in the Hood." Mind you, I live a block a way from the Marcy projects in one of those converted loft buildings in Bushwick. We moved into to their hood.
Then last night, I saw that someone wrote "KKK" in black marker in the hallway on the wall. I circled it in red paint pen and told the person to reveal himself. Then this morning, I see another "KKK" grafito. Next to it, the same person wrote "Practice Racism." I cant handle this kind of shit in my building and am ready to stab somebody. This ironic hipster racism is so bad it fucking hurts me to the core. Don't they teach you history at Bennington???
Comments
Is writing "KKK" and "Practice Racism" really "ironic"? Frankly, I'm missing the irony.
WTF yall living in Bushwick for anyway? I can think of three or four other gully hoods that I'd live in before the 'Wick...
No doubt, thanks for the reality check. My girlf and I moved into the first place we found and gave it little thought. We're moving out. But, as a jew, I find KKK graffitos in my building personally offesnisve. I realize I'm being a bit of a hypocrite about all this shit, as I am part of the probelm at this moment, but thats still no excuse for racism.
More like not part of the solution...
Not saying you shouldn't be offended though.
I'm part of the problem becasue I moved into a neighborhood that is growing only due to gentrification. I falied to research what I would be supporting by moving into this neighborhood on the more affluent side of town. The gentrification that the landlords are hoping for indirectly promotes racism. I shouldnt support such a thing.
What, my post on this board isn;t part of the solution?
Yeah man, Bushwick??
[smugness]build your own apartment on a block that is zoned M-1/M-2. That's about the only way you can live in N. Brooklyn and not be part of the problem of gentrification[/smugness]
Although, maybe we are all doing the Ricans a favor by making them move to little Billiamsburg in Miami. NYC is falling down.
But the racism thing, I find an amazing number of college-educated whites (ie, yuppies) who I work with in IT and design industries would basically have loved pre-Mandela South Africa. They want their own walled little ghettos in neighborhoods that are not theirs. Once you're in private the conversations can make me very uncomfortable: "These people" =
Blacks
Mexicans
Ricans
Afganis
Iraqis
Homeless
This is basically why we put up with murdering "these" people overseas. Means there's less of them trying to come here and take our jobs/women/healthcare.
Also P.B.R., Trucker caps, Lynyrd Skynyrd fits in there as well somehow. Not a good look.
I wasn't trying to offend anyone. That shouldn't have come off offensive. He just seems like a positive person and I don't see why he shouldn't be in a certain community. I suppose I should keep out of all this since I'm not familiar with the area.
what is the solution?
the way I'm reading this is 'white people should stay in white neighborhoods'...
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Nope. That's not really how NYC works. But one thing that locals have said to me is they welcome change and development but they don't like how white people look straight through them, and when they do get noticed, it's because whites think they are there to deliver food or fix the plumbing.
It's a basic lack of respect for human beings.
The solution is not to ever use Fresh Direct. Don't even think about it.
I don't really see how being a person who moved into a building that isn't government subsidized really puts him in any sort of negative light. People act like gentrification is so evil, but I hate to drop this bomb on people: nothing is going to happen unless there is money to be made. No one is going to upgrade a neighborhood for free. In a lot of neighborhoods gentrification is what's driving the deconcentration of the poor - not to run them out, but eliminate huge pockets of people who only interact with people of their same economic level, which just reinforces lack of education, etc.
I think the point is to have mixed income neighborhoods which give examples of upward mobility. So, in a way, perhaps he's doing the community a service by sticking himself there.
And this could be anyone, not necessarily a Jewish guy.
As far as some racist scribbling, frustrating maybe, but that's just life. All they do is probably scribble. And I hate to drop this bomb on people, but minorities talk as much racist junk as anyone else. Get over it.
Not at all.
You know what? I would fucking LOVE it if white folks would move into fucked up neighborhoods filled with impoverished Blacks and Puerto Ricans and actually make it better for THEM. Invest in the neighborhood, not just their loft space. Open businesses that actually welcome the primary residents of the neighborhood. Actually work on behalf of the neighborhood rather than remolding it to fit their image and lifestyle. That would be BEAUTIFUL.
But that's not what happens. What happens is white folks move to the city, find some piece of land previously too dangerous, polluted, run down, or some combination of the three to be settled. And they just turn it into their own private hipster circle jerk. Bunch of kids who move to the most diverse place on earth to surround themselves with others just like them and meanwhile take over neighborhoods without one thought or care for the people there before. They don't talk to the residents, they don't spend money with their businesses, and they call the cops on anyone who is threatening to them (regardless of whether the threat is real or imagined). Shit, they don't even cop from the neighborhood drug dealers because they're worried that they'll get got (well, they're right - they would, the way they act).
White folks in 2005 are feeling themselves so hard that they've decided all that civil rights work their parents did in the 60s is over, maaan. Besides, they've got "art projects" to attend to.
Yep Paycheck,
Pseudo-liberals are open-minded toward diversity but don't want the "undesirables" (insert favorite minority group) living next to them. I find them more offensive than Redneck Bob who openly hates niggas. At least he has the balls to be honest about it and let's you know who you're dealing with!!! I'll take good ole' southern racism over the guised, covert form prevalent in the Northeast and Midwest anytime. I'm sure Yusef Hawkins would agree.
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
Jesus man I don't even know what to say about this
can white people ever win with you JP? seems like you got young white folks lookin like eastern european gypsies, unwanted by anyone. When I was apartment hunting I purposely went looking for the ghetto areas, not to be ironic but to be affordable.
Guz, I think you need to read a little closer on what he's saying before you take it personal. WHITE PEOPLE are not the problem. It's the mentality(which, unfortunately, a lot of White folks insist is their birthright,IMO)that maintains that because they live there, it's THEIRS, as opposed to a neighborhood they share, good AND BAD. And that gentrification relies on an idea that it is better to have more "new" folks than old, and in most case that means "see ya" to most minority groups who don't have the juice to stay and paricipate in a given neighborhood any longer. It's a complex issue, not just down to Black and White, and I think Paychex just grazed the surface, but I guess I didn't see an anti-white thing there.
I know for me, my wife and I specifically looked for affordability, as well as an area that WASN'T gentrifying at a crazy rate. Luckily we found a house in a community basing it's development on the arts, and in Maryland that doesn't translate into expressly White hipsters, but a variety of people from a lot of different backgrounds.
Personally I thought JP hit the nail on the head, but what you say about money is true. But in this country race is really a shortcut to dealing with money/class. I mean there's asian yuppies moving into Greenpoint and displacing Poles, but at the end of the day being white in this country is one hell of an advantage in life.
And Grafwritah, your "positive role models" for success in the ghettos is pretty patronising, sort of like something Alan Keyes would say. But maybe you're right. If there were just enough ambitious white folk then maybe the kids in North Brooklyn wouldn't have the nation's highest rate of asthma.
Like I said before, if you move here and shop Fresh Direct, you are a self-absorbed asshole yuppie. Move here and try to make the pie higher, then kudos to you.
Karlito - I am only bitter because the people getting screwed here are the same as always - the poor, the Black/brown, the renters, those in debt, etc. Real estate developers aren't making anyone rich except themselves! That is funny. Again, you have to understand, I am talking about New York City specifically, where people are getting cold calls at 2 am and Sunday am house calls from guys with thousands in cash, trying to buy up their property. I don't know what goes on in Arizona.
I don't know how anyone could see this as anything but more exploitation of the poor and powerless.
This is baseless mumbo-jumbo.
Cities pay more to the federal gubmint than they get back. And the brunt of federal, local, and sales tax burden is shared by middle income and lower income people who spend the majority of their pay on rent, food, bills.
Landlords here are scum and don't redevelop shit.
Inner city redevelopment is paid for by "incentives" which is my and your taxes, and the taxes of those who will soon be priced out.
First off, yes, hipsters are moving into below-code, unzoned, infested, etc buildings. Every crappy neighborhood I've lived in has been run by slumlords. I had roaches and mice in every apartment until I moved to nicer digs.
Second off, how is it a good thing to buy up property in the ghetto, condominiumize it, renovate it, kick out the businesses surrounding it, and rent it/sell it for a small fortune? That doesn't bring money into the inner city. It destroys the inner city (the trend is, poor people move further and further outwards, basically creating impoverished and isolated suburbs).
I think you have your heart in the right place but you totally misunderstand this situation.
"Lets get these inner city streets clean for decent white folks!"
what is this Fresh Direct thing that is inspiring so much bitterness? a veggie delivery service?
Before I left NYC after 9/11( the building I worked in was at 22 Cortlandt if that means anything to y'all Noo Yawkers) I had lived in Bed-Stuy for years( on Marcus Garvey near Fulton), for all I know it could be Williamsburg jr over there by now( but I somehow doubt it) - other than Ital Shack takeout & Yemeni deli food I had to drive over to Ft Greene if I wanted some decent groceries. Sorry, but an all Goya & sugared cereal diet just doesn't cut it.
All this talk of Asthma & Marcy reminds me of Jay Z "cough up a lung where I'm from, Marcy son, ain't nothin nice..."
This is it. In 20 years this is what the new America will be looking more like. But will it flip back the other way again?