The Edge Becomes the Center

by DW Gibson

  This workshop was run by three white girls in their twenties, teaching old black women in their sixties how to cook.

  Shatia holds her breath for a moment, letting the image settle: three young white women instructing a group of aging black women on the elusive art of cooking. Then she explodes with laughter.

  The idea they put out there was we’re not going to teach you how to cook, because we already assume you can do that, but we’re going to teach you how to incorporate healthier items into your ingredient repertoire. That’s what they said they were doing. But then it’s these three white girls, and they say, “Oh, can we get anyone to volunteer to help with the cutting of the onions?”

  I think they were making jambalaya.

  So this woman gets up and she says, “Sure I’ll help you with the onions.”

  She’s this older woman—like fifties, sixties, can’t tell which but she’s up there—and she starts cutting the onion and the girl’s like, “No no, no—that’s not how you cut an onion.”

  And the older woman goes, “Woman, I’ve been cutting onions for thirty years. I’ve been cutting onions since before you were even born. I know how to cut an onion!”

  That was the most condescending thing I’ve ever heard. I would never think to tell a woman, one of my elders, how to cut an onion. I’d be looking to her to teach me things. Even if I assume she doesn’t eat healthily, at least she knows how to cook. That’s a big source of pride.

  I think there have been long-standing stereotypes and ideas about seeing a white face as the authority—and the only authority. There needs to be some measures for correcting that, for saying, “There are people like you who know things. There are experts who look like you.” It’s that same idea of telling a little black boy that he could be president because: look, there’s somebody that looks like you. I think that should start on a local level. And I’m not going to say that these girls didn’t know what they’re talking about, that they aren’t suited to the task, but I think it’s important for everyone to know that people who look like them have important roles and they’re doing things and they’re making changes and they’re leaders in certain ways. Because a lot of people don’t feel like the black population gives a shit. A lot of people feel like the black population is lacking leaders, lacking people who are involved. I think that workshop might have been more appropriately led by a group of women of color, or a group of men of color, or a group of men and women of color.

  It isn’t something that you should manufacture. You shouldn’t have affirmative action with this formula where you say, “Well, you know, all of our workshops are sixty percent this.” I think it’s something you tailor to your audiences. Today we have A, B, C people coming. Let’s think about what that means. Let’s think about how we can make this the best it can be for them. That should be something that’s constantly in the forefront of your mind when you educate a group of people. What would be best for them? What do they need to see? Or even ask them! I think it’s another condescending thing to say, “I’m going to go in and teach them.” Find out what they want to be taught. I don’t feel that happens very often.

  When I got involved in activism, I just assumed white people do everything. “There’s not going to be many people like me, not very many black people. They don’t do this.” And I knew better! As someone who prides myself on being open-minded and educated, it’s surprising how easy it is to fall into stereotypes. I know of many, many, many amazing black leaders throughout history and even currently but still I catch myself with those thoughts sometimes. Does that make any sense? I can’t really explain the contradictions. I knew there were people of color that existed in my community and in the larger community of New York and also America but I walked in saying to myself that I was going to be the only one. It’s just a thing you have in the back of your head. It’s ridiculous but you still feel it.

  I think that where the disconnect comes in is that black leaders are not widely publicized, they’re kind of behind the scenes and no one is connecting the dots. So you’ll have one person in East New York doing one great work, and then you’ll have a person in Bed-Stuy doing another great work, and there’s not much cross-referencing of these resources and ideas.

  One of my ambitions is figuring out a way to create a coalition of these leaders that is very public and very present. How’s that going to happen? No idea! But it’s going to happen. I shouldn’t have to scour the earth looking to find my people.

  In a rapidly changing landscape, the search for “my people”—a community united by a shared sensibility or a common aesthetic or a vision for what a neighborhood can become—often feels especially urgent. In the 1970s, many new Brooklyn residents began to identify themselves with the moniker “urban Thoreaus” (rather than “gentrifiers”). Regardless of each person’s longevity in a neighborhood—a month or five generations—there is often the desire to feed off the electricity of others, or, in the case of Shatia, to harness disparate currents, new and old, running throughout the borough.

  When I was growing up here, we always lived in the part of Brooklyn people called Stuyvesant Heights. That’s where all the really beautiful original brownstones are and a lot of gorgeous architecture. And that’s where a lot of the wealthier residents lived. So I grew up in this little pocket on my mother’s side. They are significantly wealthier than my dad’s side. My great-aunt on my mom’s side of the family, she owned a brownstone before she passed away. Estimated value maybe like $1.8 million. She was packed with money. My dad’s side of the family is lower working class. My experience in Bed-Stuy has always been kind of weird because when I was with my mom’s family I stayed very insulated from the world at large. And then being with my dad’s side on the weekends, I realized: oh shit, there are poor people and Bed-Stuy’s a lot bigger than these fifteen blocks that my mom’s side of the family tries to keep me contained in. So I’ve always had this weird sense of wealthy vs. poor and being a part of both worlds. Once the influx of wealthy started coming into Bed-Stuy, that didn’t really faze me because I already knew there were pockets that existed. They’d already been here. Just not in such large numbers and not in this take-over mentality. Plus all the wealthy people I knew when I was a kid were black.

  She laughs and refills her glass with wine, a more modest pour—not long now before she starts with her homework. Her son is draining the bathwater, inching toward bed.

  I really started to notice when I would walk to the train and there were more white faces than black faces. That’s when it became real to me. But that’s also when I became aware that I had a very skewed view of gentrification because I never thought of black wealthy people as gentrifiers. It always had this racial connotation to it. And I woke up and realized that gentrification is a class issue, it’s not a race issue, and it took all the white faces to move in for it to occur to me that gentrification has been occurring for a very long time, it’s just now it has a white face.

  Right now my world is in chaos, I have to tell you, because I have so many competing ideas of what this all means. If I was on one side of the fence it would be so much easier to deal with this. If I was just a wealthy white girl, or a wealthy black girl, moving to a neighborhood, I could take a stance. If I was just a poor resident I could take a stance. But I come from a unique position of knowing both sides—knowing a bunch of sides.

  It is refreshing to hear Shatia shift from the idea of “both sides” to a more complicated story—that of multiple perspectives. Gentrification is often saddled with an us vs. them framework, with “us” and “them” redefined ad infinitum—no two people ever talking about the exact same thing when it comes down to what “we” want and what “they” are doing wrong. Most of the time this idiosyncratic bifurcation is, as Shatia puts it, about class: wealthy vs. poor with everyone on either side of a centerline. But Shatia’s own experiences, the contradictory spaces she lives in, obliterate that clear line. As Neil Smith puts it in The New Urban Frontier, “Many peo
ple occupy ‘contradictory class’ positions; the source of contradiction … might involve anything from the occupation of an individual, to the level of class struggle in a given period. Classes are always in the process of constitution.”

  Shoni and I, our wealth has fluctuated. When I was in fashion we were what Obama calls the middle class, the $200,000 or more, we were there. Then I decided to be a crazy person who leaves all that and works with my hands in the dirt and, well, we’re still middle class but our household income is less than what it was.

  And when me and Sean’s dad were together, when we were first starting out, I was fiercely stubborn in the idea that I didn’t want family help. So we lived in a shelter. I know what it’s like to live in a shelter for three months. I know so many perspectives and you would think that would be something that helped but it just confuses me. ’Cause I actually don’t know how to feel about it all.

  Even outside of myself I have friends all over the spectrum. A lot of my friends are people that moved into the neighborhood recently and they’re considered the problem. But I love them. And they’re all really invested in their community and you can’t really hold them to blame for being successful. One thing I hear is all this “rich this,” or “wealthy that” or “you make more so you think you’re better.” I would hate for someone to begrudge me for being economically successful! Why wouldn’t you just be happy that I made it?

  Then I started to realize that maybe that isn’t the issue. Maybe the negative impact of gentrification has more to do with the disengagement of the people who are moving in. So I started to hone in on what I saw as the target of my anger. I found out it’s not so much the neighborhood changing and displacing people, which is a legitimate problem that I’m angry about, but I think my biggest problem is people who move here just because the rent is cheap and they see this as a pit stop to wherever their path is in life. They decide to come here but they decide to not be fully invested in their community. So they come here like we have a little more money, we’re driving rents up, we’re not going to be involved, we’re going to walk down the street with our headphones. We’re just here to find the cool bars and restaurants, and we’re not really engaged in the larger community. Those are the people I’m angry at.

  I refuse to wear headphones.

  I’ve started going on this campaign where if I’m walking and I notice that you have your headphones on, I’ll step in front of you and say, “Look up!”

  She laughs.

  And I’ll say, “Hi, how are you? How’s your day going?”

  And the reactions have been hilarious. Some people jump. Because sometimes I’ll jump when I approach them and go—she stands to demonstrate, springing forward with both feet—“LOOK UP!”

  I told my husband about it. I said, “So I’ve started yelling at people on the street.”

  And he was like, “What’re you talking about?” I told him what I was doing. And he said, “No. There is no way. I know you’ve done some ridiculous shit but this is just—you’re going above and beyond.”

  And I said, “I feel really passionate about this and I’m going to continue to yell at people on the street. If you don’t look up, I’m going to yell at you to look up.” I think he only halfway believed me.

  So we were on the way to this friend’s house, maybe last week or the week before, and I did it to somebody. And he said, “How has no one punched you in the face yet?”

  She laughs.

  But I haven’t gotten any negative reactions.

  She laughs again.

  For me it’s principle. When you’re walking down the street, no one wants to be invisible. Look people in the eye. Just look and nod. Smile. I don’t know—frown. I don’t give a shit. Look at me and acknowledge that I’m existing and that I’m walking past you. Something to acknowledge that we are here. We are existing in the space together. That’s a phenomenal thing. Just the idea that two people are sharing a space at any given time deserves acknowledgement.

  7.

  I have taken note that our shared spaces tend to have one thing in common: they offer refreshment. It can be beer, or coffee, or water, but the general principle holds firm across class, geography, religion, and history. Whether it’s a South Texas icehouse in the first half of the twentieth century or the break room water cooler in the second half of the same century, or a British coffeehouse three hundred years earlier, the experience of occupying these spaces with a refreshment is restorative and comforting—maybe even enlightening. We like to gather wherever beverages are involved. Even in the present, when our definition of “community” has less to do with sharing physical space and more to do with sharing virtual space, we still shuffle into darkened rooms and huddle around espresso machines and beer taps, if only to commune with whatever device ferries us to the internet.

  Tarek Ismail, however, just put his phone away in the pocket of his pants. And his bright blue headphones are wrapped in their cord and placed at the corner of the table where we sit. He has just swooped into his seat at Patisserie Des Ambassades, a French-African bakery in Harlem on a stretch of Frederick Douglass Boulevard peppered with new restaurants and bars and coffee shops that border spots that have held steady for ten or twenty or a hundred years.

  I arrived early, and I’m already halfway through my coffee, but Tarek has yet to get the staff’s attention. The service is shoddy but nobody cares because everyone is in a good mood. Tarek has lived in the neighborhood for three years and he picked the place. He did not pick the Starbucks a few blocks down, nor did he pick the place directly across the street from the Starbucks called Double Dutch, which offers Wi-Fi, shots pulled at 204 degrees (we are, after all, at sea level), and natural sweeteners.

  If you go into Double Dutch, it’s kind of out of touch with the history of the neighborhood. But it’s packed every single day. What’s interesting is that it’s owned by these two guys that own two other coffee shops uptown. Both of them are real estate agents and they opened these coffee shops to drum up business in the neighborhood. So it all sort of feeds on itself in this way that’s uncomfortable.

  Originally from Toledo, Ohio, Tarek is twenty-nine. His mother was born in the United States to Palestinians; his father was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. His extended family, uprooted, has been cast throughout the Middle East.

  Columbia Law School brought Tarek to New York. Three months ago he took a job with a public defense organization; he works with parents whose children are taken by the city because of neglect or abuse.

  They’re really difficult cases. Very emotionally fraught, as you can imagine. The facts of the cases, sometimes they’re not the prettiest facts. It’s kind of this seedy underbelly of society that we don’t really interact with much when we’re sitting in Double Dutch. But it’s important for me. And as a lawyer it’s important to cut my teeth doing this kind of work.

  Tarek still hasn’t had the chance to order coffee. He sits patiently with his tie knot poking out from the top of his green sweater, which rivals his blue headphones in brightness. He carries a backpack instead of a briefcase. At Double Dutch the beards grow unkempt; Tarek keeps his cut close. He looks over his shoulder once more then gives up on the coffee.

  My sister’s working at the Starbucks right here. She just moved in with me three or four months ago. She gets really good benefits. And the benefits move outward to all of us. I have a pound of coffee for my office every week.

  He laughs.

  What’s interesting to me is that this Starbucks serves everyone. In the mornings, cab drivers come in and get a cup of coffee and a croissant. They don’t do that at Double Dutch, I can tell you that for sure. And in a strange way these giant corporations seem like home to a lot of people: at my job I’m working with these families who are dealing with Children’s Services Administration and whenever you ask them where they take their kids they’re going to say McDonald’s. Because that’s the sort of thing where they’ve learned to feed their kids and
feel comfortable. And I think that’s what happens with Starbucks. This Double Dutch thing feels foreign. It’s the ambiance and who’s sitting there and who’s behind the counter.

  There’s actually a funny story about this Starbucks that one of my friends told me. He said—and I’m going to curse but you’re going to understand why—he said when Starbucks first moved in ten or fifteen years ago they hired people from the neighborhood. It hadn’t been gentrified at all and it was still Harlem as people knew it. And they weren’t really complying with the way things went in a Starbucks. So someone walks in and they order a Caramel Macchiato. They call back the Caramel Macchiato and this guy’s like, “My nigga, Caramel Macchiato!”

  He laughs.

  That doesn’t happen any more.

  Whole Foods just broke ground up at 125th. I don’t know how it’s going to go but there are four or five Whole Foods around the country that are community Whole Foods, where they reduce the prices and make it affordable to people in that community. And I think what they decide to do with the Whole Foods will say a lot about the future of this community. And whether or not they are willing to preserve the identity of the community that exists here today. I don’t know what direction we’re going to head in.

  The farther east you go in Harlem, it’s kind of virginal in a way. You can see that there are new properties just waiting to become new businesses.

  Tarek knows the terrain because he is looking for a place to lease. He wants to find an empty spot in the neighborhood and fill it—that much he knows. Other than that, he hasn’t settled on many specifics. Beverages will likely be involved, possibly food. This flirtation with entrepreneurialism has roots in his experience as a student: