WCSU Social Sciences Department

04/18/2026

04/15/2026

02/11/2026

“I once lived in a Black mecca. But by the summer of 2022, my toddler son and I were often the only Black folks on the playground in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a fact that felt both alienating and surreal,” the novelist Naomi Jackson writes.

Jackson was born in Crown Heights to parents from the Caribbean — part of a tidal wave of late-20th-century West Indian and African emigration that changed the face of Black New York. “My formative years were in Flatbush, which is called ‘Little Caribbean’ even though it becomes less and less Caribbean,” she writes.

Over two decades, from 2000 to 2020, New York City lost nearly 200,000 Black folks, or about 9 percent of its Black residents. These losses have been particularly notable in historically Black strongholds like Bedford-Stuyvesant and Harlem. Data shows that in 2000, Black residents made up approximately 75 percent of Bed-Stuy’s population, and that number dropped to about 40 percent between 2019 and 2023, with the white population increasing more than tenfold.

In 2006, Jackson convinced her dad that buying property in Prospect–Lefferts Gardens was a smart idea. “At the time, I was 25 years old and scraping together a down payment on a modest studio apartment through a combination of savings and first-time-homebuyer grants. The neighborhood was already transforming; there was a new coffee shop and more white residents. Back then, the abbreviation PLG felt like a harbinger of gentrification that would protect my property value. Now, it feels more like a death knell for the childhood I remember.”

Read Jackson on how gentrification has reshaped her sense of belonging in the city: https://nymag.visitlink.me/zwsEwm

11/11/2025

Would you like to spend Summer Session I in Spain? There are TWO information sessions this week: Wednesday, Nov 12 at 2:30 and Thursday, Nov 13 at 2:30 in Higgins 218. This WCSU travel abroad trip is the most affordable, educational, fun and safest way to spend a month in Europe and earn credit. Learn more here:
https://www.wcsu.edu/spain/

11/08/2025

Join us next Wednesday, Nov 12, to celebrate Jane Goodall.

12/06/2024

https://theconversation.com/protests-sectarian-violence-and-a-growing-spat-with-india-bangladeshs-new-leaders-are-beset-with-challenges-to-its-democracy-236993

Restoring democracy will be a tall order for the interim government as it grapples with security, economic and geopolitical crises.

11/12/2024

12/22/2022

Researchers are learning why the emotional bond grandmothers have with their grandchildren is different than the one they have with their own kids.

11/14/2022

This Thursday!

11/10/2022

The discovery in an ancient thermal spring near Siena, Italy, is one of the most significant ever in the Mediterranean.