It seems like with every struggle the black community is hit with, there’s always something that damns us to the inevitable hell we constantly face. One of our biggest hurdles is escaping ghettos. Too many blacks feel as though there’s no way out. This ideal is pretty much true given the way the government finds ways to keep us there. Many people don’t even realize the changes until the damage is done. All we have is the following question: how did this happen?
The answers lie in the process of gentrification. According to Dictionary.com, gentrification is defined as “the process of renovation and revival of deteriorated urban neighborhoods by means of influx of more affluent residents, which results in increased property values and the displacing of lower-income families and small businesses”. The gentrification process takes place over the course of a couple of years. When pieces fall together, for many the process is life changing.
Gentrification is personal to me because the government is gentrifying my home. The city where I reside outside of college is currently in the process of determining what is to become of it with the upcoming election reaching its finale.
Lithonia, Georgia is an alright city. There’s enough to do what you have to do when you live there, but many of the residents aren’t happy with the resources available to them. To be fair, we do have the back end of a lot of things. Dekalb County, for instance, is one of the poorest school systems in the state of Georgia. The money in the schools is zero to none, and it seems like the teachers have given up. It makes your diploma mean hardly anything. When you graduate from low income high schools like mine, Arabia Mountain High School, it is harder for you to get into college. But if you live in the nicer areas by the mall and not next to the high school, your outlook is slightly better. Either way, nobody wants to be in Lithonia because there’s nothing there.
Over the course of the few years that I’ve been there, I figured it was alright aside from the school district. In the last two years, there have been constant renovations to Stonecrest Mall and the empty land as a means of bringing people back to the area. But here’s the issue: Lithonia has profitable area around the mall. To put it frankly, anything that’s not in the Stonecrest area ain’t sh*t. Lithonia’s mayor of 3 years, Deborah A. Jackson, wants to create Stonecrest City.
Stonecrest City is meant to be a profitable city where there is no tax increase, just an economic focus. Improvement in the education system will most likely exclude Lithonia High School because Stonecrest City will not expand its profits to that area. This will turn the high school into a remedial school.
There will be increased security in the area and recreational centers. While this all sounds good, this leaves the excluded area without anything. Eventually this area will look worse than it is and people who live there will be stuck there. Job opportunities will be limited, the housing market will continue to deteriorate, and so starts the area of the “hood.” The process of gentrification in this area will be finalized if the people vote yes. With misinformation, it’s easy for this plan to go through. Gentrification is condemning issues in the black community and for some of us, it’s closer than we may think.