Last Night in Peckham - abridged (1500 words): Gentrification and Race Relations in Modern Day Metropolitan Britain

‘Mate - have you got anything? Can you sort me out?’

Peckham Springs

Last Saturday night in Peckham (14 May) I was greeted with these words on exiting Peckham Car Park (next to the Cinema) by a white man in his early 20s accompanied by two of his friends: on male, one female in the same age range. As I walked away shaking my head, I heard her say ’If you get battered…’.

A few weeks before I had a Facebook debate with an artist of mixed Middle Eastern/English descent who was adamant that gentrification has nothing to do with race. He espoused the conventional wisdom that artists move into an area first make it ‘cool’ and then the yuppies follow - it’s not about race, it’s about class. I questioned what the colour of these artists is.

The evening prior to the Car Park incident I attended a private screening of an upcoming film I’m in called ‘A Moving Image: A film about gentrification'. Though focused on London, there is segment where a black artist in Berlin repeats the conventional ‘class’ wisdom and seemingly answers the question I posed above saying ‘artists like me’. I challenge artists ‘of colour’ on this since I believe that in Western countries it’s really not such artists that make these inner city areas ‘cool’  because in this context  'cool' means acceptable, palatable, safe. I’m sorry to break it to those artists but in this your colour trumps (no pun intended) your class.

Forget that this ‘class’ premise presupposes that ‘indigenous’ inhabitants of the inner city do not create art, ask yourself: ‘If all the artists moving into these areas were black would the white middle/upper class be moving in there?’. Be honest your answer. The truth is that gentrifiers need their pioneers to look like them to feel safe.

Funny Vibe

Ironically I felt this during the events leading up to the Car Park incident. I was in the Car Park trying to find ‘Frank’s Cafe’ a hip spot where coincidentally, a black artist I knew who was returning from Berlin, was having a get together. I ran into a white couple in their 20’s on the 5th floor - Frank’s was meant to be on the 6th , the roof(I later discovered it was closed that evening). The woman had mentioned she had been before but eventually we all gave up looking. The couple had appeared nervous of me from our initial meeting and had a ’funny vibe’ (a vibe black men in particular recognise. We get it while noncommittally browsing through a shop only to be followed by security). As we exited the floor the man said ‘After you’ which was odd since they were actually closer to the door. I returned not long after and discovered the entrance to the roof - but it was blocked off. Returning to ground level I experienced the scene I started this post with but immediately prior to exiting the Car Park another black man entered with a quizzical facial expression, one I now recognise the probable cause of.  

The individual who approached me for drugs knew nothing of my class background, his assumptions were entirely based upon my complexion - my race. Some might argue that the combination of my colour and location contributed to this profiling: ‘well if you’re black and you are in this area then you must sell drugs’, sadly I see how black artists defending the class argument might cling to this equally pernicious outlook as a lifeline. If you are black but your peers are white, the other blacks they come into contact with being security, the ‘help’ or … drug dealers, then if you happen in to a ‘black’ area then maybe it’s understandable even forgivable when a strange white person takes you for a drug dealer  - wrong place wrong time.

You're black - you know where to get drugs

However I have another true story to debunk that. About a year ago I attended the opening of an Art Exhibition. Let's call it’s curator 'Hector' (not his name). Latterly some of the artists, two female curators, Hector and I repaired to a Private Member’s Club in Soho. Drinks flowed and 'In vino veritas', as one female curator asked me without irony upon hearing that I have family in Scotland: ‘Is your mother - black, black? You know - fully black?’ One of the artists remarked ’You’re black - you must know where we can get some drugs.' I may have dismissed this as very crass humour (I’m lying, I wouldn't have done that) had I not heard this artist telling one curator  ‘I’m dying for some coke’, several times on the way to the club.

The artist/curators group were literally at least a class above those I met outside of Peckham Car Park, the latter group bearing Northern accents (real posh doesn't do regional accents). The distinction in the class of the two groups made no difference to their expectations of me as a ‘black’ person.

No one called Asian communities in Bradford and Leeds 'gentrification'

I’ve had discussions about gentrification with a number of friends from different backgrounds over the last few years. Interestingly race featured little in the debate. For although gentrification concerns the movement of people and the changes of the makeup of communities it’s definition seems dependent on the type of people moving and who is describing the phenomenon. When Asians communities moved into East London or Bradford and bought up properties or built Mosques it wasn’t deemed gentrification. When Caribbeans came over in the 'Windrush' and bought properties in Brixton that was not called gentrification either.

The Venn Diagram we call society

I haven’t necessarily shared thoughts on the racial dynamic with a lot of people I know with good reason. My closest friends are from varied complexions and social backgrounds. I'm loathe to reduce things to black and white, I see people as human beings. But as a human being I get fatigued by being reduced to a stereotype myself. Around 18 months ago I had a drink in the Peckham Wetherspoons with a born and raised Peckham native,of Nigerian heritage. We observed two groups of white people inside: locals and new arrivals. Their differences were marked by clothes, attitude, accents and even distance, each group congregating at opposite sides of the pub. But those differences are not as marked as skin colour and the assumptions that come with it. I suppose the challenge for an enlightened human being who happens to be white is how to prevail on peers not so enlightened. You are privy to interactions ‘others’ won’t be, by being identified with the ‘elite’ and sharing the same invisibility of belonging, similar to a Muslim woman in a burka or a Hasidic man in his attire.

In conclusion (however unsatisfactory), it appears that at that point in the Venn Diagram we call society - where ownership, power, wealth, culture, race and faith might coalesce, our circles of belonging may be moving further apart. In a world dominated by Eurocentric identity, where humanity is created in that image, everything else is considered as 'other'. We 'others' remain expected to validate and justify not only our rights but our very existence, and are subject to tacitly understood yet universally enforced 'pass laws'. Changing cityscapes due to trade, migration, progress are inevitable most would say. The difference with gentrification is that it is less a matter of necessity and more a matter of the ruling elite and it’s aspirers flexing their muscles saying ‘this is our world you just live in it'. It may be true in London that all but the so called ‘1% are feeling the pinch but as with many such times of financial pressure this can give rise to the worst in human behaviour. Paradoxically these often double as aspirational times (see Thatcherite Britain) and right now is no different. Despite all the complaints about inequities, the society we inhabit remains about ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ with the 1% in fact being the zenith of ‘Us -' which many secretly covet. So when Middle England flocks to London in this climate, falling back on racial stereotypes is easy for those who are visually identified with the ruling class; no matter their class or even nationality. If you are white play by the rules of your pigmentation,.practice your accent and you won’t even stand out. You’ll be accepted as a fully paid up member of ‘Us’. A darker complexion will always identify a person with ‘Them’; even at the highest level you will still be the exception to the rule.  And thus gentrification becomes it’s very own ‘Reclaim the Streets’ movement - it’s message being that the streets, all the streets belong to ‘Us’.

-----'A Moving Image' world premiered on June 5 at the Arclight Culver City as part of the LA Film Festival (one of MOVIEMAKER Magazine's 10 Films to look out for)

(Read the full length version here: http://140not.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/last-saturday-night-in-peckham.html)