Saving Black Neighborhoods

The Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates uses humor to address the backlash against the gentrification of African-American neighborhoods. Suggested Reading Black TikTok Has Theories on Whether Taraji’s Daughter in ‘Straw’ Was Dead the Whole Time The Unbelievable Reasons Jury Deliberations in Diddy Trial Got off to a Rocky Start Have You Heard of The Tragic Story…

The Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates uses humor to address the backlash against the gentrification of African-American neighborhoods.

Video will return here when scrolled back into view
Trump’s Tariffs Might Stick Around. What Should We Buy Now?
Trump’s Tariffs Might Stick Around. What Should We Buy Now?

โ€ฆ It occurs to me that we really need a world with more murders, more failing schools, more grocery stores with rotting vegetables, more bodegas with old milk, more teen-pregnancy, more homeless, more crack, more heroin, more fathers on the lam, more disease, more joblessness, and generally, more death. And we need to concentrate every one of those those ills in black neighborhoods.

We have seen the enemy, and it is change. Clearly the only way to preserve black neighborhoods from the scourge of white people is to render them as post-Apocalypticย as possible. It's not even enough to roll them back to the days of Jim Crow โ€” that would mean an actual black middle class in Bed-Stuy and Columbia Heights, and great jazz clubs in Harlem.ย 

No. We need complete cultural and socialย depredation, a total breakdown of black humanity until our neighborhoods resemble something out of 28 Days Later. I am calling for theย Superpredators of Bill Bennett's negrophobic dreams to make themselves known. I am calling for the thugs of Katrina who raped and murdered babies in the Superdome into being. I am calling for Saturday Night Specials, Starter Jackets and Lottos โ€” the 80s on steroids, but without the great hip-hop.ย 

Read Ta-Nehisi Coates' complete column at the Atlantic.

Straight From The Root

Sign up for our free daily newsletter.