Special Report: Gentrification: Black and White Middle-class Blacks also Bring Change to the 'Hood
Issue date: 7/24/03 Section: COMMENTARY
"There is really very little difference between these middle-class Blacks and middle-class Whites who are integrating Black neighborhoods in the city," says historian William Cummings, who is working on a book about gentrification in New York City. "We call the Whites 'yuppies' and the Blacks 'Buppies,' but both groups are changing the economic dynamic of the neighborhoods they're moving in," he added.
When William Etheridge graduated from Georgetown University's prestigious business school, he could have lived anywhere. While working on Wall Street as an investment banker, he chose to return to the Black section of Flushing where he grew up as a child. In fact, he moved back in with his family.
After making a decent salary crunching numbers on Wall Street, Etheridge quit his job and took a lower-paying job in Harlem working for the Empowerment Zone. Since he was working in Harlem, he thought it made sense to live there, too.
"It was very important for me to move to Harlem," says Etheridge, who left the Empowerment Zone last year to get a masters degree from Columbia University in real estate development. He now works in corporate real estate.
"I felt that I could do a better job if I lived in the community. I also had a better idea of what was needed in Harlem if I was living there. It was like, 'Practice what you preach,'" he said.
In the renovated Hamilton Heights apartment where he lives, Etheridge's neighbors are a rainbow of diversity-Asians, Blacks and Whites-but especially young White women. He has watched as the neighborhood has drastically changed.
"I saw Harlem when it was in heavy, heavy transition," he says. "You would have these beautiful immaculate brownstones and on the same block you would see heavy, heavy drug activity."
Etheridge, like so many others, is worried when any middle-class or upper-middle-class group-be they Blacks, Whites or immigrants-move into a neighborhood and fail to acknowledge the issues that face the working-class residents that have resided there for decades.
When William Etheridge graduated from Georgetown University's prestigious business school, he could have lived anywhere. While working on Wall Street as an investment banker, he chose to return to the Black section of Flushing where he grew up as a child. In fact, he moved back in with his family.
After making a decent salary crunching numbers on Wall Street, Etheridge quit his job and took a lower-paying job in Harlem working for the Empowerment Zone. Since he was working in Harlem, he thought it made sense to live there, too.
"It was very important for me to move to Harlem," says Etheridge, who left the Empowerment Zone last year to get a masters degree from Columbia University in real estate development. He now works in corporate real estate.
"I felt that I could do a better job if I lived in the community. I also had a better idea of what was needed in Harlem if I was living there. It was like, 'Practice what you preach,'" he said.
In the renovated Hamilton Heights apartment where he lives, Etheridge's neighbors are a rainbow of diversity-Asians, Blacks and Whites-but especially young White women. He has watched as the neighborhood has drastically changed.
"I saw Harlem when it was in heavy, heavy transition," he says. "You would have these beautiful immaculate brownstones and on the same block you would see heavy, heavy drug activity."
Etheridge, like so many others, is worried when any middle-class or upper-middle-class group-be they Blacks, Whites or immigrants-move into a neighborhood and fail to acknowledge the issues that face the working-class residents that have resided there for decades.