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

The problem that this article addresses is a simple one: in academic articles, in public media, and in everyday conversation, we tend to discuss gentrification as a white phenomenon. And yet, thus far we lack a full theoretical engagement to say exactly how or why gentrification is “white.”

Take, for example, a recent feature article in the Washington Post in which Bahrampour et al. (2023) write of how “gentrification has remade” cities across the United States. The authors profile four historic neighborhoods of color, each of which has witnessed an increase in white-identifying population over the past 2 decades. The article rehashes a familiar racial dynamic in depictions of contemporary gentrification: a contrast between an influx of white in-movers and displacees who are people of color—usually Black or Latine,¹ but sometimes Asian. Some academics might take issue with how the authors of the Washington Post article conflate white influx with gentrification, which in scholarly parlance usually refers to a process of economic investment and class change (i.e., Smith, 1998, p. 198). The profile, however, underscores that to many more casual observers, the racialized dynamics of American urban gentrification seem obvious, even inherent.

In this example, we observe an important mismatch between public and academic discourse on race and gentrification that I believe merits further inquiry. Scholarship has historically centered economic class as the primary stratifying mechanism in gentrifying areas, and race is usually theoretically subsumed under this. Fallon (2021), in a critical literature review of 331 empirical studies of gentrification, finds as much: race is often brought up in a descriptive fashion (for instance, typifying the “wealthy white newcomer” and “poor minority incumbent”), but is usually not given definitional or theoretical consideration. The issue with a descriptive approach is that it risks minimizing the ways in which racism itself—not racism as class schematic—shapes our world. Given this historical deficit, a number of scholars have recently called for more substantive engagement with the racialized dynamics of gentrification (Hyra, 2017; Mumm & Sternberg, 2023; Rucks-Ahidiana, 2021, 2022; Summers, 2019; Timberlake & Johns-Wolfe, 2017).

Building on this development, in this review piece I argue that the race-gentrification literature can be further improved through two theoretical advancements. First, these perspectives largely treat race and racial categorization as an a priori construct that influences urban processes in various ways, and lack a racial formation lens that views race-making itself as a contested, negotiated, and discursive process (Omi & Winant, 1986). Taking these theories into account, we are led to think of race and gentrification as mutually constructed (race ↔ gentrification) rather than uni-directionally impactful (race → gentrification). From this vantage, we discover that not only do racial ideas inform how the process of gentrification plays out, but that gentrification, as a major topic of discourse in scholarly and public media, shapes racial understandings in contemporary American urban settings. This perspective has been taken up very recently in select articles (Huante, 2021; Mumm & Sternberg, 2023), but could benefit from further theoretical definition and expansion.

Second, I note that the gentrification literature generally lacks critical theories of whiteness as a social location and ideology that both shapes and is shaped by urban development processes. At first glance, this may seem surprising, given that white people are nearly omni-present in discourse on gentrification. The prototypical gentrifier is usually imagined as white, as is apparent in the specific naming of other forms of “nonwhite” gentrification (Anderson & Sternberg, 2013), like “Black gentrification” (M. M. Taylor, 2002) or “gente-fication” (Latine-led gentrification, see Delgado & Swanson, 2021). The implication is that just plain “gentrification” is a white phenomenon. This treatment, however, is often implicit and almost always descriptive: the gentrifier’s whiteness is treated as a condition rather than a contested location in a social hierarchy. Mumm and Sternberg (2023, p. 5) sum up the issue well: “Whiteness and white newcomers as central objects and subjects of study continue to be overlooked as inherent, intrinsic, causal, or productive elements of gentrification in the United States.” Instead of treating whiteness in a descriptive manner, or as something that gentrifiers might have, I argue that the gentrification literature will benefit from a deeper engagement with theories of how white privilege and dominance are perpetuated, and how these factor into gentrification processes. In other words, I seek to take whiteness’ omni-presence in gentrification discourse and interrogate it further: what exactly makes gentrification “white”?

After reviewing relevant literature and further framing the issue, I seek to answer this question in two broad ways. First, I build theory on how whiteness shapes (→) urban gentrification. Given that not all gentrifiers are racialized as white themselves (Anderson & Sternberg, 2013; Bostic & Martin, 2003; Boyd, 2005; Delgado & Swanson, 2021; Hyra, 2008; Pattillo, 2007; M. M. Taylor, 2002), contouring this relationship requires us to move away from a notion of whiteness that refers to light-skinned bodies, and instead focus on whiteness as a social location, ideology, and culture. Here, I work with both sides of a historical debate, and highlight gentrification as both an appropriative process of racialized cultural consumption and one that is perpetuated via economic processes related to racial capitalism (Dantzler, 2021; Rucks-Ahidiana, 2022) and racialized organizations (Ray, 2019a). Then, I turn to how whiteness is shaped by (←) gentrification. I posit that race-making occurs via two mechanisms: first, via everyday discourse that is spurred by the inter-cultural encounters that occur at the “borderland” (Ramírez, 2020) of gentrifying areas; and second, by necessitating narratives of justification and encouraging systems of rewards that are resultant of racially uneven distributions of housing, capital, and other resources.

My choice to focus on whiteness in this particular article leads to a heavier overall focus on the gentrifying forces of the state, developers, and gentrifiers themselves. However, no process of urban change is one-sided: for every action imposed upon a community, there are always those within the community who seek to resist, promote, or augment that action. I therefore give some attention to incumbent residents, in addition to gentrifying forces, as actors who may also either facilitate or challenge the race-making processes of gentrification.

In this article, I limit myself specifically to gentrification processes in the urban United States, so as to cohere with a relatively similar racial history and development.

Literature review

Race and gentrification in the contemporary urban U.S.

Defining gentrification is generally a difficult and divisive task, and so I leave my conception as a broad one. In this paper, I refer to gentrification as a general process of neighborhood upscaling and the in-migration of relatively privileged individuals (whether in terms of wealth or other forms of social status and mobility). As is expanded upon in this paper, what is theoretically important about gentrification as it relates to the production of race is that it involves the addition of residents from disparate socioeconomic backgrounds and is usually marked by visible transformations to the urban landscape, both of which generate a discourse of difference from which racial ideas and understandings are derived.

Researchers have historically centered economic class as the primary source of stratification that leads to conflict and strife in gentrifying neighborhoods. It is generally accepted that somewhere at the intersection of capital flows, governmental policy, developer real estate practices, and the cultural desires of the middle-class, gentrification is pushed forward. In this context, race is often utilized insofar as it is a refraction of class: gentrifiers are likely to be white because, due to various structural advantages, this group more readily has access to the wealth necessary to invest in and transform urban space. This is true, and I do not seek to diminish class-based perspectives. In this paper, however, my goals are different. I seek to show the relationship between gentrification and whiteness itself, not necessarily whiteness as a reflection of class dynamics. I follow researchers who have recently begun to more intensively explore the relationship between race and gentrification, namely by investigating how racial considerations of various kinds augment the trajectory of gentrification.

For instance, though it is often presumed that gentrifiers are a mostly white group, some scholars have written about “nonwhite gentrification,” and how this process is qualitatively distinct from white-led gentrification. Beginning in the 1990s, researchers identified the movement of middle-class Black residents to lower-income inner-city locales (Anderson, 1990; Bostic & Martin, 2003; M. M. Taylor, 2002), particularly to historically Black neighborhoods such as Harlem in New York City (Freeman, 2006; Hyra, 2008; M. M. Taylor, 2002) and the Bronzeville-Kenwood area of Chicago (Boyd, 2005; Hyra, 2008; Pattillo, 2007). More recently, scholars have termed “gente-fication” to refer to upscaling led by middle-class Latine residents (Delgado & Swanson, 2021; Huante, 2021). These movements may be more “defensive” in nature (Boyd, 2008), in that they feature narratives extolling racial solidarity and within-race development (Delgado & Swanson, 2021; Moore, 2009; Pattillo, 2007). “Nonwhite gentrification” may lead to less social disruption and alienation of incumbent residents of color (Helmuth, 2019; Monroe Sullivan & Shaw, 2011; Somashekhar, 2020), yet still can result in intra-racial class-based conflicts—what M. M. Taylor (2002) refers to as “dilemmas of difference” (see also Lees, 2016; Pattillo, 2007). These findings present a problematic tension for the field: why is gentrification usually thought of as a white process if it is not always led by white people? I consider this tension within my theory-building; these findings on “nonwhite” gentrification necessitate a consideration of racialization as a process beyond a priori racial categorization.

In addition to the racial identities of gentrifiers, scholars also consider the dominant racial make-up of the impacted neighborhood to be significant to how gentrification processes play out (Hwang, 2020; Hwang & Ding, 2020; Mumm & Sternberg, 2023; Rucks-Ahidiana, 2021). Namely, quantitative studies have revealed that gentrification has historically been less likely to occur in majority Black neighborhoods (and to a lesser extent, Latine neighborhoods), as compared to dominantly white neighborhoods (Hwang & Sampson, 2014; Owens, 2012; Timberlake & Johns-Wolfe, 2017). However, this trend appears to have changed since approximately the year 2000, and since then, scholars have observed more white entry into neighborhoods of color (Freeman & Cai, 2015; Hyra, 2017; Jun, 2016; Owens & Candipan, 2019; Sutton, 2020).

Qualitative scholars have also started to tease out the complexities of cross-racial interaction that often occurs in gentrifying neighborhoods (Deener, 2012; Helmuth, 2019; Hyra, 2017; Summers, 2019). For instance, researchers have begun to point out some of the ways in which communities of color respond to and resist white encroachment, displacement, and other forms of racialized violence (Curran, 2018; Martinez, 2010; Summers, 2021; Summers & Fields, 2022). Despite this empirical attention, I argue that academic scholarship still has a long way to go in fully understanding why gentrification is commonly understood as a racialized phenomenon. I agree with Fallon’s (2021, p. 5) assessment of the issue: “By coining non-White gentrification, studies imply that gentrification is inherently a racialized phenomenon, predicated by White individuals moving into non-White spaces … Yet the role of race remains unclear and underexplored.” Further, I point out that thus far, the field has been almost entirely concerned with how various exogenous racial variables (i.e., the racial make-up of a neighborhood or dominant racial identity of in-movers as defined by Census categories) shape gentrification processes, but little attention has been given to the opposite: how gentrification shapes racialization processes. In the following section, I expand on racial formation theory, and how spatial configurations and processes have historically been imperative to the development of racial ideas.

The production of race in space

It is apparent to most urban theorists and practitioners the ways in which race shapes space. “[Ideologies of race, racisms, and forms of racial consciousness] are integral to the formation and revision of all American spatialities,” Delaney (2002, p. 7) reminds us, and it is true that physical and social landscapes are always the result of racial ideas. The residential segregation of differently racialized groups, which is both a historical process (Massey & Denton, 1993; Rothstein, 2017) and one that is perpetuated today (Shabazz, 2015; K.-Y. Taylor, 2019), is just one glaring example of how racism influences spatial arrangements.

What is often less discussed, but equally important, is how these spatial arrangements then form the basis of race-making itself. From Omi and Winant’s (1986) racial formation perspective, race is not static but shifting, made up of contested social processes embedded in specific contexts. Racialization refers to the “ideological process” (Omi & Winant, 1986, p. 7) by which something (i.e., a person, group, or neighborhood) takes on race. Racialization processes are built foremost on racial ideas, or publicly traded notions of difference (Kendi, 2016). Certain racial myths or stereotypes form understandings of what we should expect from certain people, places, and things—these understandings are what make up racialization. By trading narratives, either explicit or implicit, of certain people as different from other people, we form racial categorization.

Racial ideas arise, in part, to justify uneven landscapes or to explain different ways of being in space (Anderson, 2015, 2022; Delaney, 2002; Neely & Samura, 2011). For instance, the “analogous, reciprocally related, and mutually constitutive” (Gotham, 2014, p. 4; see also Squires, 1994) processes of racial segregation, suburbanization, and urban decline led to many American downtowns becoming racialized sites of concentrated poverty in the decades following World War II. Struggling post-industrial urban areas became ghettoized, home primarily to Black or immigrant Latinx or Asian residents (Hyra, 2008). These areas, in turn, served as the foundations upon which contemporary racial ideas have been formulated and reproduced. The ghettoized inner city came to be a dominant representation of Blackness and racial others more generally. Born in the midst of urban decline was Elijah Anderson’s conception of the “iconic ghetto” (Anderson, 2012), a public imaginary of violence and distress that becomes associated with Black skin and therefore gives Blackness a lower status; it is “a point of reference that hovers over phenotypic Black people as they make their way in civil society” (Anderson, 2022, p. 27).² Public narratives of persistent poverty and alleged issues with crime, drugs, and disorder within these neighborhoods are usually viewed not as structural issues but as cultural deficits, the fault of “an urban underclass … impervious to social intervention or change” (K.-Y. Taylor, 2019; p. xiv; see also Massey & Denton, 1993). They display the power of public discourse centered around racialized understandings of place to shape racial ideas—and therefore, understandings of place shape the contours of racial structure itself.

Meanwhile, the vast suburbs that surround most American cities, usually viewed as concentrations of relative wealth, stability, and cultural normativity (K. T. Jackson, 1985), came to be associated with whiteness (D. Harris, 2013; Lipsitz, 2011). The suburbs represent everything the iconic ghetto is not, and therefore bolster understandings of racial difference. Lipsitz (2011) calls these narratives the “white spatial imaginary”; he claims that this lens “portrays the properly gendered prosperous suburban home as the privileged moral geography of the nation” (p. 13). The discursive positioning of the “white space” (Anderson, 2015) of the suburbs as normatively desirable is rooted in postwar segregation and the exclusion of racial others (Lipsitz, 2011). The suburbs are a place where racial others are “typically unexpected, marginalized when present, and made to feel unwelcome” (Anderson, 2022, p. 14), where they are likely to be the targets of suspicion simply because of the perception that they are “out of place” (Boyles, 2015). Spatial arrangements, or more specifically narratives of space, not only allow the creation of racial others, but form the basis of white racialization as well.

Like gentrification, racialization is not a linear process, but one that is contested by racially subjugated individuals in both everyday and formal practice. Space is imperative to this side of the equation, as well—such is the insight of Black placemaking, a set of theories that demonstrate how Black communities create and maintain spaces of creativity, joy, and resistance in otherwise hostile environments (Hunter & Robinson, 2018; Hunter et al., 2016). Against the “unrelenting negative portrayals of black neighborhoods” (Hunter et al., 2016, p. 33) upon which the foundation of racial other-ing is built, Black placemaking builds a subversive alternative to the white gaze. This intervention demonstrates that it is imperative to consider not only how spatial-structural arrangements provoke the discursive work that consolidates whiteness and racial difference, but also how practices in space allow for opposing narratives.

We know much about the process by which segregation begets racialization, and therefore how the two processes exist as mutual constructions of one another. We know less, however, about the reciprocal relationship between gentrification and racialization. Perhaps this deficit is due to a historically descriptive treatment of race within the literature, or the unclear role of whiteness in the process. I argue that all spatial arrangements are in some way racialized—and this must include gentrification. To this end, I begin to theorize the mutual construction of gentrification and whiteness, focusing not only on how racial ideas influence development patterns, but also how these in turn either reinforce or alter the basis of racial understandings. I also consider the complexities of challenging this mutual construction via responses to the “racialized financial violence” (Summers & Fields, 2022) wrought by gentrification.

Locating ”whiteness”

Like gentrification, whiteness can also be a difficult concept to develop, even though to some its manifestations are so readily apparent. Echoing the language that Omi and Winant (1986, p. 3) use to describe race, I agree that whiteness is “concurrently an obvious and complex phenomenon.” Partially, this is due to the nature of racialization as a contested and ever-shifting process, one that does not always bear exact resemblance to patterns of the past (Bonilla-Silva & Forman, 2000), but rather incorporates salient cultural markers and structural arrangements to constantly reify stratified categorization (Omi & Winant, 1986). Whiteness in particular, however, is often noted for its “invisibility”—that is, those racialized as white tend to have low levels of racial self-awareness, or do not tend to see themselves as “having” race at all (Doering, 2016; Frankenberg, 1993; Hartmann et al., 2009; Lewis, 2004; McDermott & Samson, 2005). Also, one of the functions of contemporary white ideology is to downplay the significance of race and racial inequality, so as to maintain structural advantages (Bonilla-Silva, 2003/2022; Feagin, 2010; Lewis, 2004). In this way, whiteness can be not only invisible but invisibilizing; not only hidden from the majority of those racialized as white but also a central part of a cultural schematic that aims to obscure racism as a whole. In order to map the contours of whiteness in the United States, I propose three interconnected ways of conceptualizing it, based on existing theory:

First, we can consider whiteness as a racial group, a category of people that can be socially and contextually differentiated from people who are understood to belong to other racial groups. Like all racial groups, whiteness is related to phenotypic indicators (most especially, light-colored skin), but biology and genealogy are not determinative of racial categorization. Rather, whiteness is the result of distinct racial “projects” that have played out in patterns contextually dependent on time, place, and sociopolitical atmosphere (Omi & Winant, 1986). Whites can be described as a “passive collectivity” (Lewis, 2004), a group that does not often feel or acknowledge their own “groupness.” This lack of awareness stems from the fact that whiteness is often assumed to be a default racial category in the American context, unless a different racial group is specifically invoked (Feagin, 2010; Hyde, 1995; McDermott & Samson, 2005). Since early in American history and still today, whiteness has been “the unmarked category against which difference is constructed” (Lipsitz, 1998, p. 1). Against this default category, individuals not considered to be “white” are relegated to a status of racial “others” or minorities. It is through this “dialectical process” (Bonilla-Silva, 1997, p. 471) of other-ing that the default category of “white” is constructed. Due to the often “unmarked” nature of whiteness, and the defining of racial others in relation to it, it is often easier to define what whiteness is not rather than define what exactly it is. Regardless of the lack of an active sense of “group-ness,” in certain racially salient contexts, white people might become more self-conscious, and often throughout history have acted in tandem to advocate for the advancement or material benefit of the white racial group (Lipsitz, 1998).

Second, acknowledging that racial groups are not neutral collectivities but rather occupy positions in a social hierarchy, we might conceive of whiteness as a social location. Specifically, whiteness refers to the structurally dominant location in a racial hierarchy, the one most closely associated with material advantages and culturally favored characteristics. Importantly, conceiving of whiteness as a social location allows us to investigate the desirable position that those who are understood as part of this group possess while acknowledging that the group’s boundaries may change over time (Lewis, 2004, p. 626; Roediger, 2005). This idea is invoked, for instance, in the status of “honorary white,” a term that is meant to refer to people of Latine or Asian ethnicity who are assimilated “upward” to receive at least some of the benefits of whiteness (Bonilla-Silva & Dietrich, 2009; see also Glenn, 2015, p. 54; Huante, 2021). As Rodriquez (2006, p. 647) states, “Whiteness is not a thing but an accomplishment.” Acknowledging white “groupness,” therefore, does not deny the heterogeneity that whites exhibit in terms of a number of different characteristics (Hughey, 2010). Identities of gender, class, ability, sexuality, and myriad other social factors will intersectionally correspond to a range of structural benefits for different members of a white racial group. Still, researchers maintain that all individuals who are racialized as white possess a similar racial privilege, whether they claim whiteness as part of their identity or not (Lewis, 2004, pp. 627–628; McIntosh, 1988). This privilege is expressed in terms of the ability to command structural resources, like easier access to wealth, education, and civil rights. Relative privilege holds so strongly that scholars often synonymize whiteness as a currency or capital, a form of property (C. I. Harris, 1993), or in the Du Boisian tradition, a “wage” that bestows upon its holders economic, social, and “psychological” benefits (Du Bois, 1935/1992; Roediger, 1991).

Finally, whiteness represents a collection of racial ideologies, particular ways of being and interacting with the world informed by a set of stances or positions that are intertwined with structural advantage (Bonilla-Silva, 1997, 2003/2022). White ideologies, frames (Feagin, 2010), logics (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008), or consciousness (Eyerman, 2022) are built on the imperative to maintain the material benefits or “wages” of whiteness. They serve to justify racial inequality, especially uneven economic arrangements (Robinson, 1983), by writing off disparities as the result of the cultural deficiencies of racial minorities rather than as the result of a racialized social system (Kendi, 2016). The most significant white racial frame shaping contemporary, post–Jim Crow era America has been that of “color-blindness,” a viewpoint that insidiously utilizes the language of equal opportunity and a post-racial society to obscure white advantage and racial inequity (Alexander, 2010; Bonilla-Silva, 2003/2022; Feagin, 2010). Others have theorized whiteness as a proprietary and objectifying orientation toward the world, a proclivity toward dominion and manifest destiny, or “a comprehensive outlook that thingifies whatever it sees” (Myers, 2019, p. 13; see also Du Bois, 1920/2007). Some might argue that there is risk of over-simplification in adhering ideology to structural position (i.e., Brown-Saracino, 2009, pp. 16–17), as amongst them white people can and do hold a wide variety of viewpoints, positions, and attitudes. But even across this diverse population, the social location of whiteness and necessity to maintain it leads to certain ideologies that are remarkably consistent, even across political lines (Hughey, 2010). One also does not have to be racialized as white to utilize and advance white ideologies and uphold white power structures (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008, p. 18). The ability to “pass” in white spaces, or reflect certain elements of white cultural normativity, is often imperative to gain access to educational institutions, wealth-building opportunities, and other structural needs (Anderson, 2022). For instance, Grundy (2022) writes about the “respectability politics” that pervade the elite Black institution of Morehouse College, much of which is aimed at satisfying the white gaze by training “good” Black men that can successfully navigate white spaces. This note is imperative, as it allows us to understand how even during patterns of “nonwhite” gentrification, white ideologies can still be pervasive, and white power structures still upheld.

In sum, based on these various perspectives, we can define whiteness as a privileged and contested social location that informs both the ever-shifting boundaries of a passive collectivity of people racialized as white and an overarching frame or orientation that serves to maintain structural advantage. In the following sections, I will utilize these intersecting conceptions to deepen our understanding of how whiteness shapes gentrification, and vice versa.

Summary

Thus far, I have reviewed previous literature to argue that: (1) empirical research has come far in establishing that certain racial variables impact the location, pace, and qualitative experience of gentrification, but has done relatively little to establish how gentrification affects racialization processes; (2) despite this, scholars find that contested narratives surrounding disparate spatial arrangements often form the basis for racial ideas of difference, and it follows that gentrification, a dominant spatial form in contemporary American cities, is part of this process; and (3) there is a need to specifically clarify the role of whiteness in gentrification and gentrification in whiteness, a mutual construction that reifies racial hierarchy. Though difficult to identify, whiteness can be thought of as the ever-shifting boundaries of a privileged social location that is connected to certain ideologies and culture, or normative expectations of behavior, that uphold structural advantage.

How whiteness shapes gentrification

The primary debate concerning gentrification’s origins has been whether the process is largely the result of cultural preferences and consumer demand or of capital flows and the machinations of city elites (Zukin, 1987). Though consensus now dictates that gentrification is likely caused by a mixture of both factors, I utilize these two perspectives as a useful way to organize two broad ways in which whiteness shapes gentrification processes. First, I highlight cultural appropriation as a heuristic that emphasizes a particular approach to racialized cultural consumption in urban settings, one based on a simultaneous and sometimes conflicting push and pull. Then, I turn to and weave together theories of racial capital and racialized organizations to argue that systems of urban capital flow are also influenced by white ideologies.

Cultural and aesthetic appropriation

A demand-side perspective on gentrification places most emphasis on the “back to the city” movement (Hyra, 2015) amongst part of the American middle- to upper-class. Its prominent theorists argue that the desires and motivations of this consumer base are key, as developers and city leaders will clamorously follow suit, seeking to be the ones to fulfill the middle-class’s demands and thus receive their dollars as revenue or taxes. What has made aging central cities attractive to this populace are several broad cultural and aesthetic movements that took hold after the 1960s: the solidification of post-modernism, which called for the rejection of the overly standardized and homogenous suburbs in favor of “authentic” inner-city neighborhoods (Ley, 1996; Zukin, 2010); an appreciation for bohemian and other alternative lifestyles (Lloyd, 2006; Zukin, 1982); and an ethos of unconventional, creative, and progressive approaches to business practices (Centner, 2008; Florida, 2003). Such movements and cultural styles are eventually subject to cooptation and capitalist appropriation by increasingly wealthier clientele (Zukin, 1982), and while the “new middle-class” may want some aesthetic elements of bohemianism, industrialism, and the avant-garde, in reality very few are willing to give up the elements of comfort that make up middle-class living (Parker, 2018; Zukin & Kosta, 2004).

In this section, I consider what it would add to our understanding of cultural consumption in gentrifying areas if, instead of viewing it as the product of shifting middle-class tastes and preferences, we instead view such cultural consumption as the product of white tastes and preferences. This frame, I argue, allows us to further comprehend a complex and contradictory approach to the racialized inner-city, one based on the simultaneous incorporation of certain aesthetic elements of diversity and multiculturalism but the displacement of others. For instance, gentrifiers might celebrate the availability of hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants that make them feel as if they’re getting an authentic cross-cultural experience (Zukin, 2010); yet might also lodge noise or other complaints via 311 when certain ethnic customs don’t align with their sensibilities or expectations (i.e., Doering, 2020). I describe this conflicting push and pull as one rooted in white cultural appropriation, built on a tension between incorporation and rejection. For example, historical scholars of race and ethnicity note that early American frontiersmen often appropriated the fashion, symbols, and practices of Native Americans (i.e., moccasins, buckskin, and horse-riding techniques that have become staples of American cowboy culture) while at the same time oppressing and otherwise distancing themselves from Native people, whom they claimed were barbaric (Glenn, 2015, p. 58). “The colonizer desired the colonized other,” writes Hixson (2013, p. 3), “for example for his [perceived] attunement with nature or sexual liberation, and yet was repulsed by his primitiveness and the dangers he posed.” Based heavily on racialized stereotypes, certain aspects of indigenous culture were romanticized even while Native bodies were ostracized and reviled. Similarly, today L. M. Jackson (2020, p. 6) defines appropriation as the use of “Black aesthetics without Black people.”

Importantly, cultural appropriation should be viewed as distinct from other, more benign forms of cultural exchange. The key difference is power, and the gain of some perceived reward for the white racial group (Broady et al., 2018; L. M. Jackson, 2020). For the frontiersmen, the appropriation of indigenous symbols allowed them to “forg[e] a new national identity” (Glenn, 2015, p. 58) distinct from that of both white Europeans and indigenous racial others. Here, I describe further how white cultural appropriation plays a role in gentrification, and how it serves to uphold white racial ideologies. We can observe a similar dynamic to that of settler-colonialism, not on the Western American frontier but on the “frontier” (Smith, 1996) of gentrifying American cities: iconic ghetto stereotypes provoke white celebration and intrigue, even while these communities are other-ed and displaced.

The cultural consumption that drives gentrification across the urban U.S. is based heavily on Black, Latine, Asian, and other ethnic signifiers, mostly in the form of consumer goods like food and art. In many gentrifying settings, they have become aesthetically prized, both for their perceived authenticity and as symbols of progressivism, worldliness, and eclecticism. Gentrifiers often express an appreciation for ethnic and racial diversity and multiculturalism that many claim influences their desire to settle in an urban area instead of the more racially homogeneous suburbs (Berrey, 2005; Darrah-Okike et al., 2020; de Oliver, 2016; Deener, 2012). The gentrifying commercial landscape seeks to brand itself accordingly (Hyra, 2017; Monroe Sullivan & Shaw, 2011; Summers, 2019; Zukin, 2010): for instance, in the Centro de Oro neighborhood of Philadelphia, arts organizations attempt to distinguish themselves by offering what visitors might see as the most “authentic expressions of Latino culture” (Wherry, 2011, p. 6). Brandi Thompson Summers (2019) observes the proliferation of Black symbolism along the H Street corridor of Washington, DC, as it gentrifies, including a display in a new Whole Foods market that celebrates DC’s heritage as a “Chocolate City.” Summers terms this phenomenon “Black aesthetic emplacement,” a reference to how Black imagery “is marketed to sell a progressive, ‘cool,’ and authentic experience of … the city” (Summers, 2019, p. 4). Even some of the more grisly aspects of the “dark ghetto” (Clark, 1965), areas long seen as pariahs due to their persistent social problems, have become “reimagined for cultural consumption” (Zukin, 2012, p. 138). Hyra’s (2017) term “living the wire,” for instance, references the hushed intrigue that some white newcomers use to reference the violence that sometimes occurs in their adopted neighborhoods. For these residents, an edge of perceived danger adds to the area’s authenticity.

These findings help us to understand how gentrification aesthetics are often colored, drawing in multicultural signifiers for the purposes of profit and entertainment. This work, however, does not go far enough in theorizing both the incorporation and rejection of non-whiteness that defines cultural appropriation. “Living the wire” is an intriguing concept, but we also know that gentrifiers go to great effort to police crime and disorder in their new neighborhoods, ostracizing their Black and Brown neighbors who are more often than not victims of the increased scrutiny and surveillance (Beck, 2020; Doering, 2020; Helmuth, 2019; Ramírez, 2020). Both Summers (2019) and Hyra (2017) point out that even though Black aesthetics proliferate in DC’s gentrifying neighborhoods, actual Black residents and the establishments they frequent are being displaced.

These contradictory results are usually explained through the ability to generate monetary profit for capitalist interests. Terms like Black or ethnic “branding” (Hyra, 2017; Wherry, 2011), “packaging” (Hackworth & Rekers, 2005), or “marketing” (Summers, 2019, p. 4) foreground a sense that multiculturalism and racial diversity are centered when they can be sold as valued amenities (de Oliver, 2016); the implication being that they are rejected when not. I do not argue against this perspective, but add to it by urging a more specific foregrounding of white racial ideology. In the gentrifying city, I theorize that aspects of racially othered cultures are appropriated not only when they might turn a profit, but also when they are considered advantageous, or at least non-threatening, to white structural positioning. “Color-blind” ideology depends on building an image of development that benefits all, thus effectively masking racialized displacement. An aesthetically diverse and multicultural space allows this narrative to persist—it provides the appearance of equal opportunity and racial advancement, even while the average racially othered denizen is left out. Aesthetic emplacement helps white power structures to distinguish themselves as tolerant, progressive, and “not racist,” thereby allowing racial hierarchy to remain even when explicit racial animus is generally not accepted (Bonilla-Silva, 2003/2022; Feagin, 2010; Lewis, 2004). Certain elements of the iconic ghetto are not just tolerated but celebrated by whites as they push off the feeling of being “cultureless” that is a side effect of whiteness’ invisibility and passivity (Rodriquez, 2006). Thus, displacement occurs amongst practices, people, businesses, and aesthetics that do not serve a role in solidifying white racial ideology, and are more likely to be viewed by a white populace as expendable. Continuing with earlier examples, for instance, Summers (2019) writes of hair salons and barbershops forced to shut down on H Street, and Hyra (2017) tells of a Black church that eventually relocated from the Shaw neighborhood. What connects these spaces is that they are more likely to be exclusively Black-oriented, serve an everyday Black populace, and therefore are less able to be appropriated into white culture.

This perspective allows us to think of Black aesthetic emplacement and other elements of racialized cultural consumption associated with gentrification not only as elements of capitalist appropriation and profit-driving schemes, but of racial appropriation as well, a thing-ification (Myers, 2019, p. 13) resultant of the propriety orientation of whiteness (Du Bois, 1920/2007). Today, white cultural appropriation serves the purpose of advancing color-blind racial ideology via the image of cross-cultural geniality. This process solidifies white identity and ultimately maintains the privileged structural position of whiteness (Rodriquez, 2006). Therefore, we might say that whiteness shapes (→) gentrification in that it influences which racialized practices, symbols, and people are appropriated into development schemes and which are policed and displaced based on whether they cohere with white racial ideology and white structural advantage or not.

In provoking a consideration of appropriation beyond commodification, I do not mean to simply swap out one cynical view of urban cultural practice for another. I also point out that the production of space, signifiers, and artistic output by racially marginalized communities has a role in challenging racial hierarchy. This possibility, and the general complexities of cultural practice in gentrifying spaces, is perhaps best represented in the work of Denmead (2019). As the leader of a youth arts organization, Denmead observes the role that the organization played in re-branding downtown Providence as a creative hub, fueling gentrification and facilitating “the reconfiguration of urban space for the economic and cultural benefit of whiteness” (Denmead, 2019, p. 2). The studio also, however, allowed youth of color to create and explore world-building possibilities outside of the racist narratives placed upon them by everyday discourse, thus challenging the solidification of white supremacy that thrives on narratives of cultural deficiency. It is often difficult to distinguish how cultural practice either challenges whiteness or is coopted into systems that uphold it—such are the complexities of gentrification and race-making alike, processes that pull gestures of placemaking into schemes of appropriation. I make an intervention to suggest that it is the gaze of whiteness, in addition to the commodification of capitalism, that sometimes renders such practices problematic, allowing them to be used in ways that further subjugation. It follows that white supremacy—indeed, notions of racial difference and cultural deficiency more broadly—must be challenged in order to resolve this tension.

Racial capitalism and racialized organizations

Supply-side theorists, on the other hand, think of gentrification as a process spurred by a capitalist system in which investment in urban space is a primary means of capital accumulation, and led by the economic and governmental elites who seek to profit from it (i.e., Smith, 1979, 1996). Generally, this perspective emphasizes that supply leads demand: that rather than anxiously fulfilling the wants of the middle-class, elites urge development because of the need for growth, profit, and healthy tax bases. Stemming primarily from a Marxist tradition, these political economy-focused perspectives have generally ignored race as a social mechanism that augments gentrification processes. Here, I consider how theories of whiteness might allow us to more fully understand how the capital flows and elite actions that push gentrification are racialized. Much work has already been published in the field of racial capitalism that will be useful to this end (i.e., Dantzler, 2021; Robinson, 1983; Rucks-Ahidiana, 2022; Wilson, 2009). I also attempt to add to our understanding of elite urban actors like city governments, development agencies, and banking institutions through a framework of racialized organizations (Ray, 2019a). Far from being de-racialized entities, these groups are often predominantly white institutions (PWI) whose actions and priorities usually uphold white ideology. I build on each of these theoretical interventions in this section, in an effort to continue to build an understanding of how whiteness shapes gentrification.

Dantzler’s (2021) critique of Harvey (1978) clarified the role of racial ideas in uneven development. From a racial capitalism perspective, racial disparities that exist across the urban landscape are not simply a consequence of economic and class-based processes, but also a function of racism itself. Rucks-Ahidiana (2022), for instance, applies this perspective directly to patterns of gentrification spread. A neighborhood’s likelihood to gentrify, as well as the type and pace of gentrification that a neighborhood experiences, is at least partially dependent on the neighborhood’s racial composition. As reviewed earlier, quantitative studies commonly find that majority Black and Latine neighborhoods in the United States have historically been less likely to gentrify than majority white neighborhoods (Hwang & Sampson, 2014; Owens, 2012; Timberlake & Johns-Wolfe, 2017). Neighborhoods, Rucks-Ahidiana (2022) explains, contain value (i.e., the perceived ability to obtain profit via investment in that neighborhood) that is built at least partially upon their racialization. The devaluation of Black neighborhoods, long seen as more “risky” investments, explains why gentrification has historically been less likely in these areas. The shift in this pattern that has occurred since around the year 2000—an increase in white entry to Black neighborhoods that Freeman and Cai (2015) term “white invasion”—represents a process of revaluation (Rucks-Ahidiana, 2022). Amongst certain stakeholders, racial diversity has become a prized and valued commodity, as reviewed in the last section, thereby giving capitalist value to these neighborhoods.

The application of a racial capitalist framework to gentrification studies is a clarifying and needed intervention, but could be further expanded to include more of an explicit engagement with whiteness. Racial capitalist frameworks focus extensively on processes of race-based valuation, but sometimes lack detail on who exactly does the valuing and why. Rucks-Ahidiana (2022, p. 174), for instance, notes that valuation is carried out by a list of stakeholders that include “developers, real estate companies, city governments, banks, businesses, and individual homeowners.” What is it about each of these disparate institutions that allows their actions to play out in remarkably similar trends in cities across the U.S.? I argue that the answer lies in their orientation toward white culture and ideology, and these various entities should not be thought of race-neutral, but rather, as structurally white. Ray’s (2019a) theory of racialized organizations is an important intervention here, as he posits that organizations are themselves racial structures, in that race is foundational to their everyday behavior. Within organizations, whiteness (referring, again, not only to white skin but also to white-oriented norms of behavior) serves as a form of “credential” which helps to determine one’s place in the organizational hierarchy (Ray, 2019a). In this sense, organizations function as “white spaces” (Anderson, 2015), or contexts in which nonwhite norms and manners of behavior are ostracized. Within racialized organizations, rewards, like promotions, might be extended to those who “pass” relatively well within white spaces, in that their behavior and mannerisms match white expectations.

Banking institutions, development conglomerates, real estate companies, urban universities, and hospital groups all assess risk and apply valuation to neighborhoods, and in this way have an outsized role in shaping urban development. We cannot think of them as race-neutral actors, but rather often as structurally white racialized organizations that are “built and managed to prioritize whiteness” (Ray, 2019b). The addition of racialized organizational theory to a racial capitalist perspective allows us to better understand when and why these stakeholders engage in systemic devaluation of colored neighborhoods, instead shuttling resources to historically white spaces as a form of “possessive investment” (Lipsitz, 1998). Revaluation of these neighborhoods, then, might similarly occur when it benefits racial hierarchy and the white social location to allow some aesthetic racial diversity. After all, like individual gentrifiers and the small businesses that make up the realm of cultural consumption, large organizations are also subject to the imperative to appear “color-blind” even while producing racialized landscapes and racial displacement.

Government policy at various levels has also had a hand in pushing racialized gentrification forward, from how public housing is handled to the provision of tax subsidies for redevelopment and renovation (Boston, 2021; Goetz, 2011; Hyra, 2008; Zukin, 1987). More specifically, neoliberal urban governance, defined by a free market ideology and suite of policies that prioritize the facilitation of private capital accumulation (Hackworth, 2007; Harvey, 1989), has often been linked to gentrification, as it more often places matters of urban development in the hands of private interests and public-private partnerships (Hackworth, 2002; Mele, 2013; Smith, 2002). Mele (2013) points out that neoliberalism is a racial project as well, cohering and incorporating the color-blind rhetoric that has defined the post-civil rights U.S. to espouse the rhetoric of economic liberalism and equal opportunity for all—even while producing deeply racialized effects that mostly benefit the white racial group (Lipsitz, 1998). Even when state-led gentrification benefits white urban denizens and displaces those of color, neoliberal urban development is able to proceed as a discursively race-neutral process (Boston, 2021; Chronopoulos, 2016; Mele, 2013), cohering with our understanding of contemporary “color-blind” white logics (Bonilla-Silva, 2022/2022). That local government offices and agencies can also be understood as structurally white racialized organizations themselves allows us to better understand how these policies and orientations that benefit whiteness are maintained.

Governmental and corporate elites, however, are not the only actors who attempt to enact “value.” Urban residents respond to and struggle against the predatory financialization of their communities (Summers & Fields, 2022); they attempt to get the state to recognize the emotional and temporal—as well as economic—investments that they put into property (Becher, 2014). An essential question for the racial capitalism perspective, and supply-side gentrification theories more broadly, is how elite entities respond to these pressures. What often results is a form of appropriation: the aesthetic incorporation of progressive ideals into the messaging of organizations without significant structural reform or follow-through. Táíwò (2022, p. 8) calls these actions elite capture, the “tactic of performing symbolic identity politics to pacify protestors without enacting material reforms.” For instance, the city of Washington, DC, emblazons the words “Black Lives Matter” across a street (Táíwò, 2022) even while city-led redevelopment efforts displace Black residents (Hyra, 2017; Summers, 2019). Ray (2019a, p. 42) claims that within racialized organizations, “formal commitments to equity, access, and inclusion” are often decoupled from practices that serve to reinforce racial hierarchy and white structural advantage. Even within organizations that claim to be committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion (or DEI, a common acronym within most modern institutions), white organizational structures still remain in place. Once again, the relationship between anti-racist practice and appropriation into white ideology proves complex; it is in these negotiations that gentrification as a white racialized process advances.

Summary

White structures, culture, and ideology shape (→) gentrification in several ways, which I organize according to demand-side and supply-side views on gentrification’s causes. Racial appropriation within urban cultural consumption is based around a conflicting dynamic of incorporation and rejection which leads to the celebration of some aesthetic elements of multiculturalism even while racial displacement occurs. In addition to viewing this process as one centered in capitalism, I view it as also serving “color-blind” ideologies of racial harmony that obfuscate racial harm and allow white dominance to persist. And while the processes of valuation and capital investment that drive gentrification should be viewed as racialized, I argue that we also must be clear about who is behind this process and why it occurs unevenly. The elite institutions that apply valuation to space can properly be viewed as racialized organizations, and structurally white. At all points in this process, urban residents exercise agency in their responses to structural impositions. The interplay amongst practice, protest, and appropriation demonstrates both the adaptive persistence of racial hierarchy and the ability to contest it.

How gentrification shapes whiteness

In a recent article published in The Atlantic, Xochitl Gonzalez (2022) writes about the sounds of gentrification. In New York’s neighborhoods of color, Gonzalez revels in how living tends to be noisy: the sounds of music, children, and motorcycles fill the air between apartment buildings. She contrasts this with white spaces, like the suburbs or an Ivy League college campus, which tend to be defined by quiet, an orderly disdain for boisterousness and an expectation of privacy. For Gonzalez (2022), this is the difference between what she terms “living” and “residing”: “Living is loud and messy, but residing? Residing is quiet business.” As parts of New York gentrify, they come to be defined more by the latter than the former: “Alas, these newcomers hadn’t moved here to live alongside us,” she writes. “They’d come to reside.”

I utilize this racialized dichotomy between “living” and “residing” as a useful demonstration of how gentrification spurs the narratives of difference that undergird racialization. It is in spaces of encounter, what Anderson (1990) terms the “edge,” where racially salient dialogue abounds and racial ideas can be formed. In this section, I take up the less-researched perspective that race, and whiteness in particular, might be shaped by (←) gentrification, thereby theorizing both sides of my mutual construction (↔) argument. This perspective has been taken up recently by a few researchers, like Huante (2021, p. 75), who “argue[s] that … gentrification is involved in race-making as well as place-making.” Overall, however, this idea still lacks theoretical breadth, something I aim to provide here by looking at gentrification as a process that spurs discourse of difference and justification of inequality. Overall, I build on a racial formation perspective to advance the notion that whiteness is an incomplete, ongoing, and contested project negotiated in specific time-space contexts: gentrification, as a specific context, shapes the contours of whiteness itself.

”Living” and ”residing”: Racial formation via discourse of difference

Race is built, at least partially, on discursive understandings of different ways of being in space. “Living” and “residing” stand in here as short-hand examples of differing normative expectations of how public space can and should be utilized, as “quiet business” or “loud and messy.” In terms of the formation and maintenance of racial ideas, it does not so much matter whether or not this dynamic is always true or applicable—surely, there are many millions of exceptions to Gonzalez’s living/residing dichotomy. What matters for race-making is the salient discourse around certain behaviors and ways of being.

Perhaps most prominently, the work of Elijah Anderson is instructive to understand how this racialization process occurs. His theories of the iconic ghetto (Anderson, 2012) and white space (Anderson, 2015) cohere a perspective that both Blackness and whiteness are defined through discursive images related to the spaces that each racial group is understood to occupy. The iconic ghetto, for instance, is a social imaginary built on stereotypes of crime and disorder that come to shape how Blackness is viewed by the (white) American populace. As Lipsitz (2011, p. 116) states: “Because whites learn who they are through demeaning portrayals of who they are not, they need images of Blackness to stabilize an otherwise ungrounded white identity.” It is only through a collective understanding of racial difference that whiteness can exist, based upon a construction of racial others that clarifies the boundaries of a white group and a construction of racially othered behavior that clarifies the boundaries of white normative culture.

The gentrifying neighborhood is a place of encounter, where newcomers and incumbent residents, representing different socioeconomic locations, might interact. Alternately termed in the literature as a “frontier” (Smith, 1996), a “borderland” (Ramírez, 2020), or an “edge” (Anderson, 1990), the gentrifying neighborhood is neither an iconic ghetto³ nor a white space, but rather a space of interaction that might lead to new patterns of racialization. At first glance, this might appear as an antidote to the physical separation that has for many years facilitated a construction of racial difference. Gentrifying neighborhoods, however, do not tend to be sites of in-depth cross-racial interaction. Terms like “diversity segregation” (Hyra, 2017) or “intimate segregation” (Mumm, 2008), each used to describe ethnographic observations of gentrifying areas, instead foretell a reproduction and reinforcement of similar dynamics. Differently racialized residents are not often meeting in social settings; their encounters are instead limited mostly to sidewalk exchanges or witnessing each other from a distance (Hyra, 2017). It is precisely the contradiction of “disparate but embedded social worlds” (Mumm, 2008, p. 18) that makes the gentrifying neighborhood a productive landscape of discursive racial difference. The gentrification frontier is a place that allows observed behaviors to be discursively understood as the difference between one’s living and another’s residing. Whiteness in particular depends upon the foundation of racial other-ing. It is an understanding of “them” that allows the clarification of “us,” and for whiteness to take shape.

As can be observed in the gentrification literature, this discourse plays out in the everyday, with real lived consequences for those who do not or cannot match the normative expectations of white culture. Continuing with the example of sonic landscapes brought up by Gonzalez (2022), Ramírez (2020) observes a conflict in a gentrifying neighborhood of Oakland between a band called SambaFunk, who regularly play in a local park, and white neighbors, who complain about the noise. Similarly, in the gentrifying Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC, a local business was pressured to stop playing go-go music (a local Black-centric genre) on a speaker outside the store due to neighbor complaints (Summers, 2021). These incidents are viewed and discussed as racialized, as a conflict between two differing normative understandings of how space can and should be utilized. They also serve as instructive examples of how white norms are often prioritized and win out in these scenarios. It is within the white gaze toward go-go music and SambaFunk—more distinct, possible, and conflict-laden in the borderland of gentrification—that a process of discursive other-ing takes place and therefore also the clarification and maintenance of whiteness.

”A rising tide lifts all boats”: Race as justification and whiteness as reward

Race does not precede inequality, but follows it. Society derives racial meaning, in part, from a want to justify or otherwise explain away unequal circumstances and outcomes. In the American context, the social-discursive creation of a Native “other” was necessary to justify colonization and genocide (Glenn, 2015); a Black “other” was necessary to justify chattel slavery (Omi & Winant, 1986). These outcomes take on the narrative tinge of necessity and naturalism: racialized others are de-humanized, painted as barbaric and animalistic, and through this lens racial hierarchy and white dominance make logical sense. Kendi (2016) tells us that racial ideas are not derived from hatred toward minority groups, resulting in discriminatory policies. Instead, discriminatory policies come first, and these are then rationalized by a populace through a lens that we know of as “race.” This is particularly true in relation to uneven economic circumstances (Robinson, 1983). In this way, the relative poverty of Black Americans, for instance, is subject to an interpretation of race-based cultural deficiency, rather than viewed as the result of historical and ongoing systemic processes.

Gentrification is a process wherein economic inequality is rendered starkly in urban space. What has captivated urban researchers for over half a century is the juxtaposition between disparate classes and urban forms that have historically been defined by their separation. Luxury condos are built where a public housing complex once stood; an expensive restaurant opens in an area where most residents cannot afford their offerings. These types of developments leave both newcomer and incumbent groups to figure out what appears to be for “us” and for “them.” Despite stark inequalities, however, discourse around gentrification can sometimes lend itself to a “rising tide lifts all boats” narrative, that neighborhood development benefits everybody. Some, for instance, argue that incumbent homeowners in particular stand to cash in on rising property values (i.e., Freeman, 2006). In reality, this is often untrue, as racial minorities face a variety of structural disadvantages in the housing market that often deny them from realizing home equity accrual (Hightower & Fraser, 2020). White ideologies often exist, however, to draw attention away from such structural arrangements, instead framing inequality as a cultural narrative related to racial difference. In the gentrifying neighborhood, displacement and the general inability to “cash in” on development may serve as another proxy for racial failure. If an incumbent community cannot derive profit the land, this can be framed as cultural deficiency rather than structural constraint. Altogether, the economic inequality rendered closely and encountered during gentrification is a prime basis upon which racial meaning can be built.

But racialized economic inequality does not just lead to a system of justification, but also a system of rewards and “credentialing” (Ray, 2019a) to certain other-ed individuals who can “pass” in such a context, or who themselves become part of the development machine. Huante (2021), for instance, studies the case of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles, a heavily Mexican ethnic neighborhood facing gentrification via an influx of middle-class Latinos (reflecting gentefication). Huante centers whiteness in his theoretical assessment by noting that, especially amongst Latinos, whiteness is heavily contingent and contextual: a social location rather than discrete category. Based on upward mobility and one’s position in the gentrified landscape (i.e., homeowner vs. renter), the status of “honorary white” might apply to middle-class Latinos in Boyle Heights who participate in gentrification schemes and are therefore discursively and practically assimilated “upward” in a racial hierarchy (see also Bonilla-Silva & Dietrich, 2009; Glenn, 2015, p. 54). More broadly, narratives of equal opportunity always require the incorporation of select successful minorities in order to appear properly “color-blind.” In the context of economic development, the politics of respectability (see Grundy, 2022) that determine who most appropriately fits white expectations are intertwined with capitalist savvy and willingness to engage in development.

Summary

Gentrification, like all spatial forms, is a process of race-making. Here, I have outlined two specific ways in which gentrification shapes patterns of white racialization in urban settings: (1) Gentrifying areas become a “borderland,” where surface-level encounter with disparate groups is likely to spur discourse on racial difference; (2) gentrification renders economic inequality more visible to urban newcomers, necessitating narratives of justification and rewards that often affirm racial categorization. Both result in the coherence of a privileged white social location.

Conclusion

Filmmaker Spike Lee once infamously described the attitudes of gentrifiers as “Christopher Columbus syndrome” (Coscarelli, 2014), invoking the language of white invasion and colonization to describe his home borough of Brooklyn. In Lee’s language and elsewhere in public life, discourse around gentrification as an explicitly racialized process abounds—yet so far, academic theory has lagged behind in describing exactly how gentrification might be white. I have argued that within contemporary American urban settings there has developed a mutual construction of whiteness and gentrification, in that they shape one another via processes related to discourse, cultural appropriation, and the actions of structurally white organizations. What we observe in so much empirical work on gentrification is a dialectical process that solidifies white dominance and reifies whiteness itself via racialized discourse around differences in how people occupy and capitalize upon space. This is what makes gentrification white.

Surely, there are numerous examples to complicate the generalities that I have written here. The existence of “nonwhite gentrification,” for instance, presents an obvious challenge to my perspective. Indeed, as some scholars have pointed out, Spike Lee himself has served as a gentrifying force in Brooklyn via his investments in the physical landscape (Johnson, 2015). Zukin (2012) even coined a term, the “Spike Lee effect,” to describe the cultural consumption of racialized ghetto aesthetics that his films inspire. I have tried to cohere some of these scenarios within my overarching framework through arguments related to racial credentialing and assimilation, and an overall need to separate white ideology and the upholding of white power structures from white skin. My purpose, though, is not to account for every scenario—I leave it to further empirical research to tease out some of the finer complexities provoked by this theorization. Overall, I argue that we need to be paying closer attention to how dominant spatial arrangements and processes like gentrification influence processes of racialization. Though we might trade back and forth the example of Spike Lee and other Black elites, what remains is that despite gentrification’s differences from development patterns of the past—despite gentrification’s potential to upset a suburb-ghetto dichotomy that has reinforced racial difference for decades—evidence suggests that gentrification has by and large not made Black people, nor other racial minorities, any more free. In this we find the heart and substance of Spike Lee’s words. We need to ask why and how gentrification continues to uphold the aesthetics and ideologies of whiteness—even when it involves nonwhite individuals.

To this end, scholarship on gentrification, even that which focuses on economic and class considerations, must continue to incorporate race into their analysis. There are no race-neutral actors involved: city and federal governments, real estate interests, individual gentrifiers, and incumbent residents are each actively participating in certain racial projects, the contours of which must be mapped out and understood. Particularly, I argue that a racial formation perspective, one that is able to generate insight beyond the Census Bureau’s racial categorization variables, is needed to fully contend with gentrification’s manifold social impacts. Lewis (2004, p. 637) call to explore “how whites lives, perform, and ‘do’ race in the everyday” is a prescient need for the gentrification literature. And yet, dismantling racial hierarchy also requires us to consider how whiteness is challenged in the gentrifying city, or how the protest, practice, and everyday survival of racially subjugated urban denizens disrupt the mutual construction written of here. If there is one implication of this paper for the realm of praxis, it should be that dismantling capitalism is not enough to prevent the problematic nature of gentrification; white supremacy is a condition that must be challenged as well.

Acknowledgments

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

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

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.

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.”