To Mongo, the term pollinator describes what gentrification has become in Detroit: the white kids move into a neighborhood, and investment and attention follow. Mongo said all the kids from Quicken, Rock Ventures, and the rest of the companies moving downtown are great for D’Mongo’s Speakeasy, but he can’t help but think it’s troubling that the city seems on its way back up only now that they’ve arrived. “The city doesn’t really see black life as life,” he told me. “When the pollinators come, that’s when the civilization comes.… It makes me angry, but you know something? That’s the way it is.”
