My Dear Harlem…

I love Harlem. Every time I come to the city of New York, I am in the borough that is enriched with African American history. It is the place I first encountered when I first touched down and rode the M60 to my formal mentor’s job, and stayed with him in my early, and albeit naïve young adulthood, and it is the place I always traveled back to, if not just for inspiration, but to be surrounded by the African-American community that is still apparent there in numbers. American writer James Baldwin spoke very passionately about his living there for a number of years, and might I add that it has not really changed too much since his or his parent’s lifetime, other than the advocacy that was much more visible and vigilant in those times. At the most, one can catch many Muslim Brothers of the Nation of Islam dressed in slick and tailored décor complete with accompanying bowties, handing out newspapers that the black community walked past nonchalantly. I believe I even took one in the past back in 2010, saying “As-salammu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuhu” and never got a reply back from him. I don’t know if he thought I was mocking him, since the conversational loquaciousness of it’s meaning has become universal, or if he thought I was just a simple passerby who heard it on television, or something.

Nonetheless, I took what at the time was a flyer for a local ‘mosque’, which in Harlem meant, sadly, that it was no more than a basement of some store, or withered apartment, where one had to walk down underground to get through, accompanied by the large infested rats, and ethnic smells that dominated the cracked streets.

I would much rather take this post in a more self-reflecting direction with my love affair with Harlem, which is quickly being more referred to as “Uptown Manhattan” than it is Harlem, because of the loud forms of gentrification that have become affixed in the places of what Hughes, Baldwin, Hurston and everyone else at one time called home. I have only seen one park, a concrete jungle gym, one tree, and young teens playing basketball, with older men outside of the park’s gates drinking beer and laughing merrily.

I have never seen one school, at least the ones I am used to back home in Gary, Indiana, as they have seemingly been blended in with the big buildings full of low-income families. That in itself brings up another observation I have made, rent is VERY VERY HIGH. The amount that you pay is no where near the amount of space one can acquire, which I guess is attributed to its close location to the major tourist attraction that is Times Square on 42nd Street, and it’s convenient ability to get there. I stayed in Harlem this past week at my Muslim brother’s house, who also is a “house brother” and otherwise as close to a “blood brother” as one can get from being in the underground Ballroom culture (which I will expound on at a later date). As we walked from his job to his place of residence within Harlem, one thing I saw amongst the twists and turns were the complacency of the many Black faces that adorned its streets. Even after being back and forth within the streets of Harlem, this has never changed. The anger that you would think would be reflected is substituted by rapid movement towards various forms of business.

There was little, if any, time to be angry when you had to put food on a table for your family. There was little time to talk aimlessly about what one was going through in their daily interactions, because you had to WORK. Which leads me to another clear observation, it’s been years since I have seen ANYONE in New York City with a television, I can count on one hand, the amount of times I have been in contact with one: 2007 staying with my mentor, 2009 at my job as an intern for Vibe Magazine (which we never got to watch of course), 2010 over my cousin’s house in Brooklyn (again…which we never watched), and in 2010 again over my frat brother’s house in Harlem). The lack of television was a constant reminder of the mercurial lifestyles that have been adopted in New York City, leaving a big void in time spent towards leisure. What I also have noticed in my own movement, that having a television otherwise kept people in contact with what they have become, what they were considered, and what they possibly could never be. Media representations of black people, especially on the news, leaves little to be desired in hopes of a much more enriching life.This is something that I know all too well, and something that while void of seeing these things on televisions themselves, New Yorkers know as well. Quite possibly Baldwin’s notion holds true in terms of the acceptance of mainstream notions, that White is right, and in this specific case, especially with “White Flight”, that the people of Harlem are constantly put into dire conditions because they are still consider not good enough to live elsewhere. A lot of this is attributed, in my own opinion, to the cost of living. Food and clothing can be so inexpensive in Harlem, prices today are not that different from back home, and at the local bodegas, mom-and-pop stores, and Arabic-owned convenience stores, more than not you won’t have to pay taxes, but with rent being so high, it leaves little room to “splurge”. Something as simple as a $20 pair of slacks, a $10 pack of shirts, and a couple of beauty supplies totaling $20 can leave a hole in your wallet until the next paycheck for your rent. The sad thing is that you don’t have to tell these people about the predicament they are in. They already know, and sadly, many have accepted this as the way of life.