LETTER: Concrete Steps

"Sam's Place and the Evils of White Gentrification" (DP 2/10/92) is an insult to all those who have been victims of crime, white or black, in West Philadelphia and metropolitan areas everywhere. It does nothing but whine and complain about the specter of white gentrification, without defining what it means or how it can be resolved. It's the classic "Us vs. Them" argument, arrogant whites and penny-pinching Asians murdering blacks. The evil, racist shopkeeper, Dave Graves moving into a black neighborhood and selling expensive, elitist products he knows locals cannot afford. It's very convenient for the authors to ignore the fact that Sam's Place was held up three times in the week preceding the shooting. It's very convenient to ignore the fact that Graves, in addition to having the right of opening a shop wherever he damn well pleases, was providing jobs and choice to the people who lived there (more than half him employees were actually black). Any death, especially that of a 14-year old boy, is tragic. However, Andre McNatte knew exactly what he was doing when he decided to commit armed robbery. He knew that he risked running into somebody who would fight back, somebody who might have a gun, and he chose to do so anyway. The authors seem to suggest that if whites and Asians moved out of West Philadelphia, taking their shops, bars and other gentrifying institutions with them, blacks would be better off. They could own their own shops and run their own business, thereby being allowed to prosper. Not only is this notion extremely racist and an insult to the likes of Martin Luther King and other supporters of integration, it clearly doesn't work. Just look at certain parts of Camden and inner city areas throughout the country: white people simply have more money and once white businesses moved out, blacks weren't able to replace them, leading to huge urban wastelands. Racism of this kind is dangerous and unproductive. Rather than helping take concrete steps towards change, it simply breeds bad will. JASSEM BUSAIBE Engineering '95