My good friend Dalton A. Roberson Jr watched this and was amazed that there seemed to be as many idiots videoing the mayhem as hooligans involved in it. When I viewed it, I immediately thought this is why we wont be having a downtown mall any time soon and this is why Im gung-ho for gentrification. Pittsburgh has just over 300,000 people living within the city limits and only one quarter of those are black folk. Monroeville, where the mall is actually located, is 15 miles east of the city and is 79 percent white and just six percent African-American. Yet somehow, more than 1,000 of these teens managed to descend on this mall at the same time and disrupt the retail experience to the point where the mall had to close for the day. Locally, folk have long since stopped patronizing Northland, so much so that its owners defaulted on their debt obligations last week. Eastland is heading in that direction, Summit Place is already closed and fewer people frequent Fairlane. Ive even heard that some shoppers are not going to Somerset on the weekends as they once did. Does anybody really believe that national retailers or city leaders would risk creating a multi-million dollar mall within the heart of a city thats 80 percent African-American and within the reach of ten times as many teens as in Pittsburgh? Does anyone seriously think that this type of investment will occur without gentrification, in a city where at present 40 percent of its residents cant read and over one third receives some form of governmental assistance? I dont think so. I also dont think theyll be showing this video in February during Black History Month either. Sigh...
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 22:38:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015