#charles in my home city and i’m not there😔

[crvvys]

He’s talking about how black people left the South despite leaving behind farm land bc they wanted something better. but they left behind the idea of freedom and prosperity through black ownership of land and homes. as poor as they were, they still had some sense of self-sufficiency bc they had community and the ability to grow their own food on their property. i think of my grandma and how her maternal side of the family all lived on this land in their homes and they took care of their own. but my grandma went out West to get more opportunity bc there’s just not much to do out here and she wanted to be more than a farm girl from rural Oklahoma.

he argues that they left one form of poverty and the fear of white aggression for another form of poverty and white aggression in the north and west that Blow believes was more pernicious bc they end up renting in low income areas and when trying to move into white areas, they were met with extreme hostility. he says they end up having many of the same issues but now have congestion, crowding and lack of ownership which he says is a worse form of poverty than having land but being poor. man…my people were doing their best though 😔

I’ve never liked the North and West. I think the white people out there are often rude and weird but I respect what black folks have built out in these cities. it took a lot of bravery to take that kind of risk. my grandma did it and moved back home to the farm she grew up on. my mom moved back here too bc of my grandpa passing but she was going to move back here anyway despite being born and raised in California and then living the other half of her life in Texas.

and I will do the same. I’m not motivated by my own need to have a good life but I really want to make something of myself and bring that back to the South bc it truly is a wonderful place and I believe a lot can be done if black people had more power down here. the South is still where the majority of black folks live and I hate to feel like we’ve been forgotten.

the writer Charles Blow said he thinks the black community was split when the Great Migration happened and he thinks the urban north and west black communities that had a more revolutionary nature could merge with the southern communities that were more connected to land and earth and that this could bring healing. I like that idea and I think reverse migration as he calls it has been happening slowly. I’m a product of it. I can’t imagine being from California lol. I’d hate it. my mom and her side is so much weirder than my dad’s deep south side.