Our Black Year (28 page)

Community Mart was in Austin, the same distressed neighborhood as J's, but the church next door, New Philadelphia Christian Ministries, owned it, and they also operated a soup kitchen and homeless shelter. To the hardworking people of the West Side, New Philadelphia's pastor, Bobby Butts, was a true hero. He took in drug addicts, at-risk youth,
and felons, and he helped them change their lives for the better. I really wanted to believe in the place and would have spent more time at Community Mart just to support Pastor Butts. But too many raggedy, unsteady-looking men always hung around the store and the area in general. John was so concerned that he wanted to inspect it before I went there by myself. After stopping at Community Mart on his way to an appointment downtown and checking out the men hanging around the store, John declared it a danger zone.

“Baby, if they were sitting on a bench reading a paper, or even waiting on a hot and a cot, that might be different,” he said. “But man oh man, when I got out of the car, they were sizing
me
up.”

I went anyway because I had no choice. One afternoon in the late fall I drove there to buy a few basics, but the milk cooler was empty. The cashier, a hulking teenager, said the delivery guy had missed last week's drop but was supposed to come today, except that he hadn't. We got to talking—him, mostly—and the kid told me about his life. He had been an abused foster child turned gangster until the pastor gave him a second chance. The story wasn't the only thing that stole my heart; he was so anxious to tell me about it. So when he said the milkman would probably be there in the next few hours and that I should drop by later that afternoon, I gave him my cell phone number and asked him to call me either way. Then I reached in my purse for a credit card to buy the couple of things in my basket.

“Cash or Link,” the cashier mumbled. “Cash or Link.”

I sighed and reached into my wallet for a few dollars.

About four hours later I drove back to Community Mart. At this time of year it gets dark pretty early, and I questioned my decision to go trekking back as the sun set just for a jug of milk. I knew John wouldn't be happy about it either. But I wanted to support an honorable venture and a fragile kid, and we needed milk.

I walked in and found no milk. My shoulders slumped. I sighed as I stared at that refrigerator case and thought about Pastor Butts, the church, the men outside, Karriem, John, the girls, and driving home without milk, past all those clean, well-stocked stores. I cursed under my
breath. I was about to walk over to the cashier to scold him for not calling me, but he was a long-winded kid and I just didn't have the energy for an extended encounter. I was done.

Then I remembered I had a Citgo gift card with some money left on it and that there was a Citgo station with a small convenience store a couple blocks away. I drove over there.

By this time it was dark, casting a fairly frightening aura over the place. I could taste the gas fumes. Like so many of these stations, unsettling characters were drifting in and out of the store and through the half-lit parking lot. The second I stepped from the car, some shabby, elderly guy hobbled over and started hassling me. He was shorter than me, missing teeth, and had an extreme, almost exaggerated limp. I could detect a fairly strong odor of what I thought was vomit. I felt sorry for him, thinking maybe he was a lost vet. But at that point, even if he was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, I didn't want to talk to him. I just wasn't in the mood.
Please, oh Lord,
I thought,
please don't let him bother me.

“Fittee fuh twunee,” he sputtered. “Fittee fuh twunee.”

I looked at him like he was speaking Mandarin. For a few seconds I couldn't figure out what the hell he was saying. Then it dawned on me.

Fifty for twenty. Fifty for twenty.

More victim than predator, the poor hustler was selling food stamps—$50 worth of food stamps for $20 cash—so he could buy liquor, which you cannot do with food stamps.

Dudes like him—and women too—roam the parking lots of retail food establishments in devastated urban landscapes across America. They find someone who looks like he or she doesn't rely on food stamps and then they make that someone a profitable proposition. Lots of people take up the offer, which only expedites the drunk/junkie/thief's downward spiral and helps entrench neighborhood rot. It makes me crazy.

I just stared at him. And then I let loose. That he was old, tiny, and harmless must have had something to do with my sudden burst of courage, that and the fact that I was beyond pissed.

“Do you think I'm going to give you
my
money so that you can go out and get drunk?” I yelled. “How stupid do I look?”

I pointed at the food stamps in his hands. “Why don't you quit hassling people and use those things for what you're supposed to use them for? Just for tonight, for a change,” I said. “Get yourself some food and take a break from the drinking. Just for one night. Okay, sir? Make an effort. Just this once.”

He didn't say anything, just looked at me with yellow, bloodshot eyes, and I knew he was gone, lost a long time ago, and I felt bad. But the ire wouldn't pass.

“Unbelievable.” I just about spit the words at him. “Get out of my way.”

I stomped past him and headed for the lights of the store. Feeling the anger begin to dissipate, I started babbling to myself about the miserable history and the dreadful current conditions that put this guy in this predicament: the racism, the poverty, the lack of jobs, the hopelessness. And I started to feel ashamed of myself for yelling at him.

Inside, the mart was filthy, impersonal, like some store you'd see in a war zone, which I guess wasn't all that far from the truth. The cashier was walled off by what looked to be six-inch-thick bulletproof glass. He spoke to customers through a speaker linked to a mike on his side of the barrier. The only thing close to actual contact could occur through a slot at the bottom of the glass where money exchanged hands.

I sighed, shook my head again, and went looking for milk and any other reasonably edible food. I did locate milk and Pop-Tarts and knew the girls would be excited about the real cheese I found. Near the line at the cashier, some large, menacing guy was speaking in a loud, deliberate tone, talking smack about “the A-rabs.” Of course, the cashier, who was probably the owner or a relative, looked Middle Eastern.

“I don't want to be givin' my money to these people,” Angry Brutha said. It was obvious why he was upset. Like a lot of Black folks in these areas, he was disgusted with how his neighborhood looked and how everyone in it was poor and suffering. Seeing these thriving business owners making money from him and his community, coupled with the certainty that they did not employ locals, live, or otherwise reinvest here, fueled an ugly anger. “For all I know, they're turnin' right around and givin' it to Osama. Shit.”

As I stood in line and tried to tune out his tirade, all I could think was,
What are you doing to change that, asshole?
Angry Brutha was still going on about “motherfuckin' terrorists” when I reached the front of the line. I used my gas card, and the cashier slipped me some plastic bags through the slot at the bottom of the glass.

Angry Brutha abruptly stopped his rant and came over. He started helping me bag my groceries. I just looked at him and thought,
So much is wrong here.
His small gesture of kindness, helpful as it was, seemed to serve as more evidence of my growing belief that the situation is intractable. Here is this angry, hate-filled man who has stopped to help me. Despite his animosity, he clearly has a basic desire to lend a hand. I'm sure he has a sense of community spirit too, somewhere deep within him, and yet he is so frustrated. He's expending so much energy on the bitterness that he is incapable of focusing on the bigger issues.

Or maybe he isn't. Maybe he understands but he's overwhelmed. As much as his behavior infuriated me, I got it. In fact, he and I might not be all that different after all.

I trudged back to my car, dropped the groceries in the backseat, and drove home, all the while thinking that what we're doing isn't going to make a difference. The Community Mart will probably be closed in a month, and why am I helping that place, anyway? I don't want it to grow. The lost brothers and sisters who wander in and out of that place, other shops like it, and the miserable Citgo will always be there. Everything is so messed up and has been for so long. Once home, I walked in the door and collapsed in John's arms, sobbing.

That time of year, maybe more than at any other point in our odyssey, was full of contradictions. One moment I'd be foraging for food in a frozen, gray urban landscape. The next moment I'd be attending or planning an event at a swanky establishment. Our latest was another wine tasting and fund-raiser, envisioned as an EE victory party, to be held in December in Bronzeville, the South Side neighborhood known in the early twentieth century as the Black Metropolis. The neighborhood became a
haven for thousands of African Americans fleeing the hostilities of the South. Over the decades it developed into a vibrant community, home to some of the most famous African Americans, including Joe Louis, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ida B. Wells, and Andrew “Rube” Foster, founder of the Negro National Baseball League. At that time, apart from those folks, Bronzeville supported several Black newspapers, 731 businesses—including several Black banks and seven insurance companies—106 lawyers, 192 churches, and one of the top Black hospitals in the country. By 1929 Bronzeville Blacks had accumulated real estate holdings totaling $100 million.

After World War II, however, Bronzeville started slipping, in part because of less restrictive housing elsewhere in the Chicago area, and the community became one of those rough, somewhat deserted sections of town. Things started picking up again in the mid-1990s, when folks began to appreciate its undervalued real estate, battered but beautiful houses, and its proximity to downtown, McCormick Place, the University of Chicago, US Cellular Field, and the beaches along Lake Michigan. That residents had easy access to a pair of major expressways didn't hurt either. All of that blended together to make Bronzeville a textbook example of gentrification, one of the thornier issues for Black America.

In Chicago much of the gentrification of the 1990s first occurred in neighborhoods like Bronzeville, places close to the Loop that were low-income and predominantly Black. That revitalization sparked a huge jump in home prices. According to Derek S. Hyra, an associate professor at Virginia Tech University who studies gentrification in Chicago, “Between 1990 and 2000, real estate prices in Douglas and Grand Boulevard, the two contiguous districts that make up Bronzeville, rose 67 and 192 percent, respectively.”

The population of Bronzeville, while still 92 percent Black, has become increasingly White. In 1990 census figures showed that a total of 2.5 percent of the community's population of 66,549 was White; by 2000, when Bronzeville's population actually shrank to 54,476, the White population grew to 4 percent. Some research suggests the White population is now closer to 6.6 percent.

Though we're all for diversity, the mix doesn't necessarily mean that Whites are being inclusive and welcoming Blacks to their neighborhoods. Rather, what seems to be happening is that Whites are coming to an all-Black neighborhood on its way “up” because of the amenities it offers.

The problem, according to Professor Hyra, is that “we typically see whites moving in and taking over all the public spaces and putting [in] their own cultural values, and making the community their own, as opposed to integrating the values of individuals who have lived in these communities.” Professor Hyra and other experts have noted that retail growth in urban areas is occurring where the White population is rising. The research says that those merchants are following the money. I say that they are following White money.

And it's not only middle- and upper-class Whites who are elbowing out lower-income Blacks; it's also middle- and upper-class Blacks too. In fact, researchers suggest that middle-class Blacks are playing a larger role than Whites in driving out lower-income Blacks from once-impoverished neighborhoods like Bronzeville. Members of the Black middle class have had their options limited due to discrimination from banks and realtors, what scholar Sheryll Cashin calls “integration exhaustion.” As a consequence, those Blacks are moving to poorer, predominantly African American neighborhoods and exerting their influence.

When wealthier newcomers push for economic growth so that property values will rise and more upscale businesses and restaurants will be lured to the area, it's often done with complete disregard for the original residents. Large financial institutions, government agencies, and land developers also influence the changes that occur in a neighborhood. According to Professor Hyra, “it is undisputable that the black middle class and their preferences for ‘community improvement' are associated with rising property values and the displacement of the poor.”