We have previously noted how the Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer told us that the violence problem in the City of Brotherly Love is due to the internal segregation of what is, overall, a very ‘diverse’ city. However, the Inky has also been very wary of gentrification.

What is gentrification?

Gentrification is the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses.^[1]“Gentrification”. Dictionary.com.Lees, Slater & Wyly 2010[page needed] define gentrification as “the transformation of a working-class or vacant area of the central city to a … Continue reading It is a common and controversial topic in urban politics and planning. Gentrification often increases the economic value of a neighborhood, but the resulting demographic displacement may itself become a major social issue. Gentrification often shifts a neighborhood’s racial or ethnic composition and average household income by developing new, more expensive housing and businesses in a gentrified architectural style and extending and improving resources that had not been previously accessible.^[2]West, Allyn (5 March 2020). “Baffled City: Exploring the architecture of gentrification”. Texas Observer. Archived from the original on 22 June 2020. Retrieved 21 June 2020., [3]^[3]Harrison, Sally; Jacobs, Andrew (2016). “Gentrification and the Heterogeneous City: Finding a Role for Design”. The Plan. 1 (2). doi:10.15274/tpj.2016.01.02.03.

The gentrification process is typically the result of increasing attraction to an area by people with higher incomes spilling over from neighboring cities, towns, or neighborhoods. Further steps are increased investments in a community and the related infrastructure by real estate development businesses, local government, or community activists and resulting economic development, increased attraction of business, and lower crime rates. In addition to these potential benefits, gentrification can lead to population migration and displacement. However, some view the fear of displacement, which dominates the debate about gentrification, as hindering discussion about genuine progressive approaches to distribute the benefits of urban redevelopment strategies.

While Philadelphia and the Inquirer haven’t been so blatant as to say so directly, the liberal city of Lexington^[4]Fayette County was one of only two counties, out of 120 total in the Bluegrass State, to be carried by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. has. As we have previously noted, Lexington said, directly, that it was concerned about gentrification, and, “Most new owners being more affluent and differing from the traditional residents in terms of race or ethnicity.” The city was concerned about white people moving into heavily black neighborhoods.^[5]Though there is a neighborhood called Little Mexico in the area around Alexandria Drive north of Versailles Road, Lexington’s Hispanic population are not large enough to really dominate larger … Continue reading

Now comes The Washington Post, weighing in on the same subject:

White people have flocked back to city centers — and transformed them

In the past decade, the White population increased significantly in urban cores across the country, bringing changes both sweeping and intimate

By Tara Bahrampour, Marissa J. Lang, and Ted Mellnik | Monday, February 6, 2023 | 8:02 AM EST

In the 20th century, “White flight” transformed many American cities as White people moved in droves from urban centers to the suburbs.

In the last decade, that exodus kicked into reverse.

The White population increased between 2010 and 2020 in hundreds of neighborhoods at the center of many large cities, even as it declined almost everywhere else in the country. This influx, which in some cases began before 2010 but has accelerated and expanded, has brought about new upheavals, making some of the country’s biggest urban cores feel increasingly unrecognizable to longtime Black, Hispanic and Asian residents.

Some remember when they or their families were forced to live in certain inner-city neighborhoods, restricted by economics or racial covenants from moving to the leafy suburbs. Now many wonder how much integration is really happening between old and new neighbors — and whether there is still room for them in the neighborhoods they call home.

The Supreme Court ruled that racial covenants cannot be enforced by state courts back in 1948^[6]Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948), and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 made them illegal. The Post is trying to blame something which has been wholly illegal for over half a century.

Using census data from 2010 and 2020 on population totals by race and ethnicity, The Washington Post identified nearly 800 neighborhood-size tracts across the nation with the highest White population gains. In these neighborhoods, located mostly at the center of major urban areas, the total number of White residents increased by over half a million, while the number of Black residents declined by 196,000 and the number of Hispanic residents fell by 45,000. The Asian population declined in traditional Chinatown neighborhoods close to downtown in cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia.

Wouldn’t that be called racial integration?

Racial integration is something the left will always say they support. The ‘gentrifiers,’ usually white couples, sometimes with children, are choosing to spend their own money to fix up previously distressed housing, but are concomitantly choosing to live next door to neighbors who are frequently not white. Wouldn’t these be white people who are very much not racist? Shouldn’t these be the people the left laud rather than lament?

Further down, in a section on New Orleans:

Spurred on by climate catastrophes, new development and a booming short-term rental industry, gentrification has remade the Big Easy and displaced thousands of Black families, a population that has been shrinking for more than 20 years.

In a city where the very culture is bound to African American tradition, the threat of erasure extends beyond the physical.

“Cultural annihilation is very real here,” said Cheryl Robichaux Austin, 68, executive director of the Greater Tremé Consortium, a neighborhood-based advocacy and community equity nonprofit. “It’s slowly decaying, and we see it … every day in the neighborhood. We see it when the city has special events and we don’t see Black bands, how there are all these White folks playing in the second line now. Things you never used to see before.”

How can you read that as anything other than a lament that white people have moved into the neighborhood, and are participating in the neighborhood?

Those “displaced” black families? They had to go somewhere, right?

“You have minorities who are looking for more affordable housing, so they’re moving out to the suburbs,” said Derek Hyra, a professor of urban policy at American University.

Oh, so black families are moving out into the purportedly lily-white suburbs, the places to where white city residents fled? Wouldn’t that, too, be integration?

When the left tell you that they are all for integration, ignore the big statement, and look further down, into what else they say, what else they write. It’s a long article, something only newspapers can do, something that really doesn’t work in television. The theme is that formerly mostly segregated black or Asian neighborhoods were good things, due to the cultures which grew up within them. All that you have to do is change the descriptions to white neighborhoods, and readers would be screaming that that’s raaaaacist, you can’t be trying to protect the whiteness of white neighborhoods.

And the American left can’t even see it, can’t even understand what they have written and what they want.