Black professionals Leading the Charge of gentrification

In Dc it is a general consensus that Whites are usually the cause of gentrification, however a few African Americans have started to realized that they are the gentrifiers. "I used to think it was about race — when white people moved into a black neighborhood,” Said lawyer Charles Wilson, 35, president of the Historic Anacostia Block Association. “Then, I looked up the word. It’s when a middle-class person moves into a poor neighborhood, and I realized, I am a gentrifier. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t like that word. It makes so many people uncomfortable. The g-word.” Many African Americans like Wilson have been able to afford the high priced row houses of nearby Capitol Hill or the condos of U Street or Adams Morgan but instead they have chosen to live in Ward 8, which was once filled with violence , poverty and drugs. They prefer to live east of the river, they say, because they feel at home in the black community and because they take pride in living near historic sites like the Frederick Douglass House. This is shocking because the stereotype of most middle to upper class African Americans is to get out of the troubled inner city to a more safer environment.