Not enuf is written a/b the copout & racism that has dominated much of urban planning theory re: high-opp hoods

Issue is nuanced but not if one understands the goal must be stabilization of BIPOC & preservation of their unique culture in a white-nation. https://shelterforce.org/2021/01/04/opportunity-areas-shouldnt-just-be-places-with-a-lot-of-white-people/

Of course more affluent white communities, especially those in diverse urban areas should be more economically & racially mixed. But that goal shouldn’t compete w/the goal of creating opportunity & recognizing the agency of BIPOC in the communities they’ve built.

The belief that for a poor BIPOC community to thrive one must bring in higher income residents & that poor ppl must move to higher income communities is inherently elitist & ultimately a copout to avoid addressing structural white supremacist parasitic capitalism & globalization.

When a reporter who has been following my work & the work of @crenshawsubway for over a decade interviewed me on the @DTCrenshaw & @liberty_clt she said: “this seems 2b where you’ve been going & what you’ve always done.”

I was like: glad to see someone from the outside gets it.

Establishing community standards, resisting out of scale development, fighting gentrification towers, maintaining/improving quality of life by fighting for project mitigations in a Black community is about resisting the structures that have inhibited Black self-determination.

It’s quite powerful work that many others have done and been doing long before I was born.

It recognizes that for descendants of formerly enslaved ppl living in America community-wealth building & community-control is essential in the pursuit of freedom.

There is abject failure 2 recognize this among many white liberals (especially YIMBY) & even many/most Black electeds.

And btw if the concept of keeping a Black community Blk in USA “sounds racist” to you, u need to do a bit more study to expand ur understanding of yt supremacy.