What makes gentrification ‘white’? Theorizing the mutual construction of whiteness and gentrification in the urban U.S.

ABSTRACT

Urban gentrification is often assumed to be a racialized process. Scholarly work on gentrification, however, has generally left race underexplored, and has specifically not fully engaged with critical theories of whiteness, despite the frequent use of this categorization in a descriptive manner. In this review piece, I clarify this relationship by theorizing the mutual construction of whiteness and gentrification in contemporary U.S. cities. Whiteness, as a powerful structural and ideological force, shapes how gentrification processes play out via both appropriative practices of racialized cultural consumption and economic processes related to racial capitalism and racialized organizations. In turn, gentrification shapes whiteness by spurring salient discourse of racial difference and further necessitating the justification of racial economic inequality. When we imply that gentrification is “white,” what we mean is that it solidifies white structural dominance and reifies whiteness itself as a privileged racial categorization.

KEYWORDS:

• Gentrification
• whiteness
• racialization
• racial capitalism
• appropriation

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Robin Bartram, Kevin Gotham, Corey Miles, and the JREC reviewers for their helpful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. As is now standard journalistic practice, I capitalize Black in this article but not white, because the former refers to an ethnic identity (see Laws, 2020). I use the term Latine because it is gender-inclusive, and offers a more organic alternative to the clunky Latinx.

2. See also Clark’s (1965) conception of the “dark ghetto,” which functions as a similar imaginary.

3. At least, not anymore, though in many gentrifying iconic ghettoes, like New York’s Harlem, Chicago’s Bronzeville, or New Orleans’ Treme neighborhoods, memorialization of these historically Black neighborhoods may still be inscribed upon the physical landscape. As Hunter (2013, p. 168) writes about Philadelphia’s historic Seventh Ward, these neighborhoods might transition “from a physical site of black residences to one of cultural and historical memory.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

AJ Golio

AJ Golio (he/him) is a doctoral student of sociology in the City, Culture, and Community Program and a Mellon Community-Engaged research fellow at Tulane University. He researches and writes broadly on topics related to urban and cultural sociology, including housing, evictions, gentrification, policing, and representations of the city in popular culture.