"I generally think concerns about the ill impacts of urban gentrification are overblown."

Duncan Black's neighborhood was majority black before the redevelopment that brought him in. It's now 67% White and 12% black. Remember that every time he posts something on the overt racism of others. [The stats are from Wikipedia and unsourced. This seems to confirm them]

Zadie Smith

But to live variously cannot simply be a gift, endowed by an accident of birth; it has to be a continual effort, continually renewed. I felt this with force the night of the election. I was at a lovely New York party, full of lovely people, almost all of whom were white, liberal, highly educated, and celebrating with one happy voice as the states turned blue. Just as they called Iowa my phone rang and a strident German voice said: “Zadie! Come to Harlem! It’s vild here. I’m in za middle of a crazy Reggae bar—it’s so vonderful! Vy not come now!”

I mention he was German only so we don’t run away with the idea that flexibility comes only to the beige, or gay, or otherwise marginalized. Flexibility is a choice, always open to all of us. (He was a writer, however. Make of that what you will.)

But wait: all the way uptown? A crazy reggae bar? For a minute I hesitated, because I was at a lovely party having a lovely time. Or was that it? There was something else. In truth I thought: but I’ll be ludicrous, in my silly dress, with this silly posh English voice, in a crowded bar of black New Yorkers celebrating. It’s amazing how many of our cross-cultural and cross-class encounters are limited not by hate or pride or shame, but by another equally insidious, less-discussed, emotion: embarrassment. A few minutes later, I was in a taxi and heading uptown with my Northern Irish husband and our half-Indian, half-English friend, but that initial hesitation was ominous; the first step on a typical British journey. A hesitation in the face of difference, which leads to caution before difference and ends in fear of it. Before long, the only voice you recognize, the only life you can empathize with, is your own. You will think that a novelist’s screwy leap of logic. Well, it’s my novelist credo and I believe it. I believe that flexibility of voice leads to a flexibility in all things.

"But to live variously cannot simply be a gift, endowed by an accident of birth; it has to be a continual effort, continually renewed."

I'd disagree only to say we live variously by default, we're conflicted and contradictory, and others notice that more than we do ourselves. Engaging that makes us stronger. Flexibility is the opposite of brittleness. Curiosity is the opposite of pedantry.

"He was a writer, however. Make of that what you will"