The following post is a Letter to the Editor submitted yesterday to the Chronicle.  It is as yet still unpublished, so I thought I'd share it here.  

Follow the link to see the published letter!

Editor,

Props to the Chronicle for today's article on African American displacement from the Bay Area's urban centers [Monday, January 14, 2007, Erin McCormick, "Bayview's Black Exodus"].  In particular, a graphic showing population shifts around the Bay Area provides much needed context and depth to the Chronicle's coverage of housing and development that has previously skewed towards what are seen as benefits of corporate development and away from the very real and harmful human impacts of gentrification. The use of US Census numbers and the 2006 American Community survey clearly show an alarming pattern of African American displacement.

Yet the idea that this trend is somehow an "exodus" is simply not true. No disrespect, but I somehow doubt that Antioch, eastern Contra Costa County and Solano County are really the promised land. The article left this regular Chron reader with at least one question: If African Americans are moving to Antioch and other East Bay Counties - the same places that according to the Chronicle are the hardest hit with the housing crisis and foreclosures - just where are African American's supposed to go now?

Oh yeah, and neighborhoods just don't "revitalize themselves" with light-rail lines and condos as if it's some natural process, rather these are deliberate, planned and consequential decisions by the region's political leadership and profit minded developers.