Today, it seems that Oakland–in conjunction with the natural effects that time causes–has changed drastically.

As suspected white supremacists continue to move into the area, many of them have resorted to being part of an online community, ran by nextdoor.com. The website, which was developed in nearby San Francisco in 2010, has seen a sharp uptick in usage of the web platform. 176 neighborhoods (and 20 percent of all households in the city) in Oakland have groups registered on Nextdoor. The site, which is known as “the private social network for neighborhoods”, allows people to report “suspicious activity.”

Of course, much of the reporting on Nextdoor involves reporting innocent Black people as being suspects for merely engaging in non-criminal/pedestrian activity, such as walking down the street. Many of the area’s Black door-to-door sales reps and mailmen have been labeled as “suspects”, according to the online company.

White members of Nextdoor have used the site to call the police and file complaints about Black residents nearby, which includes being “too noisy” at public parks and bars. Mitsu Fisher, a Black father of two, isn’t allowing his kids to play outside or roam the neighborhood free without his presence. The concern stems from a February 2014 incident in which a patrol officer working for a private security company chased down and shot a young Black teenage boy. To make matters worse, the private security company that  the race soldier worked for forbids their officers from carrying firearms. As a result of shooting the Black teen, the officer was rewarded by white members of Nextdoor.com and local neighborhood groups on Yahoo, with all of them collaborating to buy him a gift.

One Black Oakland native by the name of Leland Thompson has grown so weary of the rampant racism in theses local Internet groups that he has decided to stop wearing hoodies. After regularly browsing “Glenfriends”, a Yahoo group created by the Glenview (in Oakland) neighborhood residents, he has discovered that an overwhelming amount of the “suspicious activity” reports in the group described him. “Black man, five-ten, 160 pounds, bald,” Mr. Thompson says in reference to the typical descriptions given in the “Glenfriends” Yahoo group.

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B. Clark