are usually the term NIMBY not in my
backyard they’re characterized as a
group of individuals who have the
propensity to oppose new developments in
their community they are spunky yet
passionate group to say the least and
they often represent a generational
voice that has been victimized by the
process of gentrification and yes their
experience was real yes they were
displaced and yes they were replaced by
middle-class white families and
businesses and yes they were primarily
members of african-american families and
communities and as a result this
generation has developed an emotional
connection to the process of
gentrification versus a strategic one
they have become risk-averse and fearful
of change in essence they have lost at
the game of gentrification as a third
generation community builder I’ve had
several encounters with limpy’s at
community meetings and public hearings
who have wrongfully accused my family of
gentrifying the community the community
we live in by the way they have
passionately opposed our developments
versus support my family’s dedication to
providing quality housing and
homeownership opportunities to members
of our community and you know it often
amazes me how the voice of my generation
is rarely in the room or even being
heard at these meetings so I started to
think I bet if my peers better
understood the concept of wealth
creation and the importance of our
economic and cultural mobility then we
would have a different perception of
gentrification than that of our parents
or even our grandparents we could
understand that gentrification is
something not necessarily to oppose all
the time but instead something to
embrace prepare for strategize around
invest in and redefine so if you don’t
mind I like to speak to a particular
demographic no offense to any other
generation I like to speak to my pee
members of my group Generation X that
generation that has directly benefited
from the civil rights movement but are
now taking care of our aging baby boomer
parents that generation that has been
educated and offered opportunity of
access to predominant white institutions
and Ivy League colleges and who have
succeeded in becoming doctors lawyers
and even mayors councilmen and
congressmen that old-school R&B real
hip-hop generation who have become the
new millionaires and soon-to-be
billionaires
their generation of husbands wives
babies daddies and single moms who have
given birth to today’s millennial I want
to speak particularly to you and the
goal of my talk today is to not only
offer you a paradigm shift as it relates
to gentrification
but to also offer you some real gain on
how to capitalize on it now I respect
and appreciate that our parents and
grandparents were preoccupied with
boycotts and giving up their lives so
that we can enjoy the civil liberties we
have today but what I wish they had
enough energy and knowledge to do was to
pass down the game consciously and
willingly to pass the baton to drop some
pearls to consciously educate their
children on the correlation between
culture wealth and politics and how to
not only create but recreate black wall
streets all over the country like our
nation’s Chinatown’s Korea towns and
little Ethiopians where the dollar and
the culture recycle intergenerationally
now before I drop this game there are
two very important questions that I’d
like to ask of my peers and members of
my community first question they even
know about black Wall Street do you even
know that we once owned our own economic
cultural space that we claimed as our
own we were said to have owned 600
businesses 21 churches 21 restaurants 30
grocery stores six
private airplanes to movie theaters a
hospital a bank our own bus and school
system for it all to be tragically
burned down in less than 24 hours due to
white hate envy and institutionalized
racism do you even know it’s bit of
history don’t worry if you didn’t I
didn’t learn about black Wall Street
till after earning a bachelor’s degree
from UCLA and a master’s degree in
psychology and now to my second question
do we even want to learn how to recreate
Wall Street is it really important for
us to have an economic cultural space
that we can claim as our own are we
truly committed to creating sustaining
and recycling the black dollar and our
cultural competency in our community for
generations because if you haven’t
noticed
ginger education doesn’t really happen
in Chinatown
Koreatown or call on the west side well
yes members of these communities do get
displaced but somehow the culture and
the economics seem to remain the same
how is that I believe it’s that these
communities all have a cultural
commitment and willingness to maintain
an economic space that they can claim as
their own so much so that even if they
don’t live in those respective
communities there is an inherent
commitment and willingness to support it
both socially and economically it’s why
as we as black people when we talk about
gentrification it’s with a negative
connotation or from a victim’s mentality
because gentrification revitalization
urban renewal no matter what you want to
call it it’s not necessarily a bad thing
but I guess it is if you see it from the
paradigm of the victim and not be Victor
now let me back up and first define
gentrification that might help
according to Webster gentrification is
the process of renewal and rebuilding
accompanying an influx of middle-class
or affluent people into deteriorate
areas which often displaces poorer
residents okay a Wikipedia kept it 100
gentrification is a trend in urban
neighborhoods that increases property
values and displaces lower income
families and communities with an
increased share in wealthier residents
and businesses it refers to a shift in
an urban community lifestyle that often
displaces poor residents hmm now why
does Wikipedia defined gentrification as
a shift in an urban community lifestyle
and we all know what they mean by urban
in my humble opinion the difference
between these two definitions is that
one is factual and the other is a
paradigm because the truth of the matter
is education really is just the process
of rebuilding that often displaces poor
residents so how we now allowed it to
become defined as a shift in our urban
community lifestyle so again I ask you
do we really want to learn how to
recreate black Wall Street for today’s
and tomorrow’s generation whose fault is
this
how did gentrification now become
defined as a shift in our urban
community lifestyle when did this happen
and how did this happen I would say that
is our own fault while we may say we
want an economic space that we can claim
as our own our actions speak otherwise
because when we leave the community we
really leave the community but why
nobody knows our housing retail business
and/or educational needs better than we
do but why when we get a little money we
move out of the community and start
investing our dollars in some other
communities legacy and we wonder why the
dollar said to recycle in the black
community
for less than an hour so if we want to
recreate black Wall Street and build
legacies for today’s generation I have a
few steps and in a my humble opinion
these are the steps that we need to take
in order to win at the game of
gentrification and I will use the term
wealth the acronym wealth because in
order for us to win we have to have a
long term wealth building strategy and
mindset W willingness we have to be
willing to mobilize the black dollar
simply put if we’re going to create a
strong economic base the bite dollar has
to stay in the black community oh and by
the way burning our communities down is
not an option II evolved we have to have
an evolution of the mind we have to
begin to increase our financial literacy
skills our business acumen and customer
service skills our multicultural
networks and our level of engagement in
local political and community processes
because as many of us know and
understand our true power is in our
voice our vote and our dollar a agenda
do we even have a black agenda and if so
can someone please tell me what it is
because from my vantage point our issues
supersede police brutality or yes I
acknowledge that black lives do matter
but what I know is that black legacies
leave hope in an order for us to win we
have to create and support an agenda
that’s going to sustain the black
community for generations l legacy
simply put we have to want to leave one
socially economically culturally but why
we do decide to leave our communities
and it’s ok to leave but why when we do
decide to leave we sell our family homes
the birth of our legacies to the highest
bidder versus the family with the
cultural connectivity because as I
mentioned
like legacies leave hope and our family
homes are the foundation of our cultural
legacies team tres no matter what you’ve
been told white folks ice ain’t
necessarily coder so we have to begin to
trust each other enough to share our
money and pull together our resources
which will require a new meaning of
Black Friday
and lastly H hope and as our first black
president Barack Obama said in his book
The Audacity of Hope we have to continue
to hope in the face of difficulty hope
in the face of uncertainty the audacity
of hope in the end this is God’s
greatest gift to us the bedrock of this
nation a belief and things not seen a
belief that better days are ahead and I
will conclude with my rules to winning
at the game of justification for the
next generation with his speech from the
2011 Congressional Black Caucus dinner
when he told black America it’s time to
take the slippers off put on our
marching shoes and shake it off stop
complaining stop grumbling stop crying
because we will press on but we have
much work to do so to my peers it’s our
time it’s our time to win at the game of
gentrification and not allow it to
continue to victimize us like it did our
parents or even our grandparents we have
to begin to see value in our own
backyards and not let gentrification be
defined as a shift in our urban
community lifestyle let’s instead
embrace it prepare for it strategize
around it invest in it and redefine it
for legacies and generations to come
thank you [Applause]