Economic Development, Racialization, and Privilege: “Yes in My Backyard” Prison Politics and the Reinvention of Madras, Oregon

Abstract

This article draws from geographic engagements with theories of racialization and NIMBYism to explore connections between economic development and the relational construction of racial identities. I investigate the discourses of local white leadership surrounding two interconnected economic agendas crafted with the goal of remaking the central Oregon town of Madras into an upscale, white community, including (1) entrepreneurial prison development, and (2) an urban renewal project emphasizing high-income residential construction and the removal of “blighted” housing. Community leaders framed these developments as essential to changing perceptions of Madras based on its racial makeup and entrenched poverty. White officials promoted prison recruitment and upscale housing development through a normative racial framework that reaffirmed the privileged status of whites, stigmatized Latinos and Native Americans, and (re)produced unequal spaces. Through this empirical focus, I call attention to the centrality of race in economic practices, emphasizing how racialized privilege and marginalization are reproduced through development agendas that give shape to geographies of opportunity and (dis)advantage.

本文根据种族化理论与邻避主义的地理涉入, 探讨经济发展与种族认同的关係性建构之间的连结。我探究关于两项相互连结的经济议程中的地方白人领导论述, 这些经济议程以将马达斯的奥勒岗镇中心重塑成为高档白人社区为目标打造之, 并包含 (1) 企业化的监狱开发, 以及 (2) 强调高收入住宅营建与移除”衰败”住宅的都市更新计画。社区领导人将这些开发案构念为改变马达斯观点的核心要素, 而这些观点建立在马达斯的种族组成与根深蒂固的贫穷之上。白人政府官员藉由再度重申白人优势地位、污名化拉丁裔及美洲原住民、并 (再) 生产不均空间的规范性种族框架, 提倡监狱徵员与高档的住宅开发。透过上述的经验重点, 我呼吁聚焦关注经济实践中种族的中心性, 突显出种族化的特权与边缘化, 如何透过形塑机会与优 (劣) 势地理的发展议程被再生产。

Este artículo se apoya en estudios geográficos de las teorías de racialización y NIMBYismo destinados a explorar las conexiones entre desarrollo económico y la construcción relacional de identidades raciales. Yo investigo los discursos del liderazgo blanco local que involucran a dos agendas económicas interconectadas, discursos construidos con el propósito de convertir el pueblo Madras de Oregon en una comunidad blanca mejorada, que incluya (1) un desarrollo empresarial para la prisión, y (2) un proyecto de renovación urbana que enfatice la construcción residencial de alta renta y la remoción de vivienda “tugurial”. Los líderes comunitarios destacaron estos desarrollos como esenciales para cambiar las percepciones que se tienen de Madras, basadas en su atuendo racial e inveterada pobreza. Los oficiales blancos promovieron el reclutamiento laboral en la prisión y el desarrollo para mejorar los estándares locales de vivienda por medio de un marco normativo racial que reafirmaba el estatus de privilegio de los blancos, estigmatizando a latinos e indígenas americanos, y que (re)produjera espacios de inequidad. Por medio de este enfoque empírico, llamo la atención hacia la centralidad de raza en las prácticas económicas, haciendo hincapié sobre cómo el privilegio racializado y la marginalización son reproducidas a través de las agendas de desarrollo que dan forma a las geografías de la oportunidad y la (des)ventaja.

Key Words:

• economic development
• housing
• NIMBY-ism
• prison
• race

关键词:

• 经济发展
• 住宅
• 邻避主义
• 监狱
• 种族

Palabras clave:

• desarrollo económico
• vivienda
• NIMBY-ismo
• prisión
• raza

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my gratitude to the anonymous reviewers who provided invaluable feedback on this article and helped to make it much stronger. I would also like to thank Richard Wright for his detailed and insightful comments and guidance through the publication process. I am grateful for feedback that Victoria Lawson and Elizabeth Brown provided on earlier drafts of this article. Finally, I extend a special thanks to Victoria Lawson and Lucy Jarosz for their support and collaboration on the Northwest Poverty Project.

Notes

1. The city's population has grown by 52 percent since the year 2000 (U.S. Census Bureau 2000, 2010); this increase is part of a long trajectory of population growth in central Oregon. Indeed, Madras's population expanded by 233 percent between 1980 and 2000 (CMURP 2007). It is notable, though, to highlight that 774 of the town's new residents are incarcerated in the minimum-security prison that opened in 2007 (ODOC 2012).

2. The federal Homesteading Act of 1862 was implemented to promote westward expansion. Homesteaders were offered 160 acres of “free lands” to “improve” Western territories that had been cleared of indigenous peoples (Bell 2012). The Act's offering of these “conquered territories” (Barraclough 2011, 235) had profound implications: It privatized 270 million acres of land (10 percent of U.S. territory) and significantly eroded American Indian culture (Bell 2012). In Oregon, 10,513,945 acres (17 percent of total lands) were homesteaded following the Act and its subsequent iterations (OBLM 2012).

3. See Wilson (2011) for a detailed discussion of the racial implications of the connections between irrigation and homesteading in Oregon.

4. At the time when interviews (2005–2006) were conducted in Madras, an all-white city council and a white mayor served the town. In 2007, the city's first non-white mayor was elected to office, which I discuss in more detail in the Conclusion. After completing this term, the mayor was replaced by another well-established white city leader who continues to serve in this position today.

5. ODOC demographic reports indicate that 9.1 percent of those in prison are black (although African Americans make up just 1.8 percent of the state's population), 14.1 percent are Hispanic (in contrast to the 11.7 percent of Oregon residents who identify as Hispanic), 2.6 percent are American Indian (with just 1.3 percent of the state's population being American Indian), 1.4 percent are Asian (while Asians represent 3.7 percent of the state's population), and, finally, 72.6 percent are white (although whites make up 84 percent of state population totals; ODOC 2012; U.S. Census Bureau 2010). Of course, these numbers are fraught because many individuals who identify as two or more races are not reflected in census and ODOC numbers.