Lawsuit: Being Creative Is Racist

This lawsuit is senseless. The attorney may as well argue that white neighborhoods should remain white, asian neighborhoods remain asian, etc.

However, I do not disagree with the attorney's consideration that these policies are nefarious towards local residents, meant to push them out, undermine their political and economic power, and disrupt their community well-being. I just don't think the motivation was race-based.

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Lawsuit: D.C. policies to attract affluent millennials discriminated against blacks

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But a new federal lawsuit alleges that the policies that officials initiated to attract younger, more affluent professionals discriminated against poor and working-class African Americans who have lived here for generations.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court by lawyer Aristotle Theresa on behalf of several African American residents, claims that the new residential buildings that have sprung up across the city — many of them with studio and one-bedroom apartments — catered to what urban theorist Richard Florida famously identified as the “creative class” and ignored the needs of poor and working-class families.

The lawsuit says that the “New Communities” program initiated by the District to turn aging public housing complexes into mixed-income developments was meant to “lighten” African American neighborhoods and break up long-established communities.

In theory, Theresa argues in the lawsuit, D.C. policies that were intended to “economically integrate” neighborhoods “are classist, racist and ageist” and “lead to widespread gentrification and displacement.”

“Every city planning agency . . . conspired to make D.C. very welcoming for preferred residents and sought to displace residents inimical to the creative economy,” Theresa wrote in the 82-page complaint.

The plaintiffs — Paulette Matthews and Greta Fuller of Southeast Washington, and Shanifinne Ball of Northeast — are seeking in excess of $1 billion in damages.

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To Theresa, the Fenty administration’s promotion of a “Creative Action Agenda” in 2007 represented a “paradigm shift” for D.C. government. Instead of prioritizing what was best for the land, it was focusing “on the predilections of a certain class of individual,” he says.

Fenty’s successor, Mayor Vincent C. Gray, also championed the creative economy by changing zoning regulations to “increase affordable space for creative businesses,” Theresa says. By targeting businesses that “produce innovative goods” or “use innovative processes,” the District offered tax breaks and other incentives that favored a “discrete class” and discriminated against more traditional modes of business, according to the lawsuit.