![\"lookupalley\"](\"http:\/\/www.challengedetroit.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/LookUpAlley-169x300.jpg\")
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Caught in the middle looking up.<\/em><\/p>\n Hope passed us over.<\/em><\/p>\n Stuck between two worlds.<\/em><\/p>\n Will you remember me when it’s over?<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n If there is one thing I have learned since moving back to Detroit, nothing is truly black and white, not even gentrification. \u00a0Gentrification<\/strong>… do you feel that? \u00a0The way it rolls off your tongue, say it louder! \u00a0Do you feel that? \u00a0If you don’t feel much, then you probably haven’t yet experienced walking in ‘ Having been born and raised on the city’s northwest-side, I recall in my youngest years living across the street from a Detroit Police officer, an older white man. \u00a0I was maybe four or five years old, but I remember the unequivocal feeling, albeit\u00a0too nebulous for my premature articulation, that ‘the white man across the street’ was leaving. Hyper-awareness set in… this was a ‘black neighborhood’. \u00a0Though, my inclination to perceive race and ethnicity hadn’t yet matured through America’s long-standing and antiquated ‘color problem’. \u00a0I was aware of, if anything, that ‘the white man across the street was gone…’ he left Detroit.<\/p>\n Fast forward…<\/em><\/p>\n I’m standing on Griswold St. in downtown Detroit, twenty-something odd years later when I meet the acquaintance of Jane. \u00a0Before I walked into her presence I had been admiring the architecture of the buildings, the type of things one tends to take for granted having grown\u00a0up and lived in a place they’ve\u00a0been their whole life. \u00a0And amidst my observations, to think back for a second to that four year old kid on the northwest side of Detroit, my surroundings no longer felt black. \u00a0In fact, I felt like the outsider\u00a0this time.\u00a0\u00a0The prism of my mind, now as a mature adult, seeing through my mind’s lens… ‘black OR\u00a0white?’<\/p>\n Then I met Jane…\u00a0a white woman, born in Detroit. \u00a0And suddenly my perception changed.<\/p>\n This is Jane’s story.<\/p>\nNew<\/del> Detroit.’<\/p>\n