Black neighborhoods in "Non-Black" Cities
- Thread starter Biscayne
- Start date
FruitOfTheVale
Superstar
Yup centered around Capitol Expressway, there's no real concentration in any one part of ESSJ though. ESSJ is dominated by Mexicans and Viets period.
One area worth mentioning though is Seaside in Monterrey (formerly East Monterrey), in the 90s it was around 20% black. Today it's less than half that, the community was definitely recognized in NorCal though.
^This dropped back in 91, the album cover photo was taken in front of the Del Monte Manors (low income housing) in Seaside.
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Erratic415
Superstar
FruitOfTheVale
Superstar
Yup they tore down most of West Point already. They're about to do the same thing to Sunnydale
AlbertPullhoez
The Takeover
, Eastside got no more projects. Gentrification a bytch
There's plenty of it. Had a "Harlem of the West" district and all that WAY back in the day like every other city out west. Alot of that history has gotten erased tho with the development of the gaslamp and the "east village". Plus that gentrification has been crossing the 5 into southeast for a while now. For what its worth, I wouldn't exactly chalk up Black folks leaving the city to gentrification.
FruitOfTheVale
Superstar
Had no idea Monterrey had a significant black populous.
Never heard of this rap group.
*Google's East Monterey*
Yup Seaside Posse was a dope group
Seaside actually made a good sized impact on the NorCal Hip Hop scene despite its small size, one of the most prominent managers in our scene (Seaside Stretch) is originally from there.
He was the head of the Town Thizzness label which put out a lot of Livewire's (Philthy Rich, Stalin, etc.) music in the late 2000s along with a lot of other Bay Area artists at the time. Stretch managed everyone from Mac Dre to Kreayshawn to Mistah FAB and still has a lot of pull in the West Coast scene, he's a dope music video director too. Some of his directing work:
FruitOfTheVale
Superstar
More Seaside rap:
Ceeza got some slaps, A.Steez is cool too.
Ceeza got some slaps, A.Steez is cool too.
Erratic415
Superstar
San Francisco has such extreme contrasts with poverty and wealth. Public housing is right across the street from Victorian Houses which go for millions.
It's always been like that, but with gentrification, it's even more so with the poor and rich living side-by-side.
It's always been like that, but with gentrification, it's even more so with the poor and rich living side-by-side.
FruitOfTheVale
Superstar
This is definitely true in the northern half of the City. SF is different from a lot of cities in that regard though because a lot of the projects were never integrated into the fabric of the city to begin with. They were "othered" by design. SF always had island-like concentrations of predominantly black and islander poverty even before gentrification... To the point that a lot of SF natives have literally never so much as driven past West Point, Harbor Rd, Potrero, Alemany, etc. other than seeing the last two from the adjacent freeways which in and of itself is highly
city planningReally though the Fillmore and the Mission are the only two hoods where the projects are actually on the same grid as the main neighborhood... Buchanan, Grove, Westside Courts, Eddy Rock, Army, etc. are all on the main grid and some of them are even located very close to business districts.
Lowkey one of the most overlooked examples of what happens when housing projects are actually integrated into a neighborhood's economy as the predominant low-income labor force is Chinatown. The Ping Yuen jects are right in the middle of the tourist zone and the majority of the residents are FOB Chinese. A lot of them get paid less than minimum wage (under the table) which in reality is sustainable because their rent is highly subsidized compared to the actual market rate for Chinatown. Tourist traps get their cheap labor and broke ass immigrants get their cheap housing.
Fillmore could have had a very similar community integration of the low income labor force but the neighborhood economy was tanked by the Hayes Valley freeway construction (1951) around the exact same time that they decided to use eminent domain to raze the homes of a significant portion of the black business owners and replace them with projects
Same with West Oakland and the BART construction.
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FruitOfTheVale
Superstar
EDIT: dbl post
FruitOfTheVale
Superstar
Come to think of it, is there a single other major city in America where the projects are "othered" the way they are in San Francisco where they're not on the city grid, surrounded by the freeway and far away from commercial districts? 
For reference I'm talking about something resembling Alemany:
The actual Bernal Heights neighborhood is up the hill and the Alemany projects are on the flats right next to the freeway (foreground). This complex is literally known as "The Black Hole" which is apt because there's only one way in/out and it's the only concentration of black people in Bernal Heights outside of the Holly Courts projects a couple blocks up the street. Are there any other low income complexes in other major American cities that mirror this level of separation from the same neighborhood? To the point where you can tell the government intentionally designed it to keep nikkas broke and out of sight
The Bottoms in Inglewood is the only one that comes to mind in LA, it definitely qualifies though. It's incredibly separated from the surrounding Inglewood area despite being right behind a busy intersection (Crenshaw & Century), you would never know it exists unless you hit the right onto Darby from Crenshaw thinking you was about to take the backway to Costco
I can't think of a single low income complex in Oakland, Seattle or Vegas that was clearly designed to tuck nikkas out of sight and out of mind... Seavey Circle in Sacramento is out the way but not to the extent that Alemany or The Bottoms are.
For that matter I've never seen no shyt like that in Philly, Chicago, Boston or New York either The obvious explanation is that the Bay built its projects near the ports/military bases where migrant Southern blacks were finding work. Alameda Point and Treasure Island have very similar low income buildings to the ones in Marin City and Hunters Point that are similarly predominantly black. The military chooses remote locations for strategic reasons which oddly enough was doubly convenient for them when they started testing nuclear weapons in Hunters Point and Treasure Island. Nobody cared that Hunters Point's infant mortality and cancer rates were 6x the city average even after the military admitted they were testing nukes (look up Superfund sites for more info) because the victims were black babies. It only became a problem when 40 years later real estate investors realized that the projects were sitting on prime waterfront and that the radiation would deter monied people from buying the cookie cutter condos they're building now
In other words this black poverty island shyt is a California thing
The vast majority of poor black neighborhoods in American cities were formerly white and middle/upper middle class before white flight because they were close to the jobs (i.e. inner city)... even the projects in most American cities were originally intended for poor whites to get on their feet. California (and especially San Francisco) actually went ahead and built ghettos strictly for nikkas 
Even more sad is that that shyt really worked, the black median household income in San Francisco city is $29,500... As opposed to $104,000 for whites.
Keep in mind that the national household median income for black families was $33,000 in 2012... How the fukk is nikkas in San Francisco making less than the national average when the majority of the country's black population is in the dirt cheap South?! Never mind that the economy in SF is the strongest it's ever been 
All that to say this... IDK if I can call Boston the most racist big city in America with a straight face. The economic racism in San Francisco is unlike anything I've seen in any comparably "cosmopolitan" major city. They got nikkas living in Alabama by the Bay frfr word to James Baldwin.
@Meh @Erratic415
For reference I'm talking about something resembling Alemany:
The actual Bernal Heights neighborhood is up the hill and the Alemany projects are on the flats right next to the freeway (foreground). This complex is literally known as "The Black Hole" which is apt because there's only one way in/out and it's the only concentration of black people in Bernal Heights outside of the Holly Courts projects a couple blocks up the street. Are there any other low income complexes in other major American cities that mirror this level of separation from the same neighborhood? To the point where you can tell the government intentionally designed it to keep nikkas broke and out of sight
The Bottoms in Inglewood is the only one that comes to mind in LA, it definitely qualifies though. It's incredibly separated from the surrounding Inglewood area despite being right behind a busy intersection (Crenshaw & Century), you would never know it exists unless you hit the right onto Darby from Crenshaw thinking you was about to take the backway to Costco
I can't think of a single low income complex in Oakland, Seattle or Vegas that was clearly designed to tuck nikkas out of sight and out of mind... Seavey Circle in Sacramento is out the way but not to the extent that Alemany or The Bottoms are.
For that matter I've never seen no shyt like that in Philly, Chicago, Boston or New York either
The obvious explanation is that the Bay built its projects near the ports/military bases where migrant Southern blacks were finding work. Alameda Point and Treasure Island have very similar low income buildings to the ones in Marin City and Hunters Point that are similarly predominantly black. The military chooses remote locations for strategic reasons which oddly enough was doubly convenient for them when they started testing nuclear weapons in Hunters Point and Treasure Island. Nobody cared that Hunters Point's infant mortality and cancer rates were 6x the city average even after the military admitted they were testing nukes (look up Superfund sites for more info) because the victims were black babies. It only became a problem when 40 years later real estate investors realized that the projects were sitting on prime waterfront and that the radiation would deter monied people from buying the cookie cutter condos they're building now In other words this black poverty island shyt is a California thing
The vast majority of poor black neighborhoods in American cities were formerly white and middle/upper middle class before white flight because they were close to the jobs (i.e. inner city)... even the projects in most American cities were originally intended for poor whites to get on their feet. California (and especially San Francisco) actually went ahead and built ghettos strictly for nikkas Even more sad is that that shyt really worked, the black median household income in San Francisco city is $29,500... As opposed to $104,000 for whites. Keep in mind that the national household median income for black families was $33,000 in 2012... How the fukk is nikkas in San Francisco making less than the national average when the majority of the country's black population is in the dirt cheap South?! Never mind that the economy in SF is the strongest it's ever been
All that to say this... IDK if I can call Boston the most racist big city in America with a straight face. The economic racism in San Francisco is unlike anything I've seen in any comparably "cosmopolitan" major city. They got nikkas living in Alabama by the Bay frfr word to James Baldwin.
@Meh @Erratic415
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