This film seems like a very worthy and important film that corrects a largely inaccurate picture of racial political and economic relationships in this country. And it's true loan practices both to businesses and housing have been highly racial in this country.  This also would be worthy of another film documentary.  However, I find it most unfortunate that reporter Angela Woodall lumps gentrification, a highly inaccurate and loose concept, into this important discussion.  In the first instance racism and bigotry specifically drove Americans of African American descent from their homes.  In the second instance it is the movement of capital in our country that has displaced thousands of Americans of all races and creeds from their homes as capital shifts geographically from different locations both inside metropolitan areas and out of them entirely.  Also It's unfortunate that while newspapers and their editors love to write articles about gentrification, they never seem to include the flight of capital out of manufacturing companies to third world companies in this definition.  If there were more employment opportunities available just maybe the high rents and prices of homes could be dealt with. Also, African American families in Oakland along with all other racial groups have been leaving voluntarily in record numbers to find better homes and schools outside of Oakland and Richmond.  Many parents do not want their children exposed to the violent and ghettoized culture Oakland presents which poses a threat first and foremost to young African American male youth.  This is hardly gentrification.  In fact thousands of people have been forced out of SF due to high rents in the past two decades, ot just the AFrican American community.  In fact record numbers of been forced out of the Bay Area altogether in search of homes and jobs.  This is not racism, this is plain ole capitalism.  But every time black people in Oakland are subject to the mechanisms of the marketplace, they scream "racism".  Many unemployed Black people in Oakland, unlike other racial groups, don't want to move to where the jobs are although working AFrican Americans are willing to move out for better housing and schools.  Meanwhile we see Mexican immigrants and illegals risking their lives getting to this country and moving all over the United States in search of opportunities for survival for themselves and their families back in Mexico whom they support. There are other  phenomena driving up the prices of homes and rental housing  here in Oakland as well. One factor is a  hugh subsidized rental market through section 8 housing.  If many private and public landlords were not subsidized at high market rents for dilapidated and aged housing, maybe rental prices would have shifted down.  The other is a federally de-regulated banking system in which thousands of mortgage companies sprang up fronting for the big banks with unethical and what should have been illegal loan practices. Lastly, on my block alone in Oakland there were 3 instances where younger African Americans in my age group could have bought their family homes from their aged parents.  The only impediment to their purchase of phenomenal deals in my flatlands neighborhoods was their drug addiction problems and being wedded to a welfare system which precluded them from going out into the job market and selling their labor for housing like most working people are forced to do. 

Rate this Topic:

1

2

3

4

5

No votes yet