The invisibility of Black institutions, firms, and social clubs in various economic strategies is so stark that many cast doubts on whether many Black-majority cities like Wilkinsburg should even exist. “Merger with the central city is an option more physically contiguous inner-ring suburbs should consider,” writes Aaron Renn, a researcher at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.26 Journalist Eduardo Porter, commenting on small cities’ struggles to adapt to economic downturns, writes, “As technology continues to make inroads into the economy … it bodes ill for the future of such areas.”27 If Black-majority cities are a problem, making them less Black through annexation becomes the solution.
We know too well that merging with a larger city isn’t a foolproof path to prosperity. Indeed, there are Black neighborhoods within Pittsburgh that are struggling just like Wilkinsburg; Homewood and Beltzhoover are almost indistinguishable from my hometown. Not only is Wilkinsburg small, it hosts many undereducated single moms and fathers who’ve been to jail or prison: people whom many believe are incapable of adapting.
Restoring value is, indeed, possible. It was returned to East Liberty. The rationale of Pittsburgh’s transformation from a rust belt to a brain belt city can be applied to thinking about how to revive struggling, Black-majority communities. White Pittsburgh’s revitalization didn’t happen from talent alone. Economic growth and advancements in technology are a direct result of strategic investments in people who are trusted. Those who aren’t trusted are left behind.
When I run the Wilkinsburg streets now, my heart pounds, not from fear but from encountering some of my former classmates on Penn Avenue. One classmate who I’ll call Frank told me that, after a long bid in prison in the nineties, he has been doing odd jobs, trying to survive. He looked depleted, like he’d run a distance he couldn’t handle. Back in the day, I was scared of him. Now, I’m fearful for him, and for the residents of Wilkinsburg. It’s the same palpable fear I feel when in Detroit, Ferguson, Baltimore, and other Black-majority cities. The town is realizing the impact of divestment and devaluation and there is no hope in sight, because no one invests in perceived deficits or problems. Still, the people and property have value. The assets in Wilkinsburg are made invisible by the negative perceptions of Black people. However, instead of running away, I’m learning to run toward distress, learning how to fight back.
2
A Father Forged in Detroit
The deliberate deployment of racist policy toward Black neighborhoods has been documented, measured, and accounted for when looking at outcomes of people like my father Floyd, yet we would rather blame Black parents and parenting for the economic and social trajectory of people in Black-majority locales. We often hear “It all starts at home” when searching for reasons why someone ends up poor, incarcerated, or murdered. Some would rather find cause in poverty instead of policy. In this vein, “It all starts at home” covers for the belief that people’s deficits are to blame for negative outcomes. “Individuals are left without the norms that middle-class people take for granted,” New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in a column about urban poverty.1 His commentary shows how subtle blaming people while ignoring policy can be. Brooks adds, “It is phenomenally hard for young people in such circumstances to guide themselves.”
Behaviors don’t exist in a vacuum. Life and death are shaped by forces larger than oneself. Factors like generational wealth, property taxes, and bias baked into home valuations all limit or expand the choices a person can make. According to my research highlighted in this chapter, the value of homes in Black-majority neighborhoods across the country is $156 billion lower than their equivalents in similar White neighborhoods. In addition to eliminating wealth, the devaluation of housing throttles educational, vocational, and recreational opportunities for residents.2 Whether you are in Wilkinsburg or Detroit, the neighborhoods where many of us reside are devalued, and our educational and career choices reflect the impacts of that extraction of resources caused by racism. As Notorious B.I.G. rapped in the song “Things Done Changed”:3
If I wasn’t in the rap game
I’d probably have a key knee-deep in the crack game
Because the streets is a short stop
Either you’re slinging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot
When societal biases lessen the value on homes in Black neighborhoods, residents and communities lose the wealth and revenue to develop themselves as well as the institutions that expand the number of options residents have. Home values drive property taxes, which generates the revenue that helps determine school quality, infrastructure improvements, public safety, and recreation.
Absent is the culpability that policy should share with behaviors. While de facto and de jure segregation and housing discrimination unquestionably influenced housing markets, the residents most burdened by U.S. policy continue to shoulder the blame of its effects. The retort “it all starts at home” should be about policies that devalue homes, people, and places rather than family behavior.
“Your father just got caught up,” explained Kergulin Cunikin, who ran the streets with my father in the 1970s. “It was a good time in Detroit. People worked; they had money. Drugs were flowing … People had a good time … Your father just got caught up.”
Getting caught up with heroin led my father, Floyd Allen Criswell Jr., to a life of crime that didn’t last very long. Floyd died in prison a day before his twenty-seventh birthday—stabbed in the heart by another inmate.
But Floyd didn’t just get caught up in his own personal issues—drug use and criminal activity—as many of my family members and his former friends believe. He lived in neighborhoods that were devalued, limiting his choices. My father made bad decisions, and he paid the ultimate price. Racism was also culpable for his development, but society has not paid its debt.
All my life, I never took the time to learn much about Floyd. I don’t think I had the chance to call him Dad. I can’t recall ever talking to him, even though my mother Karen charitably says I did. Floyd bounced between Detroit and Pittsburgh throughout his life, so if I did talk to him, it was fleeting. The only address of his I knew was the one on his criminal record: Whitcomb Street on Detroit’s west side. His father, Floyd Sr., and my Grandma Doris were both born in Detroit. Grandma Doris reared her four children—Sherdina, Raymond, Floyd, and Boo—in an apartment on Pingree and 12th Streets, also on Detroit’s west side. Floyd bounced between various apartments, the Herman Gardens Housing Projects, and single-family homes amid prison bids and trips to Pittsburgh.
Three of Grandma’s four children died before she did—two killed in the Detroit area. Floyd’s older brother Raymond was a pimp who was stabbed to death in 1963 by a woman who, I presume, he tried to traffic. Although Grandma Doris and Floyd Jr. moved to Pittsburgh when he was about eight years old, they stayed connected with Floyd Sr.’s brother, Uncle Rufus, in Detroit.
I don’t remember seeing Floyd or talking with him, but I frequently saw my immediate biological family throughout my time in Pittsburgh. I learned most of the details I know about Floyd’s life only recently, from my cousin Shante. Gregarious and sharp-witted, Shante interpreted for me the police records and other legal documents I had about Floyd. But she was a witness to his story too. At about twelve years younger than he, she was old enough to remember the major events in his life. Shante wasn’t sure when Floyd started using, but by the time he was nineteen, he was a father of three and a full-blown addict. Floyd and Karen conceived my older brother Kevin and me. In 1971, five months after I was born, Floyd had another child—Diona—by a woman named Bernice.
When I visited Grandma Doris on holidays, she repeatedly grabbed my face to tell me how much I looked like Floyd. It was like she couldn’t