The Effects of Black Migration on Community Resiliency
I found the main elements mentioned in Sonny Patel and crew’s research to help define community resiliency quite interesting as they broke up their findings in to 9 parts: local knowledge, community networks and relationships, communication, health, governance/leadership, resources, economic investment, preparedness, and mental outlook. When thinking of how their research connects to Blaxit: An Exodus in Los Angeles, I couldn’t help but think of how our author grew up in neighborhoods that were quite the opposite of resiliency. Dr. Rolanda West touched on some of her childhood experiences within the short reading that didn’t come tom my surprise but was still an interesting read. She doesn’t go into detail of the governance or community resources or local knowledge, but does have coverage of relationships and communication within a community and also the level of preparedness and mental outlook. A strong city or neighborhood with the sense of community resiliency often is involved with strong communication between those within it to help create better understanding between one another. However, Dr. West didn’t quite deal with communication well within her neighborhood as she had to defend her friend (who was the only other Black girl in the neighborhood) after being called a racial slur and spat on. While the research gathered information of community resiliency when it comes to disasters like war, terrorism , or natural disasters, this act of vocal racism that lives within the neighborhood to me can still be seen as a ‘disaster’ because by their definition a disaster is “a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society.” The relationships and communication in Dr. West’s community were described as vicious and was filled with various altercations. With the lack of community networking and the use of harmful communication, it makes this community quite vulnerable to the dangers of disasters rather than resilient. Along with that, came the lack of preparedness and mental outlook. It’s hard when I bring that up because I don’t believe a Black person like Dr. West can every really be prepared for a racist environment, we just hope we don’t have to encounter it. The studies talk about mental outlook as the “feelings and attitudes when facing uncertainty” and from when Dr. West first experienced her friend being called a racial slur and spat on her initial reaction was a physical altercation and slapping the person with all their might. Now while I view that response as appropriate, when it comes to resiliency that might still come out as quite the opposite. It further pulls apart the community rather than bringing it together, but truthfully that wasn’t Dr. West’s fault but the Latino boy who decided to drop the racist comments.
Rather than forming a resilient community, it seemed as if Dr. Rolanda West often had to deal with adaptability. Having to move to a racist neighborhood and avoid conflict since you’re one of the few Black girls in the city is something that would take a ton of patience and adjusting. I don’t think that means to just accept the racism that’s given but to understand that she will have to be stronger than most in that neighborhood. On top of that, she talks about the dealing of gentrification and how even when her family did move out of the racist city and back to Inglewood, she would then have to move again due to the rising of prices. A resilient community seems to be so focused on people being able to work together in case anything happens but these experiences that Dr. West met were sure to be opposing what the research spoke of. How are people to work together when Black people are being ran out of the neighborhoods they call home? And then when joining a new community, are being called racial slurs and are disliked simply because of the color of their skin. Throughout the Black migration within the IE, it’s tough to say that there was any community resiliency and that is there were disasters that happened, there would likely still be a divide for who is getting help in these scenarios and who isn’t.
attached below is also the finishing product of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. I felt the need to attach this because Dr. West has a brief mentioning of the effects this stadium had on Black individuals and other people of color within the community of Inglewood. I live by the stadium and indeed prices are drastically rising forcing people to either move out or adapt to some sort of new lifestyle that may be new to them. With what was a quieter areas is now experiencing multiple casinos being built, along with performance centers and it’s own plaza for entertainment. Prices will continue to rise and people will continue to be forced out do to these improvements, hence continuing some of the issues West talked about throughout her piece.