The Plan

Now I’m not one who is a believer in great conspiracies. Even though I wasn’t there, I don’t think there was a paid CIA trigger man on the grassy knoll in Dallas in ’63. I don’t believe that Princess Diana is being kept on life support in the cellars of Buckingham Palace. In fact, even though there is a whole bunch of shit that doesn’t add up, I don’t believe G. Dubya or the Jewish Defense League or anyone else not associated with the hijackers of 911 were responsible for the destruction of the Twin Towers. But I was listening to a podcast of This American Life on NPR this week and they were doing stories on an episode called Human Resources. One of the stories in the show was called The Plan.

I have heard about The Plan since the late 70’s early 80’s. It is usually referred to as a white conspiracy that started around 1967-68, the period MLK was shot and the riots started in many of the major cities like Baltimore, Trenton, DC, Detroit and Newark.

The idea was for white families who had sold their properties and fled the cities to the suburbs to eventually come back into the cities and buy back land that had dropped in value due to neglect. The result would be to force black families out and usher in white families who would have made a nice neat profit; selling high and buying back low.

I would hear this theory and just laugh at the absurdity of people denigrating gentrification just because of some silly fear they had about displacement. Who would be able to organize such a diabolical arrangement? No one could tell me. “This was a story right out of George Orwell,” I would think to myself. Nowadays, I would even attribute it to an Oliver Stone movie with a meaty role for Kevin Costner that could jumpstart his career. That is I would, but I don’t.

I haven’t been to Harlem since President Clinton took up rooms there, but I get the impression that the neighborhood has changed. Rates and rents are slightly more expensive than they used to be. Some small businesses have been forced to move further away from 125th St. and replaced by larger ones that were usually seen in mid-town New York. The GAP and Starbucks now occupy the spaces that used to be held by the local barbershop and family owned eateries. There are parts of West Philadelphia that are now being called University City as many homes are being bought and taken over by the University of Pennsylvania. In New Orleans, I remember seeing on the news many of the residents of the Lower 9th Ward who had lost their homes from Hurricane Katrina, will no longer be able to afford the replacement homes that are being built there now.


In many cities across the nation, young white couples are now being seen walking the dog or strolling down the streets with their children, whereas before the only whites that had been seen before were those who worked for the city or came to collect the rent. And now I wonder.

I have witnessed the 30 years of benign neglect that has been allowed to occur in certain urban areas. I witness the change that has turned many of the slum dwellings of the poor into million dollar homes for the more fortunate. I have seen or heard of the many people, mainly minorities, who have lost their homes because of the subprime mortgage fiasco and I wonder.

Has all of this urban renewal and fictional wealth for the poor just been one vast scheme by the “man” as another way to take advantage of black people? I don’t know. It’s been a question that I have lived with my entire adult life and then some. But I'm afraid, just like the destruction of the Hindenburg and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the existance of The Plan maybe one of those questions that will never be answered.