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March 22, 2021 - Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor
09:47
'Gentrification' or 'White Flight': Whites Can't Win
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Time Text
Gentrifying With A Sign 00:04:22
Hello, I'm Jared Taylor with American Renaissance.
If you don't live in Colorado, you may not have heard of Ink.
It's a small chain of coffee shops with just 16 stores, all in Denver and Aspen.
Here's one of them.
Ink sells what it claims is super gourmet coffee from such places as Sumatra, Ethiopia, Peru.
Here's the inside of one of their stores.
Very swish, as you can see.
Well, three years ago, Inc.
decided to open a store in a part of Denver called Five Points.
It's not quite the posh locale Inc.
customers are used to, but Five Points is one of those formerly run-down parts of town that are on their way up.
A lot of blacks used to live there, but young single white people are moving in.
Well, all was well with Inc.
until just a few days ago, November 22nd.
That day, the Five Points store put up a sign that said,"Happily gentrifying the neighborhood since 2014." The other side of the sign really rubbed it in.
Nothing says gentrification like being able to order a cortado.
Inc. might as well have used the n-word.
Setting up shop in a dodgy part of town was one thing.
Actually calling it Gentrification was apparently a slap in the face for all non-white people.
If you spiff up a shabby white neighborhood, that's fine.
But if you spiff up a shabby diverse neighborhood, that's bad.
If rent and property taxes go up, that could force those authentic, vibrant blacks or Mexicans who live there out.
And that's very bad.
Doing it, though, is not so bad as admitting you're doing it.
Well, pictures of Ink's sign whizzed around the internet and caused great indignation.
Hundreds of people slammed the store on Facebook and Yelp.
Just one day after the sign went up, Thanksgiving Day, in fact, someone smashed one of the store's windows and vandalized the place.
As you can see, it now says, White Coffee.
It also says something in white letters that I don't understand, but I don't think it stands for friends always.
One black woman who grew up in the neighborhood says the ink sign is, quote, making light of something that affects communities of color all over the world.
It was like someone punched me in the heart, she added.
The NAACP issued a statement saying that the sign was, and I quote, Mocking and hurtful, especially to African Americans and other POC.
POC, of course, means people of color, which is not the same as colored people.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, who, as you can see, is black, called the sign very insensitive and disrespectful.
So far as I can tell, not one person has condemned what was actually a crime, smashing a window and spraying graffiti.
I guess that's nothing compared to the insensitive sign.
I bet the vandal could come out and brag about it and probably get the hero treatment.
Well, needless to say, Inc., the real victim, crawled.
I quote, Our bad joke was never meant to offend our vibrant and diverse community.
We should know better.
We hope you will forgive us.
Another statement said, we temporarily lost sight of what makes our community great.
Of course, once you've got Whitey on the hop, you never accept an apology.
The local POC organized demonstrations demanding that the coffee shop close down.
Nothing less will do.
Why Keep Us Out? 00:05:36
This is one of at least two demonstrations, which, of course, attracted not just POC, but many virtuous white people.
Ever since the craziness started, the store has been shut.
Will it survive?
My guess is that it will, but only after the owners of the chain put $1 million into an anti-gentrification fund.
But let's take a look at five points.
At one time, it was majority black, and in the 1920s and 30s it was called the Harlem of the West.
But then, and I'm quoting Wikipedia, the Five Points community suffered from the late 1950s through the late 1990s because of drugs, crime, and urban flight.
Many properties were abandoned.
So, what's this former haven of black vibrancy like today?
Only about 14,800 people live in five points.
And do you care to guess what percentage of those people are black?
60%?
30%?
In 2015, it was only 10.5%.
In 2015, the place was already 64.5% white, just shy of the 66% figure for the entire city of Denver.
The average household income in Five Points is $81,000, not that much less than the city average of $89,000.
And today, 90% of Denver's blacks don't even live in Five Points.
They live in other parts of town.
So, what's all the shouting about?
Ink is being dragged through the mud because it admitted to helping gentrify a neighborhood that is already two-thirds white.
Now, it's true that in 2015, there were 639 poor blacks living in Five Points.
Maybe they don't drink Cortados.
Maybe their rent will go up.
Maybe Inc.
is being insensitive to those 639 poor black people.
Except that there are more than twice as many poor whites living in Five Points.
Their rents could go up, too.
Of course, no one cares about them.
So, it's the usual story.
It's what blacks want that matters.
And just yesterday, there was another story about gentrification that sheds some light on the problem.
It was written by Erin Aubrey Kaplan.
And she's not just anybody.
She is a regular contributor to the opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times.
She lives in Inglewood.
Which is right next to Los Angeles Airport.
And she writes that 50 years ago, it was all white.
Then blacks moved in and the bigoted white people moved out.
Mrs. Kaplan writes that a couple of weeks ago, she was out walking her dog and she met a young white woman who explained that she and her husband had just moved into Inglewood and they like it.
Now, let me quote Mrs. Kaplan.
Like it?
I felt a rush of resentment.
We will lose our space, our place.
Over the years, immigration and Latino growth remade traditionally black areas like South Central and Compton and Englewood, too.
But today's white influx feels particularly ominous.
The fact that whites are coming back is not, I fear, evidence of the meaningful integration that has long eluded us.
It's a warning that my black community is, once again, irretrievably at risk.
Well, thank you, Mrs. Kaplan, for such a clear statement.
You want to keep us out so you can keep your community black.
You don't much like Mexicans, but whites are particularly ominous.
And you say that whites won't bring meaningful integration.
Well, why not?
Well, because you apparently don't want it.
You want your own place just for black people.
Fifty years ago, it was racist for whites to want to keep Inglewood white.
But today, it's fine for blacks to want to keep it black.
In Five Points, even when blacks are just 10% of the neighborhood, it's fine for them to want any more of us.
Now, isn't that the story of the entire last half-century?
Whites are bad when they leave.
That's white flight.
And they're bad when they come back.
That's gentrification.
But there's an even more important lesson.
Blacks, like all non-whites, take it for granted they have interests as a group.
They are prepared to say, as a black or Hispanic or whatever, I want this for me and for my people.
White people better learn.
We need to say.
This is ours, and we intend to keep it.
If we don't, we won't lose just a coffee shop or a neighborhood.
We will lose our countries, our culture, our identities.
And no one will give them back.
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