Cities have always been divided by race, long before the Standard City Planning Enabling Act and the Standard Zoning Enabling Act because the hierarchy existed from the beginning of this country. Colonization flourished because of the internalized belief that the existence of “wealth” was a sign that Europeans were entitled to conquer land not in Europe. To preserve a misguided equilibrium, the wealthy have always needed to portray the idea that they “earned” their resources with integrity, and to place the focus on the money, and not the people they deprived. During this racial reckoning, however, history is being uncovered and people are finally finding the truth: to have so much means that people went without so that the wealthy could remain. Moreover, more people are coming to the disturbing realization that BIPOCQ were correct when decrying that they were usually the targets, and the wealthy cannot hide their parasitic pursuits any longer. To that end, they are now making obvious bids to “protect” themselves from accountability by declaring their independence from reality, only this time, no one believes that they are hapless victims of a monarchy when they are the ones who reign.
Rich people love living next to poorer people because it makes them feel superior. They enjoy being able to easily demonstrate their wealth, and feign surprise when people come to beg them for it. “Helping” people with strings attached is a particularly common practice, which is why philanthropy is big business. However, when racial justice and liberation come into play, suddenly they are seen as villains for the corruption they enabled and destruction they allowed to flourish. Throwing money at people is harder when those people understand why they have no money in the first place, and people are less willing to bestow awards and praise at the feet of their captors. After all, many of those wealthy people threw money at governments to attack BIPOCQ who were disengaged from the wealthy, i.e. not praising those who exploited them. When people see how much damage was done to BIPOCQ so that the wealthy could stay wealthy, they also recognize that preserving the reputations of those wealthy people makes them accomplices.
Now, cities are looking at reparations, displacement, and a multitude of corrective actions, and the wealthy are terrified because they feel entitled to lord their resources over everyone else while remaining unaffected. Even corporately owned media is discussing how money never seems to be available for racially restorative efforts, but is always available for tax breaks and contractors. DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) specialists and departments are showing up all over the country, and reality is setting in: wealthy people extracted from BIPOCQ and continue to remain wealthy by exploiting BIPOCQ. The fake smiles and buildings with their names on them have been revealed as the distractions they are, and they are swiftly becoming the pariahs they always should have been. The General Strike has finally showed the wealthy that people are done with the exploitation–a strike that truly began when Black people took to the streets, and intensified when monsters crawled through Washington, D.C. and abusers dared to excuse them.
It becomes clear that even though Ahmad Aubery was killed in Georgia because two creeps were bored, Buckhead is only “divorcing” Atlanta because it knows that the enabled inequity throughout the city rests on Buckhead’s shoulders and that the death of a white man means more in their eyes. Even in Austin–the fake “weird” city where racism shrugs with a smile– the lies that keep the city popular are beginning to fade, and the wealthy community of Lost Creek reveals their fraudulent presence as the “down-to-earth” wealthy community they claimed to be. People who shriek about classism are always working to deflect from the dominant narrative, but when enough of the marginalized classes have the same experience regardless of class, the what-about-class argument crumbles to the floor.