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Ta-Nehisi Coates

Ta-Nehisi Coates - Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor for The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues for TheAtlantic.com and the magazine. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. More

Born in 1975, the product of two beautiful parents. Raised in West Baltimore—not quite The Wire, but sometimes ill all the same. Studied at the Mecca for some years in the mid-’90s. Emerged with a purpose, if not a degree. Slowly migrated up the East Coast with a baby and my beloved, until I reached the shores of Harlem. Wrote some stuff along the way.

Some Help With Harlem Geography

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
Jan 5 2010, 3:15 PM ET Comment

Can some longtime New Yorkers (and particularly Harlemites) help me out with this one? I've been in Harlem for about six years, and New York almost ten. I know that the boundaries of neighborhoods tend to fluctuate. Still, thinking more on the geography the Times calls "Harlem" raises some questions for me:

But the neighborhood is in the midst of a profound and accelerating shift. In greater Harlem, which runs river to river, and from East 96th Street and West 106th Street to West 155th Street, blacks are no longer a majority of the population -- a shift that actually occurred a decade ago, but was largely overlooked.

By my estimate this basically places Morningside Heights (amongst other things) inside of Harlem. I imagine that might have been true at some point. But those borders sound really permissive to me. Am I off?


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