My Hood Ain’t Your Hood

This chapter will focus on the environmental changes that have shifted the neighborhood narratives in Washington, DC. Through the lens of JT, this chapter will consider how his neighborhood and the city have changed over the last 30+ years. There will be discussions surrounding the treatment of native Black Americans in White America about basic human needs highlighted throughout the chapter from the time JT was growing up in the early 1980s until the present day. It will include topics like food, shelter, healthcare, and its association with the ongoing drug and violence epidemic in Black communities compared to White communities. JT believes that gentrification is by design to ensure that native Blacks in America continue to own less than one-third of the wealth in the United States. This chapter will address concerns associated with how the federal government has played its part in ensuring that native Black Americans, old and young alike, are separate and not equal in their neighborhoods.