By Jill Nelson

“No Longer Majority Black, Harlem Is in Transition,” the January 5, 2010 headline in the New York Times screamed, but not as loudly as I did at the sight of yet another article seeming to celebrate the demise of the Harlem community I know, love, and live in.

Conveniently ignored in current coverage of Harlem is that Harlem is not simply a chunk of real estate, but a neighborhood, one with a long history and connection to black Americans. It exists not simply as a physical place but as much, perhaps more, as an idea, a cultural history, and a symbol. Harlem is fluid, transcends geographical boundaries, and is defined in many ways, paramount among them the shared history, values and aspirations that have traditionally connected black Harlem residents and woven them into a community.

“Neighborhoods have geographical, political, cultural, and historical boundaries,” says Twila L. Perry, a law professor at Rutgers University in Newark who was born and raised in Harlem. “The cultural boundary is not always the same as the real estate or political boundary,” adds Perry, who since 1988 has lived in The Garrison Apartments, a thriving 29 unit co-op founded by African Americans in 1929. “There was a real sense of mission in this building, a common leadership, style and ambiance. When the building became more diverse, that mission was diluted, because it was our mission, not theirs.”

The elephant in the middle of the room in current efforts to represent Harlem as simply an available and, for those priced out of neighborhoods to the south, affordable chunk of real estate, is race. Yet inter-racial discussion of the downsides of transforming a traditionally majority black community, one known as the “Crossroads of Black America” into one in which many longtime black residents are priced out is rare, if not non-existent. That doesn’t make the need to discuss and manage the changes that are occurring in Harlem any less crucial. Central to the conversation that takes place between black Harlem residents as whites move into the neighborhood are what seem to be vastly different ideas of what constitutes community and its importance, differences that seem defined by race, and to a lesser extent, class.

Over the last decade, to be black and living in Harlem by choice—as opposed to as a refugee driven north by the now deflated housing bubble and creeping gentrification—often feels like being on the edge of erasure. Trapped inside an Etch-A-Sketch powered first by abandonment, then economic boom, now economic bust, now you see us, now you don’t. It’s as if generations of Harlem residents and the neighborhoods and communities they have built have been turned upside down and are being shaken back and forth, the better to erase you with, my dear.

The January 5, New York Times story was the latest manifestation of this process of erasure. It read as an effort by the newspaper to reinforce a trend based on two dubious premises. First, that Harlem’s black population has precipitously declined, and second that what decrease there is been has been voluntary and painless. This spin requires that one ignore or gloss over decades of failure to preserve or create affordable housing; the failure of elected officials to effectively advocate for Harlem residents; and the recent economic conditions of boom and bust that create displacement. It also presupposes that whites moving into a historically black neighborhood are inherently to the good, a script that would never be flipped if it were Harlemites trekking north to Greenwich, Connecticut. The icing on the cake is to treat as negligible the people, history, values—real and symbolic—that make Harlem a unique community.

This approach mirrors the attitudes and behaviors of many of those recently relocated to Harlem, who, in a painfully familiar show of white privilege and personal imperialism, often seem willfully ignorant of, oblivious to, contemptuous of and disinterested in the community prior to the moment of their arrival.

Then there’s The Times’ journalistic gerrymandering, in which it seems the boundaries of Harlem are redrawn to support the headline. The newspaper moved the southernmost boundary of Harlem from 110th Street down to 96th Street. “Central Harlem”—defined as north of 110th Street between Fifth and St. Nicholas Avenues—is separated from “Greater Harlem,” a designation that runs river to river and encompasses everything from East 96th Street and West 106th Street to West 155th Street.

“I think their boundaries and demographics are skewed. What they interpret as Harlem and what I have always known as Harlem do not coincide,” says New York State Assemblyman Keith L.T. Wright, who has represented the 70th Assembly District, which includes Central and West Harlem, for 18 years. Born in Harlem, Wright, his wife and two sons live in the housing complex where he grew up.

“The article tried to make an argument that people have not been displaced, and that the onset of newcomers are coming here because of new development as opposed to displacement,” says Wright, who points out that eviction proceedings have doubled in recent years and that “Housing court is full. White people are not moving up here because they love black people or this community, they’re being squeezed out as well, from the east side, Gramercy Park, and other neighborhoods. They come up here thinking it is just another place to live, with no sense of history, of what it took to make and keep this neighborhood the glorious community it is. Quite frankly, to some it’s a place to sleep, to a large extent.”

“Gentrification is a social justice issue, it’s not just a real estate issue, and it’s an issue people get defensive about and are not comfortable talking about,” says Perry, the law professor, who thinks that’s exactly what old and new Harlem residents should be discussing. “I would like to see Harlem remain a community where there is a large representation of African Americans. I don’t think they should be excluded on the basis of economics,” says Perry. “There is a value in preserving historic neighborhoods.”

Those discussions won’t happen until the focus of the conversation is expanded and reframed as more than either a race neutral real estate story or charming Negro nostalgia.

Harlem is one of the few neighborhoods in Manhattan that has long been and remains integrated by both race and class. Part of the discussion we should be having asks: do we value diversity of race, class, and age in Harlem? What, if anything, does such diversity contribute to a community? What are we are willing to do to preserve it? Does the history of a community disappear when the people who made it are gone? Does it matter?

To refuse to engage in these uncomfortable conversations will more than likely mean that the rich history, culture, emotional and psychological connections that resonate in Harlem will be erased, and it will become another community reduced to simply real estate.

Harlem, like those once bold and distinct images on an Etch-a-Sketch will be going, going, gone.

Jill Nelson is a journalist and author of five books. She lectures widely on race, gender, politics and media.