My Detroit vs. New Detroit

I was born in Detroit, Mich. Although my parents made the decision to move my family to the city’s outskirts, much of my life, growing up, was spent in Detroit.

From visiting my great grandmother in the Detroit Edison district to riding the people mover downtown. Detroit was a rough city but even I can never deny that it is mine.

Ever since I’ve made residence in Texas, I come home and I can not help but grow very leery of my vastly unrecognizable city. Like so many cities in America, Detroit is at the mercy of heavy gentrification. Cities like Chocoale City AKA Washingotn DC, Oakland California, San Francisco, Brooklyn, Harlem, Houston, and Philadelphia have experienced heavy gentrifying having changing faces and different incomes.

Gentrification has become a dirty word. It’s the evil seed of economic progress. The process usually gives birth to the economic push out of black and poor people. It will leave the city more modern and fit to serve serve the new incomers.

The problem with progress is that the new comers usually come in and wipe out neighborhoods through steeply raised property taxes and exorbitant rent. They are no longer homes of family that have been there for generations. They become the old but new thing that millennial a thrive on. I truly struggle with enjoying the newness of Detroit cause I love it but I hate it. To come into my city and be treated with racism and micro aggression s while I’m patroning a restaurant. Meanwhile native surburbanites sit with a ‘Detroit vs Everybody’ shirt on as if they aren’t two generations removed from the city. The grandchildren of the White Flight that took place in the 1950s and 1960s are back in the blackest and brownest cities to make claim.

The progress is not the problem but the exclusion of native Detroiters in that progress without it being spelled out is the problems As much as I love adorable pie shops, vegan burgers, and outdoor reggae bands, I don’t want black peopls to be the miss or on the enjoying it all.

For anyone from the major cities that once held a very large black population but is now witnessing the economic pushout, recognize the progress but resist by becoming involved in that progress. It is inaffective to turn away and dismiss your hometown because it has become unrecognizeable.

Stay proud and engage in its new progress.

Probably gonna fix this post later *

*Stay Curious|Stay Nourished

#teaforthequeen #Detroit