Radio Renaissance - Jared Taylor - 'Gentrification' or 'White Flight': Whites Can't Win
Aired: 2021-03-22
Duration: 09:47


=== Gentrifying With A Sign (04:22) ===

[00:00:03]  Hello, I'm Jared Taylor with American Renaissance.
[00:00:08]  If you don't live in Colorado, you may not have heard of Ink.
[00:00:12]  It's a small chain of coffee shops with just 16 stores, all in Denver and Aspen.
[00:00:18]  Here's one of them.
[00:00:20]  Ink sells what it claims is super gourmet coffee from such places as Sumatra, Ethiopia, Peru.
[00:00:27]  Here's the inside of one of their stores.
[00:00:29]  Very swish, as you can see.
[00:00:32]  Well, three years ago, Inc.
[00:00:34]  decided to open a store in a part of Denver called Five Points.
[00:00:39]  It's not quite the posh locale Inc.
[00:00:42]  customers are used to, but Five Points is one of those formerly run-down parts of town that are on their way up.
[00:00:49]  A lot of blacks used to live there, but young single white people are moving in.
[00:00:55]  Well, all was well with Inc.
[00:00:57]  until just a few days ago, November 22nd.
[00:01:01]  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.
[00:01:14]  Nothing says gentrification like being able to order a cortado.
[00:01:20]  Inc. might as well have used the n-word.
[00:01:23]  Setting up shop in a dodgy part of town was one thing.
[00:01:27]  Actually calling it Gentrification was apparently a slap in the face for all non-white people.
[00:01:34]  If you spiff up a shabby white neighborhood, that's fine.
[00:01:38]  But if you spiff up a shabby diverse neighborhood, that's bad.
[00:01:43]  If rent and property taxes go up, that could force those authentic, vibrant blacks or Mexicans who live there out.
[00:01:52]  And that's very bad.
[00:01:55]  Doing it, though, is not so bad as admitting you're doing it.
[00:02:00]  Well, pictures of Ink's sign whizzed around the internet and caused great indignation.
[00:02:06]  Hundreds of people slammed the store on Facebook and Yelp.
[00:02:11]  Just one day after the sign went up, Thanksgiving Day, in fact, someone smashed one of the store's windows and vandalized the place.
[00:02:20]  As you can see, it now says, White Coffee.
[00:02:23]  It also says something in white letters that I don't understand, but I don't think it stands for friends always.
[00:02:32]  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.
[00:02:44]  It was like someone punched me in the heart, she added.
[00:02:49]  The NAACP issued a statement saying that the sign was, and I quote, Mocking and hurtful, especially to African Americans and other POC.
[00:03:01]  POC, of course, means people of color, which is not the same as colored people.
[00:03:07]  Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, who, as you can see, is black, called the sign very insensitive and disrespectful.
[00:03:15]  So far as I can tell, not one person has condemned what was actually a crime, smashing a window and spraying graffiti.
[00:03:24]  I guess that's nothing compared to the insensitive sign.
[00:03:29]  I bet the vandal could come out and brag about it and probably get the hero treatment.
[00:03:35]  Well, needless to say, Inc., the real victim, crawled.
[00:03:39]  I quote, Our bad joke was never meant to offend our vibrant and diverse community.
[00:03:46]  We should know better.
[00:03:48]  We hope you will forgive us.
[00:03:51]  Another statement said, we temporarily lost sight of what makes our community great.
[00:03:57]  Of course, once you've got Whitey on the hop, you never accept an apology.
[00:04:03]  The local POC organized demonstrations demanding that the coffee shop close down.
[00:04:10]  Nothing less will do.

=== Why Keep Us Out? (05:36) ===

[00:04:12]  This is one of at least two demonstrations, which, of course, attracted not just POC, but many virtuous white people.
[00:04:21]  Ever since the craziness started, the store has been shut.
[00:04:25]  Will it survive?
[00:04:27]  My guess is that it will, but only after the owners of the chain put $1 million into an anti-gentrification fund.
[00:04:37]  But let's take a look at five points.
[00:04:39]  At one time, it was majority black, and in the 1920s and 30s it was called the Harlem of the West.
[00:04:46]  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.
[00:04:59]  Many properties were abandoned.
[00:05:02]  So, what's this former haven of black vibrancy like today?
[00:05:08]  Only about 14,800 people live in five points.
[00:05:13]  And do you care to guess what percentage of those people are black?
[00:05:18]  60%?
[00:05:19]  30%?
[00:05:20]  In 2015, it was only 10.5%.
[00:05:24]  In 2015, the place was already 64.5% white, just shy of the 66% figure for the entire city of Denver.
[00:05:37]  The average household income in Five Points is $81,000, not that much less than the city average of $89,000.
[00:05:46]  And today, 90% of Denver's blacks don't even live in Five Points.
[00:05:51]  They live in other parts of town.
[00:05:53]  So, what's all the shouting about?
[00:05:57]  Ink is being dragged through the mud because it admitted to helping gentrify a neighborhood that is already two-thirds white.
[00:06:06]  Now, it's true that in 2015, there were 639 poor blacks living in Five Points.
[00:06:15]  Maybe they don't drink Cortados.
[00:06:17]  Maybe their rent will go up.
[00:06:19]  Maybe Inc.
[00:06:20]  is being insensitive to those 639 poor black people.
[00:06:25]  Except that there are more than twice as many poor whites living in Five Points.
[00:06:31]  Their rents could go up, too.
[00:06:34]  Of course, no one cares about them.
[00:06:37]  So, it's the usual story.
[00:06:40]  It's what blacks want that matters.
[00:06:43]  And just yesterday, there was another story about gentrification that sheds some light on the problem.
[00:06:50]  It was written by Erin Aubrey Kaplan.
[00:06:53]  And she's not just anybody.
[00:06:55]  She is a regular contributor to the opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times.
[00:07:01]  She lives in Inglewood.
[00:07:02]  Which is right next to Los Angeles Airport.
[00:07:05]  And she writes that 50 years ago, it was all white.
[00:07:10]  Then blacks moved in and the bigoted white people moved out.
[00:07:14]  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.
[00:07:26]  Now, let me quote Mrs. Kaplan.
[00:07:30]  Like it?
[00:07:32]  I felt a rush of resentment.
[00:07:34]  We will lose our space, our place.
[00:07:37]  Over the years, immigration and Latino growth remade traditionally black areas like South Central and Compton and Englewood, too.
[00:07:47]  But today's white influx feels particularly ominous.
[00:07:52]  The fact that whites are coming back is not, I fear, evidence of the meaningful integration that has long eluded us.
[00:08:00]  It's a warning that my black community is, once again, irretrievably at risk.
[00:08:09]  Well, thank you, Mrs. Kaplan, for such a clear statement.
[00:08:12]  You want to keep us out so you can keep your community black.
[00:08:17]  You don't much like Mexicans, but whites are particularly ominous.
[00:08:23]  And you say that whites won't bring meaningful integration.
[00:08:27]  Well, why not?
[00:08:29]  Well, because you apparently don't want it.
[00:08:32]  You want your own place just for black people.
[00:08:36]  Fifty years ago, it was racist for whites to want to keep Inglewood white.
[00:08:41]  But today, it's fine for blacks to want to keep it black.
[00:08:45]  In Five Points, even when blacks are just 10% of the neighborhood, it's fine for them to want any more of us.
[00:08:54]  Now, isn't that the story of the entire last half-century?
[00:08:59]  Whites are bad when they leave.
[00:09:01]  That's white flight.
[00:09:03]  And they're bad when they come back.
[00:09:05]  That's gentrification.
[00:09:07]  But there's an even more important lesson.
[00:09:10]  Blacks, like all non-whites, take it for granted they have interests as a group.
[00:09:16]  They are prepared to say, as a black or Hispanic or whatever, I want this for me and for my people.
[00:09:24]  White people better learn.
[00:09:25]  We need to say.
[00:09:27]  This is ours, and we intend to keep it.
[00:09:31]  If we don't, we won't lose just a coffee shop or a neighborhood.
[00:09:35]  We will lose our countries, our culture, our identities.
[00:09:41]  And no one will give them back.
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