Wyatt Cenac Quotes

I personally think that gentrification happens long before you start seeing white people in formerly people-of-color neighborhoods. It starts happening when we start telling the young, hard-working, quote-unquote 'smart' kids that they need to measure success by how far they get away from our communities.

We can't have Harlem become one borough for the rich.

Our cultural capital has changed tremendously on its way into the twenty-first century. Manhattan has been secured and sanitized; it's smoke- and trans-fat-free. In the boroughs, many of the old jungles have been cleared as well.

The slums will be but a memory.

I think Giuliani started a trend that Bloomberg continued with rampant gentrification, and I think it's tough because why would any city choose not to do that?

I've seen my friends, my community forced from the city I call home.

I have lived in this city my whole life and have seen the way gentrification has changed it. I'm not necessarily against transplants, as 75 percent of my good friends, roommate, and boyfriend are not native New Yorkers.

I've been sort of gentrification-obsessed. Right before I left Oakland in 2012, I was feeling it. Now I go back sporadically, and the change is drastic.

Gentrification is a problem of poor planning.

It is sad that the more 'successful' a neighborhood becomes, the more it gradually takes on a recognizable, common look, as the same banks, drugstore chains and national brands move in.

Whoever is content with the world, and who profits from its lack of justice, does not want to change it.

I think there are some very evil things about gentrification.

Gentrification is a form of immigration, though almost nobody calls it that.

Sometimes, I feel that Manhattan in particular has gotten really tame and gentrified or something.

White Man’s Road Thru Black Man’s Home!

Gentrification is what brings in all the money to the cities, but it also pushes some people out.

You cannot let men live like pigs …. We need not wait for the Millennium to get rid of the slum. We can do it now.

Race affects everything that I do, and everything that I create speaks to intersectionality.

You can raze the old buildings and erect magnificent corporate towers, hose down Port Authority, but you can't change people.

The history of black people in Manhattan is a story of people getting pushed farther uptown as land acquires new uses and increases in value.

My take on gentrification and change is it's usually always a better thing, because when you see all these businesses open and flourishing, that means there are more jobs.

There's an enormous amount of obliviousness: a desire among young gentrifiers to see only the city they want to see.

I had never heard this term before - gente-fication - which is also happening in Portland, Houston; it's happening in a lot of cities. It's upwardly mobile Latinx who want to come back to their neighborhoods where they grew up - or it's Latinx moving to L.A. and looking for a Latinx neighborhood to live or open a business.

I'm not a docile, complacent person when it comes to racial aggressions.

When we were doing shows in the mid-'90s, the audiences were 95% black. What's happened now is the gentrification of hip-hop. A lot of cities passed ordinances that made it hard for black audiences to gather in large groups. Clubs are more open to hip-hop now 'cause it's the same crowd that goes to rock shows.