“But they may help gentrify some of the hood if the blacks aren’t too hostile and scary.”
If you want to take another tribe’s territory you can’t do it by inviting them for cocoa.
<<< On a friend’s suggestion, Van Zandt biked to Northeast to check out the Trinidad neighborhood. “A lot of white people are moving in here,” a black resident told Van Zandt, presumably to comfort him. But the comment made Van Zandt uncomfortable. He didn’t want to be seen as the urban pioneer who would upset the neighborhood ecosystem. >>>
In other words, Van Zandt is afraid of black people.