Re-Entrification: Stepping into my Wakanda
After watching the movie Black Panther, I was truly stuck with the desire to wish I had bought my first house in Wakanda or at least have a timeshare there. I was filled with pride and wonderment about a place that I know was fictional. In Wakanda, the people recognize their liberation has been pre-ordained, pre-approved by the blood, sweat, and tears of those who came before them. They recognize that freedom is their birthright. The Wakandans’ understand that their crown has already been paid for and all they must do is claim it.
But wait a minute that was my mom and dad. As a matter of fact that was many black folks who left the Jim Crow South from Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. They came to San Francisco and staked their claim in the Bayview, Fillmore, Lakeview, Oceanview, Potrero Hill, and Oakland. Much like the Immigrant story of today, they came in the second gold rush in the 1940’s to have the opportunity live and have a better life themselves and their children. So they settle in these places, bought homes and created a new social imagination and they formed tribes in these areas. They took areas where white people didn’t want to stay and produce churches, schools, and businesses. So history and legacy was formed. This was Wakanda.
But the past few years we’ve watched Black people in San Francisco go from 13% of the population to now about 3%. There many reasons for this decline which I will speak on at another time. And the truth is I left in 2013 myself for several reasons but one of them was definitely financial. I have watched the neighborhood become gentrified and slowly losing its soul. Starbucks, bikers, bike lanes, bike racks, joggers, and palm trees. It has made many people feel like all this was not design us and really not for me. So we left our neighborhood in droves seeking a false American dream and now all we see is gentrification at its finest.
I honestly believe in order to restore all of what my parents and those who traveled west built is that I have to become more like Eric Killmonger. I know thats scary. Killmonger is dangerous force in Black Panther. He’s dangerous for what he represents because he is just a strong and smart as King T’Challa, the hero. He is driven by righteous fury. Abandoned by the African utopia Wakanda, raised in the mean streets of Oakland. One part royalty, two parts Tupac. As a young man, his life was shaped by death. He watched black bodies fall daily, in a neighborhood not quite unlike my own. He found out that there was a hidden paradise. A garden of Eden. Not only run by people that looked like him. He belonged to it. Through the entire history of modern civilization, through colonization, the slave trade, systemic and institutional racism, droughts and famine, and rampant war, they sat on the sidelines. Wow, doesn’t this sound familiar. Our communities are just like that, while we have dozens of churches in them. Galatians 5:1 says “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
I see myself entering churches and other spaces within Bayview and Fillmore just like Killmonger did. His dads words ringing in his ear saying “how beautiful” Wakanda was. Killmonger wanted to enter a place he longed for all his life, hoping for acceptance, hoping that they would see his point of all the problems in society. But the truth is the church and community that I love has lost its identity. They are more caught up with protecting itself just like the leadership of Wakanda did. They, the church, have become a nation that only fights when absolutely necessary and did not think the kidnapping, torture, murder, rape, abuse, drugs, dehumanization, and destruction of millions of people made war absolutely necessary. They live in isolation and no one knows if they exist anymore.
I’m conflicted though, apart of me sad and I really don’t blame the church. They worked with tools that the had. They didn’t see the very scriptures that were presented, were also the things that held them captive, ie colonized. They’ve been blinded to the fact that the folks in our community are running away from the institutionalized church, they’ve been walking or driving by them for years and they feel neglected, just like Killmonger. The whole time we had the means, the tools to set them free and we sat in church. How could they love a church with the means to possible end some of this pain and suffering or to at least walk alongside them while they go through it? I don’t mean to sound hard but I’ve been apart of churches with this mindset.
Sankofa is an African word from the Akan tribe in Ghana. The literal translation of the word and the symbol is “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind or It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” The word is derived from the words:
SAN (return),
KO (go),
FA (look, seek and take).
Maybe today we can turn it around. Today I introduce a word, that I know I’m completely making up. That new word is:
#Re-Entrification
Just like Sankofa, Re-Entrification is a way to move back into my old neighborhood. It’s a way to recapture its history, its beauty, its struggle, its pain, its soul.
Last year my wife and I moved back to Bayview/Hunters Point (Theology of Place). Just like gentrification, but the opposite, Re-Entrification. I want to live out a different destiny than the one being thrown in my face. A place where we can retain and move black folks back into the neighborhood. I want to help start businesses that cater to us and our desires. I want to help black churches fall back in love with their neighborhoods again. Not just to drive by or to drive through it. To embrace our beautiful history and messy and broken past. To love what’s here and to love wants coming. I want to help build, as MLK Jr. put it, a “Beloved Community”. To stand with those that hurting, broken and also with the poor and disenfranchised, to speak life over them. To live and work for and with the community that recognizes that God is their source. Not perfect but willing to wrestle for truth and understanding with one another. That all would embrace the beauty and brokenness of all cultures and ethnicities.
In many ways, I know that Bayview/Hunters Point/Double Rock/Fillmore, will never be like they were in time past but I believe there are folks who are willing to fight for this existence.
Maybe this is my “I have a Dream” speech or maybe this is me stepping back into my Wakanda.
