Donald King, an architect who worked in the Central District for 35 years and former member of the Seattle Planning Commission. He is a critic of Uncle Ike’s.
So Seattle’s Central District, the home of Quincy Jones, the Garfield Jazz Band, and Jimi Hendrix, will soon be as white as Johannesburg.
Once Jewish, then solidly black, this great neighborhood is now less than 20% African American and even elected a Hindu woman, a radical socialist, over a home grown Black lady to serve as City Councilor. Black churches, even Mt. Zion, are moving to the burbs.
Black flight is real!
So what happens to iconic parts of Seattle’s Black culture? Can they survive without Black People? A small part of that end game is now being fought over at 23rd and Union. That corner, once famous for illegal drugs and murders, is now most famous for hosting Seattle’s most successful pot shop, Uncle Ike’s. The owner of Uncle Ike is a friend of mine, Ian Eisenberg, aka “Uncle Ike.”
Near the Uncle Ike’s shop, is a small black church, Mt. Calvary Christian Center. The Church is just half a block from the pot shop. So, naturally there have been demonstrations. Sadly, these have even degenerated to antisemitism; black racism is a poor cure for white racism but the crowds castigated Ike as an former member of the Israeli Army. Weirdly, Ike is not an Israeli and has never served in the Israeli forces. But hate is hate.
A more concrete issue is gentrification. A local architect, Donald King, told the Seattle Times, that “he wouldn’t single out Eisenberg for such broad demands as the protesters made, nor blame him for the gentrification. That gentrification is dramatic as show in this map adapted from the Seattle Times article. Still King thinks Eisenberg, Uncle Ike, ought to do something to help Mt. Calvary Christian Center. The Times piece said, that “Mr. King worries about the church “eventually being squeezed out” by some redevelopment plan of Eisenberg’s. He’d like to see Eisenberg “do something positive with the church,” maybe even share some of the carwash parcel with it.”
Donald King is not alone in concern for the African American community, While a coalition calling itself “Africatown” wants the CD to become an African American version of Seattle’s Chinatown (aka the International District), the iD is full of .. Chinese folks. I have trouble imagining Africatown unless it is going to function like something from Disneyland with live paid “Blacks” … or perhaps animatronic robots?
What can Ike do? He is a good man and is sincerely proud of the CD and its culture, but
the argument about what Ian might do to help the dwindling Black community is rather besides the point. How can one support Black culture in the CD when there will soon be no Black people living there?
YOUY PUT UP A GRAND DEFENCE OF WHITES. YOU’LL SURELY PROFIT FROM YOUR WORDS.
WTF ,, how ma I defnding anything ??