Across 110th Street?

Bobby Womack’s 1972 hit “Across 110th Street” describes a Harlem that is both very different and strikingly similar to the one that many of us at Columbia (don’t) know. Needless to say, this Harlem is a black space, but Womack also takes us to streets filled with pimps, pushers, prostitutes, and people trying to make it out of the ghetto to escape soul-crushing poverty. This space is no unfortunate or unique accident, but a produced and necessary part of the United States’ racial and economic order, as Womack reminds us when he croons, “The family on the other side of town / Would catch hell without a ghetto around. / In every city you find the same thing going down, / Harlem is the capital of every ghetto town.” Of course this imagery cannot capture the richness and depth of Harlem, even as a snapshot in Blaxsploitation time, but it remains potent in Columbia’s consciousness. You know this if you’ve ever been told at orientation to make sure that you transfer to the 1 at 96th Street and don’t end up at 116th and Lenox. I have found in my experience at Columbia that this disconnect with Harlem persists throughout our four years. I don’t think this fact can crudely be attributed to most Columbians being scared of poor black people, but rather to subtler and more institutional efforts. I’ve found in discussions with other black students that our connection to Harlem can be frustratingly shallow, reduced to shopping, dining, or community service. Even as we might desire to really know Harlem, developing meaningful relationships and spending time in the area are not easily achieved. From these conversations, I’ve gotten the feeling that even though Columbia claims to be “in the city of New York,” that the kind of New York that the geography of Morningside Heights points you to is very class-specific. Excepting my stay at Columbia, I’ve lived my whole life in similar neighborhoods, yet still often experience Harlem more as an idea than a place. This idea of Harlem, or Harlem World, as Mason Betha and anthropologist John Jackson call it, is terribly important for the African Diaspora, but also “extends and exceeds” Harlem’s physical boundaries. However, this idea can also change and mean different things for different people.

At the same time that there is still discomfort with and distance from Harlem, more recent political and economic developments, Columbia’s expansion included, have spun new images of Harlem, one experiencing a new “Renaissance.” Harlem is no longer simply a place to stay away from or to make it out of, but a place that outsiders are trying to get into and that residents are trying to hold on to. President Bollinger promises that our expansion plans will bring in a new era of intimacy between Columbia and Harlem, touting the services that Columbia can offer the community and the open and transparent architecture of the planned campus. In contrast to “Ghetto Harlem,” “Neo-Renaissance Harlem” seems to offer the possibility for increased cultural contact and reconciliation. However, I remain skeptical of this promise as I reflect on my experience as a both a Columbia student and a resident of a gentrifying neighborhood.

This year I’ve spent a lot of time at my girlfriend’s apartment uptown and I was both surprised and not so surprised by how many white people lived in her building. While almost everyone in the streets and stores in the neighborhood were black (be they Afro-Latino, West Indian, or African American), at least half the people I saw in the elevator or the hallway were white. It was like they lived in the building, but not in the neighborhood. In the Bayview in San Francisco this winter break, I saw white people on my block, a very rare sight. They were inside the new Upper Crust Deli and Grill, which had replaced Golden Eagle Liquors, buying expensive sandwiches in an “up-and-coming neighborhood” (maybe the Stuff White People Like blog is on to something). Again, I got the feeling that this place and the people in it were in a building, not a neighborhood, and replacing, rather than integrating.

In a very simplistic way, gentrification is kind of like coming to (a diverse) college. There are a whole lot of promises about how many friends you’ll make and how cultured you will be, but soon you realize that just because you throw a bunch of people together from different backgrounds doesn’t mean they will get along, or that there won’t be racism. I’ve had some of the same awkward hallway exchanges in Harlem as I did in John Jay and Carman (including being the sober person in an elevator full of drunk people one). Segregation is maintained through more than physical barriers and is maintained in even the closest proximity. While 110th Street may no longer be the barrier it once was, substantive racial and class reconciliation and cultural exchange are going to require a lot more than moving in next door.

Christien Tompkins is a Columbia College senior majoring in African-American studies. Freedom Dreams runs alternate Thursdays. Opinion@columbiaspectator.com