gentrification
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Coffee Shop in NYC’s Gentrified Bed-Stuy Neighborhood Refused to Give Candy to Black Children on Halloween: Report
A café in the increasingly gentrified Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of New York City’s Brooklyn borough is looking real funny in the light after reportedly refusing to give candy to black children who came in to trick-or-treat on Halloween. The Strand Cafe is located at 492 Nostrand Avenue in the heart of historically black Bed-Stuy. Oma Holloway—co-chair…
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How I Lost My 13-Year War Against Starbucks
Really, this is all Dunkin’ Donuts’ fault. All I wanted was the oddly priced large vanilla chai latte—for some reason the large is priced at $2.09, a full 10 cents less than the small and $1.60 less than the medium; that’s all I wanted. But their machine was down. I still wanted my drink. And…
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‘I’m a Sex-Positive, Polyamorous Pansexual’: Spike Lee’s Nola Darling Is Back, Baby!
In what undoubtedly was a black woman ahead of her time, the character Nola Darling (played by Tracy Camilla Johns) was introduced to the world by Spike Lee as the lead in his very first film, 1986’s She’s Gotta Have It (Lee also faced some pushback for a problematic rape scene in it, a scene…
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Watch: Bullet Holes and Rosé: Exploiting Black Pain for Profit
Updated Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017, 2:52 p.m. EDT: Becca Brennan, the owner of Summerhill, plastered over the holes in the wall that caused a storm of controversy when she referred to them as “bullet holes” in a press release, according to Gothamist. The repairs happened late Tuesday night. At a town hall in July, Brennan…
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Judge of Characters: The Bodega App and Tyrese Make the World Ask, ‘Why?’
This week, the biggest question that’s being asked all over the internet is … why? Why are people trying to reinvent, aka gentrify, bodegas? And why is Tyrese pleading for the Rock not to shoot the Fast and the Furious spinoff? I don’t have the answers to these questions, but I do have some hilarious…
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The White People Are Coming! 6 Signs Your Neighborhood Is Being Gentrified
Centuries before anyone noticed Christopher Columbus wandering around the Bahamas searching for gold and a place to buy caramel decaf frappuccinos, wypipo had long been moving into brown neighborhoods and planting flags. It’s how apartheid started. It’s why people in Brazil speak Portuguese. It’s why the Native American genocide was rebranded as “manifest destiny.” Now…
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I’m Black, Middle-Class and Surrounded by Crime
For somebody with multiple degrees, I’ve been pretty crime adjacent for a significant portion of my adulthood. I’ve also had several petty crimes perpetrated against me or those in close proximity to me more times than you can shake a stick at. For instance, one summer day, I got home to my apartment (the apartments…
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Can Brooklyn, NY’s J’Ouvert Retain Its Traditional Spirit Under a New Security Crackdown?
In 1881, British colonial authorities in Trinidad attempted to suppress the Canboulay, a predawn ritual with drumming, horns, dancing and torchlit parades commemorating the end of the sugarcane harvest. When police showed up to stop the procession, revelers fought back and won the right to parade. The so-called Canboulay riots are now commemorated annually during…
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Join The Root in Miami for a Discussion on How Climate Change Is Affecting Black Communities
For years, gentrification has been changing and reshaping black communities across the country. But in Miami, gentrification includes another factor: climate change. In South Florida—where people of color were redlined into less valuable areas, away from the sandy, tropical beaches—sea levels are rising faster than normal, bringing regular coastal flooding. Now real estate investors and…
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Color of Climate: Meet a Power Player in Miami’s Fight Against Climate Gentrification
Valencia Gunder loves the 305. However, there’s one nickname she says she’s never used for her hometown of Miami—the Magic City. Though she’s lived there her whole life, the 33-year-old resident of Liberty City, a predominantly black and working-class neighborhood in northwest Miami, told The Root, “Maybe where I grew up at, it was never…