[If you can't see the pictures, please try another browser. I can't see them using IE9 (except when I'm editing them, weirdly enough), but see them just fine using Firefox.]
I congratulate Gilbert Cavanaugh on his superb photoessay, and thank him for reaching out to me, to let me know of its publication, and for giving me invaluable advice and encouragement.
What Dispossession
Looks Like
By Gilbert CavanaughJanuary 8, 2014
American Renaissance
Writing “2” instead of “two” hardly makes this wall a paean to education.
Along with the rest of America, Minneapolis has become dramatically less white over the last two decades. The percentage of Hispanics almost quintupled between 1990 and 2010 from 2.14 to 10.47 percent. There has also been a massive influx of Somalis, though it is hard to know exactly how many have come. There is no category for them in the census, and estimates of the statewide population range from 35,000 to 100,000. Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, author of Somalis in Minnesota, says the number cannot be lower than 60,000.
The majority of Minnesota’s Somalis live in Minneapolis, but again there are no firm numbers. Estimates range from a low of 14,500, or about 3.8 percent of the city’s population, to a high of 40,000 or 45,000, which would mean there are almost as many Somalis as Hispanics—or a even a few more.
What follow are some images of what is so frequently and innocuously called, “the changing face of Minneapolis.”
These pictures were taken mainly in three Minneapolis neighborhoods: Cedar-Riverside, Seward, and along Lake Street, a major road that serves as the border for many different neighborhoods.
One sure sign that whites are being displaced is the number of murals. The more murals, the worse the neighborhood.
Please click on photo for expanded version.
If murals call for an end to the violence you know the neighborhood is very bad.
[For the rest of the photoessay, go here.]
Was passing through the Minneapolis area this summer and stayed at a Super 8 motel in St. Paul overnight.
ReplyDeleteThat motel for whatever reason seemed to have a RESIDENT population of surly young negro men with their white girl friends. Each whitey girl friend holding in her arms a young mulatto baby.
To be honest, I was surprised at the status of things.
Lots of Hmong in the area also. Even a Hmong newspaper, the number of that ethnic group is so large.