At the top of Sunday’s Real Estate section, The New York Times announces, “The South Bronx Beckons.” “For decades,” the Times observes, “the lower part of the Bronx remained off the radar.” It couldn’t be detected by radar? No, that isn’t true. Well, off which radar then? The radar of low-income blacks and Latinos? No, they were living there in great numbers. It’s the birthplace of hip-hop. People knew it existed. But the only radar the Times is monitoring is that of rich, white people who live in more affluent neighborhoods.

“In the never-ending quest for reasonable rents and tolerable commutes, New Yorkers are branching out in new directions,” the Times writes. But aren’t there people who already live in the South Bronx and aren’t they New Yorkers? No, “New Yorkers” in Times-speak are rich, white professionals — couples who can pay $2,500 per month in rent, like the ones profiled in the story. They may only have lived in New York for a few years, while the South Bronx is full of lifelong natives. But the former are New Yorkers and the latter are not, according to the language of the Times. Low-income, African-American and Latino communities aren’t considered New Yorkers by the city’s leading newspaper.

There are words for this attitude: racism and classism.

“With prices in Manhattan, Brooklyn and parts of Queens now out of reach for many renters and buyers, the Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, has assumed the mantle of next frontier,” the Times continues. Ah, yes, the frontier. As you may recall, that’s where white Americans stole land from Native Americans. You’d think that with such a loaded, painful history, the word wouldn’t be deployed today to describe white settlers in search of cheaper land. But the Paper of Record has no such scruples. It heralds the arrival of colonists who have come to tame the uncharted wild.

The Times appears to get this attitude from talking to real estate industry swindlers instead of actual community members. Last year, the paper quoted a real estate agent who was marketing a development in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn by claiming it was in the neighboring, more expensive Carroll Gardens area: “These days the lines of a neighborhood are drawn by real estate agents,” she said. This attitude — that rich outsiders looking to exploit an area are the ones who decide what it is named, not the longtime residents — can best be described as imperialism.