M.W.,
Brooklyn, NY.

We have been in our neighborhood for coming on ten years and in that time it has changed from ‘Bed-Stuy’ to ‘Clinton-Hill’ to ‘Fort Green East’ as the realtors slowly remade and gentrified neighborhoods. Each economic surge carved out new districts and displaced our neighbors. The most recent insurgence of peoples have been of my skin color, young and upwardly mobile. I just recently witnessed a very peppy white woman greeting an equally perky white woman at Nostrand Ave (six months ago, unheard of), ‘Lisa, is that you? Yeeeah! What are you (italics added) doing here?!!!? I just move here a week ago.’ All this as I walked down Fulton Street to my home thinking ‘is that what people see in me? ‘