Today, I've been thinking about businesses in the Black community that primarily serve Black folks and how, it feels, like they are less vibrant than I remember.

I went to two places to buy Greek paraphernalia, one in the West End Mall and the other in the Greenbriar Mall. (Both of those places are iconic places in Black Atlanta.)

One store was closed in the West End mall. (Not surprising. It's the day after Mother's Day and students are not back on campus.)

But the Mall itself lacked the vibrancy of 20 years ago.

To @Ebonyteach's point she made on her thread, gentrification and suburbanization have taken a serious toll on the sheer number of Black folks.

The West End of Atlanta, home to thousands of Black students, is now rapidly gentrifying.

Fewer and fewer middle aged Black folks.

And the nearby Beltline (a government funded walking path) has sent home prices skyrocketing as younger white families move in.

So the mall sits quiet and empty during the day, as it was today. Years ago, it was a hub of activity.

Striking out at the West End Mall, I head to Greenbriar. Many of my AUC students have likely never been. Whereas, when I was a student, Greenbriar was a destination, particularly for Black art and the bookstore.

The paraphernalia store was still there.

The store was busy -- as the West End was when I was there last week -- but the mall was eerily quiet. Even the Post Office inside the mall was closed.

With integration, then suburbanization and gentrification, our business ecosystem has been weakened. There are fewer Black owned corner stores that we walk to, like I did when I was a kid. Fewer store front lawyers, accountants, notary publics.

Fewer Black owned businesses.

There are still barbershops, beauty salons and funeral homes that cater almost exclusively to Black folks.

But they are much less likely to be exclusively found in Black communities.

I am not caping for Black capitalism. But in a capitalistic world, our very means of having access to resources are being replaced.

But what I noticed was the effect on our culture.

With kids playing inside and much less likely, outside of a very few areas, to go to schools where Black folks literally run everything, and much lower involvement in Black only (predominantly) civic institutions, we are much more likely to be integrating other spaces.

I think this leads to a subtle shift in perspective: where more folks are focused on Blackness as it appears through the prism of white spaces rather than Blackness as it appears in community with Black folks who are in community only with other Black folks.

There are still many, many places where Black folks are in large Black ecosystems.

But I was struck by traveling around Atlanta, which has millions of Black folks, and finding brick and mortar stores selling Greek 'nalia in quiet dying shopping malls.

You can feel the weakening of many of our institutions. Jet magazine, Essence, Ebony hardly hold the same impact as they used to. The Black church is not nearly the institution it once was. HBCUs are largely diversifying.

(Each of those institutions were also the site of reproduction of forms of white supremacy and subordination (often capitalistic, heteropatriarchal and colorist.)

But there is something different about having institutions that catered to our community versus fighting (begging) to be included in organizations and systems whose entire existence is predicated on violently excluding us.

That's why I think we need more Black focused institutions, storytellers, artists, scholars, businesses, civic organizations.

Too many folks are justifying why someone else's ice is colder, rather than lifting up (and changing) our own community.

That said, we also have to resist a very dangerous narrative that says that 'because white folks and white supremacy is opposed to us, we must only talk about race, because, unity.'

That's a trash narrative too. We cannot reproduce subordination in our community.

Too often -- and it is often cis-het Black men -- argue for a Black version of white supremacy where Black men are in charge, without the need of being questioned.

That's white supremacy, with slightly different actors.

Black men need to fight misogyny and homophobia -- not just misogynoir -- because the larger systems of oppression hurt ALL Black folks.

We have to work towards getting Black centered institutions that are inclusive. That means who they serve, what they look like, who holds power.

But there can be no doubt that the forces of integration and gentrification have weakened the major institutions that have been key parts of Black resistance to white supremacy.

And that is an epistemological (and real life) concern.