Ol’Otis
The Picasso of the Ghetto
We just need to organize and get an economic base
Self-Love, California, and The Broken Black Family (A Diary Megathread)...
- Thread starter murksiderock
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- Brooklyn keeps on taking it.
That’s what it all comes down to. It’s LA….opportunity
murksiderock
Superstar
1850: 1% black (population 926)
1860: 1.1% black (pop 4180 black people)
1870: 0.8% black (4482)
1880: 0.7% black (6053)
1890: 0.9% black (10,921)
1900: 0.7% black (10,395)
1910: 0.9% black (21,398)
1920: 1.1% black (37,695)
1930: 1.4% black (79,482)
1940: 1.8% black (124,333)
1950: 4.4% black (465,794)
1960: 5.6% black (880,163)
1970: 7% black (1,396,719)
1980: 7.7% black (1,822,428)
1990: 7.4% black (2,202,242)
2000: 6.4% black (2,167,785)
2010: 5.8% black (2,160,729)
2020: 5.7% black (2,253,679)
2022 ACS estimate: 5.2% black (2,025,218)
+/- by Census year
1860: +351.4% (+ 3254)
1870: +7.22% (+302)
1880: +35.05% (+1571)
1890: +80.42% (+4868)
1900: -4.82% (-526)
1910: +105.85% (+11,003)
1920: +76.16% (+16,297)
1930: +110.86% (+41,787)
1940: +56.43% (+44,851)
1950: +274.63% (+341,461)
1960: +88.96% (+414,369)
1970: +58.69% (+516,556)
1980: +30.48% (+425,709)
1990: +20.84% (+379,814)
2000: -1.56% (-34,457)
2010: -0.33% (-7056)
2020: +4.3% (+92,950)
2022 ACS estimate: -10.14% (-228,461)
Ol’Otis
The Picasso of the Ghetto
We still need an economic base
murksiderock
Superstar
Let's start with some clarifications, including clarifying some misconceptions I've had...
•California grew its black population in 9 Census counts straight, from 1910 thru 1990. Essentially the first 90 years of the 20th century, Black California was growing;
•during this 90-year run, Black California peaked in percentage in '80 (7.7% black); raw population in '90 (over 2.2 million of us); and in black growth rate in '50 (almost +275%);
•Black California has only lost population in three decennial Census counts---->1900, 2000, and 2010;
•Black California grew its population in the 2010s and had its largest population ever in the '20 Census just three years ago...
These are all facts. So then, why the misperception, including one I've had, that California's black population is habitually losing black people?
•California grew its black population in 9 Census counts straight, from 1910 thru 1990. Essentially the first 90 years of the 20th century, Black California was growing;
•during this 90-year run, Black California peaked in percentage in '80 (7.7% black); raw population in '90 (over 2.2 million of us); and in black growth rate in '50 (almost +275%);
•Black California has only lost population in three decennial Census counts---->1900, 2000, and 2010;
•Black California grew its population in the 2010s and had its largest population ever in the '20 Census just three years ago...
These are all facts. So then, why the misperception, including one I've had, that California's black population is habitually losing black people?
murksiderock
Superstar
I'm gonna get to this, my brother...
Black California has been losing black people in its major cities as more and more black folk and neighborhoods have gotten priced out of their traditional areas. But in addition to moving outta state, many of us are just moving to smaller cities in-state and suburbs of the larger cities, all the way from suburbs in the Sacramento Valley to the High Desert, plenty of Black Californians are remaining in-state...
ACS estimates are known for fluctuating wildly year to year, and I find it hard to believe that from the actual Census in '20 to the '22 estimates, in two years, California is down almost 230,000 black people. That would be an unprecedented decline in our communities that I don't find as terribly accurate, we've never lost more than 35,000 people from one Census to the next...
But supposedly we've lost 230,000 in two years? I'm not buying it...
I can however, believe we are declining again, but looking around Sacramento, this doesn't look like a city black folk are running from. Los Angeles still has the strongest black community in the state, and both of these cities are finding shifting demographics in black areas as has been true for 30-odd years now. But both still have tremendous black foundations...
Black people are fleeing Oakland and San Diego, but the black foundation in Oakland will always be there. Not sure about SD, @re'up and other San Diegans can tell me how much of the black foundation remains there...
The black foundation of San Francisco has long dissipated and is in trouble of disappearing entirely within the next generation, but SF would be a unique case among major California cities because most of us aren't like that...
This brings me to your point. Black California will likely never drop below 2% of the population again, and by the time that happens we'd all be long gone. I don't actually think we'll ever drop below 4% of the population again....
The population base is here because as of the 10s we were still attracting black people to California. So the question is, how do we reinvigorate the appeal of California to Black America and black foreigners?
First of all, I've said this before, that economic base is gonna be hard to attain as long as the cost of living here remains among the highest nationally. Period. I was talking to some people the other day who are struggling to make $20-21/hour here, which is unacceptable because I know people down in NC making that and the cost of living is far lower. We are the most disadvantaged race nationally, so logically we are going to go where our dollars stretch further. There's too many other places now that offer similar, or better, wages for Black people than California...
Lowering the cost of living and raising wages isn't something within our direct control, so then to me we need to pivot to, what do we do well as a people economically, and how do we do our part to raise the black median income...
Otis you and others still live here, so you have more answers on what we do well to provide to Cali's economic engine than I do. But for me, to raise the family income, we gotta keep this money within our communities. It's easier said than done, but when we have assets in the form of business and homes, we can't sell out to the nearest non-black bidders...
These neighborhoods that we have a historical footprint in, will continue to attract outsiders of we sell or lose our assets...
murksiderock
Superstar
My brother I'm not at risk of a single thing...
murksiderock
Superstar
I'm back and I'm so in love with this place. I have a lot of love for alot of places but the calling to return home is strong...
I have time to work out the logistics, because the fact is all three of my girls are in North Carolina. But there's a framework developing on creating a residence for myself on both coasts, and creating an action plan on how to realize that. Early, early, early planning but having somewhere to bring my girls out here in the summer, and being available in Carolina most of the school year...
My gut instinct tells me it'll take me a good two years to realize this in the most responsible, mature way, but the urge to come back is strong. It's almost as if my entire life of bouncing around and seeing the country was supposed to happen only for me to hit my mid-30s and realize I'm supposed to end up back here, and I've never had this feeling before. It's hella emotional. I have an entire life and livelihood out east that I enjoy, and I won't leave my children...
But I miss my people. I miss the sights and the culture here. I love this city and this state and I also feel as if I'm supposed to contribute to the culture here some kind of way...
I have time to work out the logistics, because the fact is all three of my girls are in North Carolina. But there's a framework developing on creating a residence for myself on both coasts, and creating an action plan on how to realize that. Early, early, early planning but having somewhere to bring my girls out here in the summer, and being available in Carolina most of the school year...
My gut instinct tells me it'll take me a good two years to realize this in the most responsible, mature way, but the urge to come back is strong. It's almost as if my entire life of bouncing around and seeing the country was supposed to happen only for me to hit my mid-30s and realize I'm supposed to end up back here, and I've never had this feeling before. It's hella emotional. I have an entire life and livelihood out east that I enjoy, and I won't leave my children...
But I miss my people. I miss the sights and the culture here. I love this city and this state and I also feel as if I'm supposed to contribute to the culture here some kind of way...
murksiderock
Superstar
Oak Park gentrified than a muhfukka too 
I'm over at one of my sister's cribs right now, she lives and goes to church two blocks from 4th Ave Park. This shyt super gentrified, it's still alot of black people around here but it's definitely a bunch of "others" out here too, much more than I can recall...
Broadway is popping though, I think what I'm gonna do this weekend is get plugged on where the concentration of black owned businesses are in the city. I want to believe that we have more than one place we set up shop at, because where are businesses are, are where our community should be, and my initial guess is there aren't a ton of black owned businesses in Oak Park anymore...
@LezJepzin @Paper Boi @Premeditated do yall have plugs on where the black owned businesses are? Any businesses, I'm really just scouting and relearning the city!
I'm over at one of my sister's cribs right now, she lives and goes to church two blocks from 4th Ave Park. This shyt super gentrified, it's still alot of black people around here but it's definitely a bunch of "others" out here too, much more than I can recall...Broadway is popping though, I think what I'm gonna do this weekend is get plugged on where the concentration of black owned businesses are in the city. I want to believe that we have more than one place we set up shop at, because where are businesses are, are where our community should be, and my initial guess is there aren't a ton of black owned businesses in Oak Park anymore...
@LezJepzin @Paper Boi @Premeditated do yall have plugs on where the black owned businesses are? Any businesses, I'm really just scouting and relearning the city!
murksiderock
Superstar
I've spent the day with my grandmother here in South Natomas and I'll have to tap back into here later...
We were talking earlier and she initiated a conversation about trauma, and how she believes she passed her trauma to her kids, and all the shyt. Very deep and emotional conversation that fits the spirit of this thread, I'm gonna tune back in later with more detail...
We were talking earlier and she initiated a conversation about trauma, and how she believes she passed her trauma to her kids, and all the shyt. Very deep and emotional conversation that fits the spirit of this thread, I'm gonna tune back in later with more detail...
murksiderock
Superstar
My grandmother was an only child born in 1953 in the Fillmore District in San Francisco. Her mom was a white lady from Sacramento, ran away at age 13 to SF. Her dad moved around frequently in his youth, between Alabama, Tennessee, and Missouri. Ended up in SF some time around 1950, give or take a year...
Her father was co-owner of a jazz club there (she can't remember the name of it), and her parents and their associates also ran heroin out of their club. Therein begins the trauma experience, how we are born into trauma we didn't ask for, and aren't taught how to manage responsibly, because her mom was a runaway from a neglectful mother and never knew her own father, left home at 13; her dad was fleeing southern racism and became a drug dealer out here...
She says she saw SFPD raid her dad's club when she was around 4 or 5, looking for drugs (didn't find any). They beat her dad and someone else in front of her and others, left him fukked up...
Trauma...
After that raid they moved to Sobrante Park, East Oakland, which at the time was a white neighborhood (Fillmore was black). By the time she was 7 or 8 she began being left home alone when coming home from school, she'd see her parents maybe an hour or two before she went to bed. She specifically notes this as something that was "normal" to her, and she ended up passing down this practice to my dad and uncle, something she regrets...
She also believes, doesn't know for certain, that this was around the time her parents started using hard drugs. She didn't see them junkie'd out until her teens but somewhere in that 6/7/8 range is when she noticed their behaviors changing....
This was also when she noticed the demographics of Sobrante Park changing. Her words: "for every black family that moved in, two or three white families moved out". So this is the early 60s, and within a few years everyone in her neighborhood was black...
Her mom left her dad after he held her over a sink with a big knife at her neck. Her mom never spoke down on her father, though, and she always had a positive impression of her father. Never had a relationship with her mom's family, as they disowned her for marrying and having child with a black man...
Her father's family ended up in South Sacramento, his mom and siblings, and when her parents separated, he left Oakland and moved here. He was already into addiction by then, as was her mom. She would come to Sacramento and spend the summers with her dad and his family, always was tight with them...
My grandma says her parents encouraged going to school and making good grades, but were also restrictive on her leaving the house or who she could be around, says she was never taught about how to relate to boys. My grandma got pregnant and had my dad when she was 15 (July 1969). Her parents were disappointed, her mom offered to pay for an abortion, she refused it. Ended up moving in with her boyfriend's family in the Oakland Hills, which apparently had a ton of well-off black families back then...
So, as grandma describes her adolescent trauma: drug dealing parents turned junkies, who were loving but left her home alone at a young age; saw her father beat by cops in front of her; saw her father hold her mother at knifepoint; became a teenage mom...
This was the framework of what my dad inherited, and this is just from his mother's side. His father's side was apparently legit people but his father was also a junkie...
My grandma found her mom OD'd on heroin September 20, 1976. Actually someone else found her mom and called my grandma. Her mom was only 43, my grandma was 15 days from her 23rd birthday when her mom died. September 20 also happens to be my youngest daughter's birthday, 45 years after my great-grandmother passed...
Her father was co-owner of a jazz club there (she can't remember the name of it), and her parents and their associates also ran heroin out of their club. Therein begins the trauma experience, how we are born into trauma we didn't ask for, and aren't taught how to manage responsibly, because her mom was a runaway from a neglectful mother and never knew her own father, left home at 13; her dad was fleeing southern racism and became a drug dealer out here...
She says she saw SFPD raid her dad's club when she was around 4 or 5, looking for drugs (didn't find any). They beat her dad and someone else in front of her and others, left him fukked up...
Trauma...
After that raid they moved to Sobrante Park, East Oakland, which at the time was a white neighborhood (Fillmore was black). By the time she was 7 or 8 she began being left home alone when coming home from school, she'd see her parents maybe an hour or two before she went to bed. She specifically notes this as something that was "normal" to her, and she ended up passing down this practice to my dad and uncle, something she regrets...
She also believes, doesn't know for certain, that this was around the time her parents started using hard drugs. She didn't see them junkie'd out until her teens but somewhere in that 6/7/8 range is when she noticed their behaviors changing....
This was also when she noticed the demographics of Sobrante Park changing. Her words: "for every black family that moved in, two or three white families moved out". So this is the early 60s, and within a few years everyone in her neighborhood was black...
Her mom left her dad after he held her over a sink with a big knife at her neck. Her mom never spoke down on her father, though, and she always had a positive impression of her father. Never had a relationship with her mom's family, as they disowned her for marrying and having child with a black man...
Her father's family ended up in South Sacramento, his mom and siblings, and when her parents separated, he left Oakland and moved here. He was already into addiction by then, as was her mom. She would come to Sacramento and spend the summers with her dad and his family, always was tight with them...
My grandma says her parents encouraged going to school and making good grades, but were also restrictive on her leaving the house or who she could be around, says she was never taught about how to relate to boys. My grandma got pregnant and had my dad when she was 15 (July 1969). Her parents were disappointed, her mom offered to pay for an abortion, she refused it. Ended up moving in with her boyfriend's family in the Oakland Hills, which apparently had a ton of well-off black families back then...
So, as grandma describes her adolescent trauma: drug dealing parents turned junkies, who were loving but left her home alone at a young age; saw her father beat by cops in front of her; saw her father hold her mother at knifepoint; became a teenage mom...
This was the framework of what my dad inherited, and this is just from his mother's side. His father's side was apparently legit people but his father was also a junkie...
My grandma found her mom OD'd on heroin September 20, 1976. Actually someone else found her mom and called my grandma. Her mom was only 43, my grandma was 15 days from her 23rd birthday when her mom died. September 20 also happens to be my youngest daughter's birthday, 45 years after my great-grandmother passed...
murksiderock
Superstar
For me, I've known the general scope of most of this, but learning details is part of my personal mission to heal generational curses within my own life, as I was born into trauma passed on to me. I don't want to pass my shyt to my girls and they are young enough that I can establish a different Rodney and lifestyle for them than the one I was afforded...
I have 3 black daughters. I want to marry a black woman and be able to show my children a functional black family, and the word my grandma actually used repeatedly yesterday was "dysfunctional". I'm exhausted with dysfunction around me, ashamed of my own dysfunction, but motivated to be responsible and functional. So motivated, yall know this board is like my personal diary. I can't express how motivated I am to be an elevated version of myself...
Also been talking to some of my sisters lately and that fuels me as well...
We, and I'm specifically referencing black people. We were brought here broken. Damaged even more in our time here. I don't know how many functional black families I've ever known. I know they exist. I know it's attainable. I don't know how many I've ever known. My entire life has been wrapped in trying to make the chaos look good, from things I couldn't control to my direct actions that I can and could control. Making the bullshyt look good...
I'm sick of dysfunction and all these conversations are fueling actionable growth and healing scars. And look man, I said it upthread, I still think it's true, it feels like im destined to return back here at some point. Way too many coincidences and signs....
I have 3 black daughters. I want to marry a black woman and be able to show my children a functional black family, and the word my grandma actually used repeatedly yesterday was "dysfunctional". I'm exhausted with dysfunction around me, ashamed of my own dysfunction, but motivated to be responsible and functional. So motivated, yall know this board is like my personal diary. I can't express how motivated I am to be an elevated version of myself...
Also been talking to some of my sisters lately and that fuels me as well...
We, and I'm specifically referencing black people. We were brought here broken. Damaged even more in our time here. I don't know how many functional black families I've ever known. I know they exist. I know it's attainable. I don't know how many I've ever known. My entire life has been wrapped in trying to make the chaos look good, from things I couldn't control to my direct actions that I can and could control. Making the bullshyt look good...
I'm sick of dysfunction and all these conversations are fueling actionable growth and healing scars. And look man, I said it upthread, I still think it's true, it feels like im destined to return back here at some point. Way too many coincidences and signs....
