I’m Watching My Neighborhood Grow Whiter Through the Window
I wonder how much longer my 13-year-old Black son can run freely through a neighborhood that is growing whiter
Gentrification of the Black Beverly Hills did not start with Covid-19, but it feels like it. A slow whitening of Windsor Hills/View Park began in the late 1990s and then gathered steam during the Great Recession of 2008. Now, 12 years later, the area is teeming with baby strollers pushed by white hands. Before the world ground to a halt, I saw the white residents in passing — a wave here, a smile there. Though we shared a street, our lives remained separate. But then mid-March came and school closed. For the foreseeable future, we would be safer at home. The pandemic had not only brought sickness and death, but it also arrived with a Spike Lee Double Dolly shot that forced me to see our surroundings, that is, white neighbors, up close.
From the 1960s through the 1990s, Black families lived and loved in this bedroom community. I grew up here, knowing my neighbors well and taking comfort in the fact that they were watching out for us, even when we couldn’t see them. Now, I am the adult on the street, peeking between blinds, keeping an eye on the younger kids, and admonishing them to look before crossing the street. But I know I’m not the…
