I Was Going to Dispute the "White, Liberal Berkeley" Meme, But, Hmmm...
One of the interesting things that keeps coming up about the Berkeley Protests is that it's a bunch of "White liberals"...so #BlackLivesMatter/Police Brutality protests there are not as authentic as protests in neighboring Oakland, which traditionally has a larger Black community (though I've heard it's been shifting toward Hispanic/Latino in recent years because of gentrification) and a fraught history of crime and notable police brutality. I read somewhere that on the first day a journalist at a White House press conference asked a baffled Press Secretary why "White liberal" Berkeley was causing such a fuss.
The thing that's been bothering me about this is when I moved to Berkeley many years ago, it wasn't that Berkeley was "White" so much is it was de facto financially segregated. The Black part of Berkeley was West Berkeley, the poorer part of town. I have been under the impression that Berkeley had a thriving Black community because I live at the edge of West Berkeley. The Black community is my neighborhood. I see them in them in the local coffee houses, corner stores, and weekend flea markets. I see Black students walking to and from the school across the street. Before Berkeley began "cleaning up the area" around a decade ago, the poverty in this area was a lot more visible: there were liquor stores and crack dens. Peoples homes (including my own) were burglarized on a regular basis. This area of Berkeley looked like the stereotype of Oakland.
I assumed that as the liquor stores disappeared, and drug addicts stopped roaming the streets, that meant the area was being lifted out of poverty in some way. I should have known better because one of my main political causes, which I've been bringing regularly to DU, is how the reality of poverty is being covered up by thin layers of political propaganda and feelgood middle-class-targeted mainstream media stories about "job growth" and "economic improvement". Those left trapped underneath trapped underneath this shiny veneer are just left to die without a source of oxygen: no one sees them and no one cares.
I thought the media was depicting Berkeley as a "White liberal" place because of the University, which more or less dominates the city: when I was a student the University had great difficulty attracting Black students, and the percentage was miniscule. I'm sure they've improved, but probably not by much. I was sure if I brought up the demographics of the actual city, that would bring about a correction to the stereotype.
Well, it seems I was wrong. According to the 2010 Census, Berkeley is overwhelmingly White:
White 66,996 (out of a total population of 112,580)
African American 11,241
Asian 21,690
So while Berkeley's primarily White residents have recently become more and more vociferous about gentrification and displacement, Black residents have silently been moving out for a while. My perception of the area getting "safer" and "poverty decreasing" may have just been the fact that Berkeley's policies - such as reducing the availability of low income housing, have been successful in quietly encouraging Black people to move elsewhere.
I also have a pamphlet called the 2014-15 East Bay Economic Outlook. Under the topic of Demographics/Population Composition (Age and Race) it discusses the general 1.8% decrease in the Black/African American population (including Oakland). The article attributes the problem to rising rents caused by gentrification. But it can also secretly be attributed to the fact that there is no adequate welfare system ($336/month loan for 3 months out of the year with many "errors" and unbelievable paperwork hassle, plus welfare fraud investigators all over you?) to cover the gaps between irregular work during times of low employment. That is the backdoor way of encouraging the Black population to move elsewhere. Those on fixed incomes are also encourage to move elsewhere. A population under siege that is just trying to defend themselves and survive gets painted as criminal and hunted by the police. Slowly Oakland's Black population is thinned, and nice White and Asian people start to move into the rehabilitated "cleaned up" downtown. (Now hung with flower baskets).
It seems to me the Political Powers That Be have been playing a game of "how long can we get away with this?" - i.e., could they quietly get the Black people out while it looked like they were doing other things (like hanging flower baskets) before people actually noticed that's what they were doing?
Because this is the sort of problem that arises from poverty, and that is a problem imposed from so many directions that it's hard to point a finger without being called "conspiratorial", the victims of this travesty have largely been powerlessness. That powerlessness has built up into unreleased stress and free-floating anger over time.
Perhaps the broiling over in "White liberal" Berkeley isn't as authentic as Oakland, but it is coming from some of the same pressures: the stresses that have apparently SECRETLY and QUIETLY been driving Blacks out of West Berkeley for a decade now have crept up on other races, including Whites, and they are expressing that knowledge by showing their belated support now. It sucks that the support is belated. There needs to be more fairness built into the system up front.
I think Berkeley itself should have a minute of confession or conversation or teach-in about what happened to West Berkeley, and why making it "safer" involved Berkeley becoming Whiter. And why our moment of Protest only becomes when the poor White people suddenly feel the pressures of displacement, while the Black people quietly "moved on". I don't think Berkeley should cease its role in the protests - but there should be some recognition that our problems are a bit catty-cornered to #BlackLivesMatter and perhaps we brought those problems on ourselves because Black Lives Didn't Matter Sooner.
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