My Experiences with Gentrification
By: Afsana Hossain
I live in Jamaica, Queens, and while it's not one of New York's fastest gentrifying neighborhoods, it's happening here too. Jamaica is a mix of several different races, such as black, Latino, and South Asian families. It depends on the area, but my school is predominantly black. For our physical education class, we have something called "Literacy Wednesdays", where we read articles about current events instead of doing physical activity. One day, we had an article about gentrification and my class would not stop identifying it with race. They described it as "white people coming in and pushing us out". While my teacher constantly corrected them, nothing would really change their minds. Another encounter with gentrification happened just recently. A few months ago, a Starbucks opened in Jamaica, not far from my home. One opened last year too, and this just encouraged my classmates' perspective of gentrification and race. These experiences helped me understand people’s perspective on gentrification, and how many people were only aware of the racial correlation, rather than the actual income, which is what it is based on. My neighborhood is filled with historical buildings. I’m not sure how old, but you can tell by the architecture that they’re not from this time. Some of them are being broken down for new buildings, to make new stores on Jamaica Avenue. Nothing is official yet, but I have heard that a Target is going to be put in its place. Most of the stores on the street are locally owned businesses, except for certain fast food chains and Old Navy. The entrance of this new Target could mean an end to these local businesses, and the start of a new kind of community.
