White "Future Thinking" and Invading Black Space

Recently, a new residential and community project has been proposed for the Crenshaw District in Los Angeles. Although the project appears to cater to mostly middle class folk, there will be some affordable housing units available. However, some pushback surrounding this project is due to the lack of involvement of the actual Crenshaw community with these plans. One of the main issues some have with the computer-generated renderings is that there are no blacks featured in what is a historically black community. In one specific image every clearly visible person is white. Blacks and Hispanic appear to be completely left out of the plans for the future of this new community. In response to this, Sahra Sulaiman in her article, “When Your Renderings Suggest the Black Population Has Been Abducted by Aliens, It May Be the Least of Your Problems,” questions, “Where is the actual community that lives there now? Where are the impeccably dressed churchgoers? Where are the low-riders, area fixe riders and folks biking out of necessity?”¹  Seeing that challenges of “black space” have been ongoing for centuries, it is essential that when improvements are finally made to traditionally black areas, the residing black community be involved in the discussions regarding, if not at least the pictures depicting, the new development. Sulaiman even suggests that these “black-less” images depict the desire that only whites will take part of this new space.² Rather than trying to celebrate this historically black area, and its potential to rise economically, it appears the city will take away the black and Latino community space.

It must be realized that this omission of blacks for future development is an issue that expands multiple centuries. Professor Staidum in his lecture Going Forward to Where We’ve Been expands on how black struggles are partially rooted in “future thinking.” In his lecture he discussed the Louisiana Purchase and the renderings that were made for the outpost of New Orleans. In a “view portrait” depiction of the white outpost, there was a similar overwhelming white population as with the rendering of the Crenshaw development. The only blacks appear to be two maids and one man tending to cattle in a field. During the lecture I was even reminded of our class discussion of how slaves fulfilled a need for social capital, as they represented future upward mobility for their owners. Staidum notes that although this makes sense at the time of slavery, it is important to understand how depictions like this represent early forms of imperialism and racial domination.³

Although the depiction of the L.A. development could simply be an accidental omission of the black community, this type of “white futuristic thinking” is one that rooted in slavery. Rather than leaving out the minority communities and even taking away their space, cities need to make an effort to collaborate with, and help these people rise up with the rest of society.

WC 483

1. Sulaiman, Sahra. "When Your Renderings Suggest the Black Population Has Been Abducted by Aliens, It May Be the Least of Your Problems." Streetsblog Los Angeles. November 17, 2017. Accessed December 04, 2017. https://la.streetsblog.org/2017/11/14/when-your-renderings-suggest-the-black-population-has-been-abducted-by-aliens-it-may-be-the-least-of-your-problems/.

2. IBID

3. Satidum, Frederick. "Going Forward to Where We've Been." Lecture, Memphis, November 16, 2017.