Arlene Davila’s work on the gentrification of East Harlem in Barrio Dreams presents a new perspective on gentrification that I have not yet encountered. The majority of work concerning gentrification that I have read focuses on Black neighborhoods, ignoring the diversity and marginalization of Latino populations throughout New York and other major metropolitan areas. Providing further evidence of the black-white binary that pervades popular racial understandings, the clear lack of literature on this topic poses a problematic stance. By addressing “El Barrio,” Davila offers a variant perspective on gentrification, one that places culture within the context of a neoliberal city at the crux. The contradictions with economics and with the memory and aspirations of “El Barrio” explain the complex political space the neighborhood inhabits.
The creation of culture as a commodity presents a complex dynamic between the residents of East Harlem and the policies enacted to further gentrification. Davila argues that residents attempts to maintain and perpetuate the preeminent Puerto Rican and Latino culture within the neighborhood plays into the commodification of that same culture into a tourist attraction and an area of outside investment. At the same time, Davila presents the contradiction within neoliberalism that purport color-blind policies while using ethnicity and culture as methods for advancing economic policies. This presents a paradox, where retainment of culture both perpetuates and is antithetical to gentrification and neoliberal policies. Any ventures to rid “El Barrio” of the negative connotations of poverty or crime, in turn, lead to a greater interest in development catering to middle and upper-middle class residents, which displaces many of the poor and working class that were essential in creating the thriving culture of East Harlem.
The ultimate goal would then to produce gentrification without displacement, attempts to maintain the very culture of the neighborhood without making way for an economic constituency that would eliminate the state of the neighborhood now. As long as neoliberal policies use the culture of the neighborhood as a means for greater economic returns and as a way to alter the neighborhood dynamics, the core of East Harlem will continue to be threatened.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Week 7
I found this week’s readings to be particularly poignant, especially when relating to discussions I’ve been having in my other classes. I find that cross-race solidarity is essential in understanding the underlying system of racism and oppression as it manifests itself through various oppressed groups.
Grace Hong’s analysis of “A Fire in Fontana”, by Hisaye Yamamoto, relates racial discrimination, on both a personal and state level, to the idea of property ownership. Historically, people of color have been deprived of property on the basis of their color, whereas, reiterating what Harris has written, whiteness has been the basis of property and privilege therein. While the racial inequities have been evidenced is different ways for blacks and Japanese, internment and denial of citizenship for Japanese and the obvious ramifications of Slavery and Jim Crow Laws for African Americans, both have dealt with violent repercussions on the basis of their identities.
All of this hints to the ideas of intersectionality and the deconstruction of a hierarchy of oppression. Intersectionality is the idea that various modes of oppression, not solely race but also class, gender, sexuality, etc., do not act independently; rather, they are all interrelated and create a system of oppression reflecting the intersection of multiple forms of oppression. By looking at forms of discrimination in this way, we are able to undermine the notion of a hierarchy of oppression, where one group’s oppression trumps others. This set of beliefs directly plays into the political ideology of the oppressor, pitting one disenfranchised group with another rather than fighting directly for equal rights or against those who are creating these inequalities. It is not enough to simply understand one’s own oppressions, but instead, to place those within a greater context of all of those who are oppressed.
Rather than looking bleakly at the future of race relations in the United States, Hong ends positively, suggesting that “A Fire in Fontana” can be read as the “basis of an oppositional political project through its creation of an alternative collective memory, its imagining of a space where the cross-race solidarity that did not happen in the past could be forged in the future” (308).
Grace Hong’s analysis of “A Fire in Fontana”, by Hisaye Yamamoto, relates racial discrimination, on both a personal and state level, to the idea of property ownership. Historically, people of color have been deprived of property on the basis of their color, whereas, reiterating what Harris has written, whiteness has been the basis of property and privilege therein. While the racial inequities have been evidenced is different ways for blacks and Japanese, internment and denial of citizenship for Japanese and the obvious ramifications of Slavery and Jim Crow Laws for African Americans, both have dealt with violent repercussions on the basis of their identities.
All of this hints to the ideas of intersectionality and the deconstruction of a hierarchy of oppression. Intersectionality is the idea that various modes of oppression, not solely race but also class, gender, sexuality, etc., do not act independently; rather, they are all interrelated and create a system of oppression reflecting the intersection of multiple forms of oppression. By looking at forms of discrimination in this way, we are able to undermine the notion of a hierarchy of oppression, where one group’s oppression trumps others. This set of beliefs directly plays into the political ideology of the oppressor, pitting one disenfranchised group with another rather than fighting directly for equal rights or against those who are creating these inequalities. It is not enough to simply understand one’s own oppressions, but instead, to place those within a greater context of all of those who are oppressed.
Rather than looking bleakly at the future of race relations in the United States, Hong ends positively, suggesting that “A Fire in Fontana” can be read as the “basis of an oppositional political project through its creation of an alternative collective memory, its imagining of a space where the cross-race solidarity that did not happen in the past could be forged in the future” (308).
Monday, October 5, 2009
Week 5
Although the overarching theme of the readings this week is the racial segregation and subsequent inequalities forced upon African American communities, it is not necessarily what struck me. While reading American Apartheid, the idea of assimilation seemed like an underlying theme in the comparisons between residential segregation of American Americans in relation to other minority groups.
Historically, “U.S. cities served as vehicles for integration, economic advancement, and, ultimately, assimilation into American life” (18). Thus, the huge influxes of immigrants, primarily from Europe, could all someday achieve economic and social stability within the United States. The goal of assimilation resonated with all once disenfranchised and underprivileged groups. This is evidenced not only within circles of nineteenth-century African American elites, who “could best overcome their disabilities by adopting the culture and values of the white middle class” (23), but also more recently with the sub-prime mortgage targeted towards African American communities. Yet the process of assimilation seems to be highly dependent on race. While the majority of immigrants have followed that same trajectory towards assimilation into “American life,” African Americans have been highly excluded. With highly racialized real estate institutions and policies, even those who have been able to gain a stronger socioeconomic standing are unable to attain any sort of upward social mobility. Therefore, regardless of a middle-income status that may be achieved, “black segregation does not vary by affluence” (85). Any attempts at desegregation by middle-class African Americans are immediately thwarted by a decline in white interest in that same housing market, and thus a greater demand within the African American community and the creation of re-segregation.
The ideas behind this harken back to the notion of passing, or Kim’s graph representing racial triangulation, where Asians (among others, such as Hispanics) will perpetually be seen as “outsiders” or “unassimilable,” the constant foreigner. Even so, Asians and Hispanics, although still underprivileged in comparison to Whites have been able to, economically and within the housing sector, assimilate within American life. Why is it that African Americans are excluded from such an ability for assimilation? How was it become that, according to Massey and Denton, entire African American communities have apparently become social pariahs? Where:
“People growing up in such an environment have little direct experience with the culture, norms, and behaviors of the rest of American society and few social contacts with members [of] other racial groups.” (77)
The amount of racial segregation and inability to integrate African American neighborhoods at this point has become so extreme that any possibility seems unreal. But what makes the African American experience in such a case vary so differently from other people of color?
Historically, “U.S. cities served as vehicles for integration, economic advancement, and, ultimately, assimilation into American life” (18). Thus, the huge influxes of immigrants, primarily from Europe, could all someday achieve economic and social stability within the United States. The goal of assimilation resonated with all once disenfranchised and underprivileged groups. This is evidenced not only within circles of nineteenth-century African American elites, who “could best overcome their disabilities by adopting the culture and values of the white middle class” (23), but also more recently with the sub-prime mortgage targeted towards African American communities. Yet the process of assimilation seems to be highly dependent on race. While the majority of immigrants have followed that same trajectory towards assimilation into “American life,” African Americans have been highly excluded. With highly racialized real estate institutions and policies, even those who have been able to gain a stronger socioeconomic standing are unable to attain any sort of upward social mobility. Therefore, regardless of a middle-income status that may be achieved, “black segregation does not vary by affluence” (85). Any attempts at desegregation by middle-class African Americans are immediately thwarted by a decline in white interest in that same housing market, and thus a greater demand within the African American community and the creation of re-segregation.
The ideas behind this harken back to the notion of passing, or Kim’s graph representing racial triangulation, where Asians (among others, such as Hispanics) will perpetually be seen as “outsiders” or “unassimilable,” the constant foreigner. Even so, Asians and Hispanics, although still underprivileged in comparison to Whites have been able to, economically and within the housing sector, assimilate within American life. Why is it that African Americans are excluded from such an ability for assimilation? How was it become that, according to Massey and Denton, entire African American communities have apparently become social pariahs? Where:
“People growing up in such an environment have little direct experience with the culture, norms, and behaviors of the rest of American society and few social contacts with members [of] other racial groups.” (77)
The amount of racial segregation and inability to integrate African American neighborhoods at this point has become so extreme that any possibility seems unreal. But what makes the African American experience in such a case vary so differently from other people of color?
Monday, September 28, 2009
Week 4
It is impossible to privilege one group without disadvantaging another.
-Laura Pulido
-Laura Pulido
Whiteness, in this country, is the paramount factor in deciding supremacy over and subordination of all other groups of color. The idea of whiteness as superior has manifested itself in both institutionalized racism within the legal system and the conscious production of racialized environmental inequities. What results is a vastly unequal distribution of wealth and power that is largely ignored and rarely contested. Harris and Pulido address the notion of white privilege and the highly implicated manifestations of such.
In order to fully understand the ramifications of white privilege, Harris traces the history and trajectory of white privilege as going from “color to race to status to property” (1714), where the nature of whiteness necessary entails “a right to exclude” (1714) and a right to define. When given the power to define race and social hierarchies, the “external imposition of definition maintains the social equilibrium” (1765). Thus, while whites have historically been given the role to define all races regardless of status, people of color have historically been forced to take a passive role in that process, where those racial definitions has been imposed upon them. The process of defining race is inevitably linked to white supremacy and white privilege. Yet there continues to be an almost blindness to white privilege and the inherent racism within our society. Whites are rarely cognizant of their own white privilege, yet all are still able to enjoy the effects of such. The fact that there is an “inability to sever intent from outcome that allows whites to acknowledge that racism exists, yet seldom identify as racists” (Pulido 15) continues the cycle of subtle or entrenched institutions tacitly employing racial subordination.
Although the readings of the week did not necessarily focus primarily on the connections between white privilege and socioeconomic status, I found the linkage to be very interesting. Both Pulido and Harris emphasize the oppression of race above the oppression of class, noting that “those whites that are disadvantaged in society suffer not because of their race, but in spite of it” (Harris 1786). In a society that is built on the oppression of people, of “the other”, whether the oppression is felt through class or race or both attests to the massive injustices forced upon the people. Thus, the “articulation of racism is predicated…on class divisions” (Pulido 27). It seems as though class and race is invariably linked. Because, let’s be honest, those in the super affluent and upper classes are rarely non-white.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Week 3
Such intimate entanglements between racial formation and the state thus remind us that all racial identities are always preeminently political identities.
-Nicholas De Genova
Race politics in the United States have been that of perpetuation of “the other” in order to maintain a hegemonic White society based on exclusion and White privilege. Through immigration laws, racial formations, and racial triangulation respectively, Ngai, De Genova, and Kim address the ways in which Asians and Latinos have been subjugated and maintained as socially stigmatized groups. The large immigration of both these populations has “modified the racial map of the nation” (Ngai 8) and drastically altered the previously pervading notion of a Black-White binary.
The racialized experience of both Asians and Latinos is fundamentally different than that of African Americans. De Genova suggests both groups can be historically placed in parallel with Native Americans. He specifically distinguishes the African American experience, one that was “fully encompassed within an ‘American’ social order of white power and prestige” (2) with that of the Native American, typically seen as an outsider “with an excess of ‘culture’” (5) and thus an inability to assimilate to that same social order. Asians specifically, Kim notes, have been subject to a problematic triangulation, where they are valorized while also ostracized from society in maintenance of White dominance. This valorization is seen through the creation of the model minority myth, placing Asians above other disenfranchised groups due to material success. The model minority myth reinforces the notion that all races are expected to follow the same trajectory, notwithstanding the wholly structural discrimination and unequal opportunities available. By creating a “good minority/bad minority opposition” (Kim 118), and thus relating the “good” minority to whiteness, society and media perpetuate the racial domination and superiority of whites, both socially and civically, over people of color.
Continued racist practices enforced by institutions, policies, and the media, attempt to idolize one sector of the population while demonizing another, blatantly seen in the model minority myth. Racialized institutions specifically target certain groups, from Blacks to Latinos, and currently Arabs, as a means to cultivate certain political agendas. Regardless of the historically targeted minority group, the maintenance of White racial domination is an interminable structure to keep non-whites powerless. And although no longer blatantly directed by the government, the inherent structural racism of this society cannot be disregarded.
-Nicholas De Genova
Race politics in the United States have been that of perpetuation of “the other” in order to maintain a hegemonic White society based on exclusion and White privilege. Through immigration laws, racial formations, and racial triangulation respectively, Ngai, De Genova, and Kim address the ways in which Asians and Latinos have been subjugated and maintained as socially stigmatized groups. The large immigration of both these populations has “modified the racial map of the nation” (Ngai 8) and drastically altered the previously pervading notion of a Black-White binary.
The racialized experience of both Asians and Latinos is fundamentally different than that of African Americans. De Genova suggests both groups can be historically placed in parallel with Native Americans. He specifically distinguishes the African American experience, one that was “fully encompassed within an ‘American’ social order of white power and prestige” (2) with that of the Native American, typically seen as an outsider “with an excess of ‘culture’” (5) and thus an inability to assimilate to that same social order. Asians specifically, Kim notes, have been subject to a problematic triangulation, where they are valorized while also ostracized from society in maintenance of White dominance. This valorization is seen through the creation of the model minority myth, placing Asians above other disenfranchised groups due to material success. The model minority myth reinforces the notion that all races are expected to follow the same trajectory, notwithstanding the wholly structural discrimination and unequal opportunities available. By creating a “good minority/bad minority opposition” (Kim 118), and thus relating the “good” minority to whiteness, society and media perpetuate the racial domination and superiority of whites, both socially and civically, over people of color.
Continued racist practices enforced by institutions, policies, and the media, attempt to idolize one sector of the population while demonizing another, blatantly seen in the model minority myth. Racialized institutions specifically target certain groups, from Blacks to Latinos, and currently Arabs, as a means to cultivate certain political agendas. Regardless of the historically targeted minority group, the maintenance of White racial domination is an interminable structure to keep non-whites powerless. And although no longer blatantly directed by the government, the inherent structural racism of this society cannot be disregarded.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Week 2
The political, and thus inherently racial, implications of space and landscape are inextricably linked to the role of race in society. Omi and Winant emphasize that the history of the United States has consistently been “characterized by racial despotism, denial of political rights, and policies of minority extirpation.” Thus, those in power, primarily whites, are able to continually control the spatial disparities in neighborhoods throughout the United States. The “repressive apparatus” controlled by the state is typified by the discrimination and racial structure of the housing market and neighborhoods that Lipsitz, Schein, and Rojas expound upon. Although Omi and Winant explain the ability of racially disadvantaged populations affecting political notions of race through political action and prominent social movements. This, however, is counteracted by the reality and nature of politically institutionalized racial discrimination that continues to be prevalent today. The racialized normative landscapes of Lexington, Kentucky’s Cheapside and Thoroughbred Park are clear evidence of such. Lipsitz suggests that the “racial projects of American society have always been spatial projects as well”. Race and space are therefore fundamentally connected.
The fact that Omi and Winant stress the idea of race as a crux to realized identities, and what Schein reinforces as “to be part of a landscape, to drive our identity from it is an essential precondition of our being-in-the-world,” implies that racial identities are rooted in the spaces that we take up, in the neighborhoods and houses in which we live. Then, because deprived populations occupy obviously deleterious and underprivileged spaces, the basis of their racial identity is innately less stable than that of those who occupy unmistakably privileged spaces. This is further elucidated by the popular notion of the “purity” of white spaces in direct opposition to “dirty” spaces inhabited by blacks or people of color.
Would it then be possible for the United States to move beyond such a racialized notion of space and place when the very basis of its creation has been the exploitation and discrimination of “non-normative” populations? Will such populations ever maintain any status of power or level of exclusiveness that is primarily associated with white communities?
The fact that Omi and Winant stress the idea of race as a crux to realized identities, and what Schein reinforces as “to be part of a landscape, to drive our identity from it is an essential precondition of our being-in-the-world,” implies that racial identities are rooted in the spaces that we take up, in the neighborhoods and houses in which we live. Then, because deprived populations occupy obviously deleterious and underprivileged spaces, the basis of their racial identity is innately less stable than that of those who occupy unmistakably privileged spaces. This is further elucidated by the popular notion of the “purity” of white spaces in direct opposition to “dirty” spaces inhabited by blacks or people of color.
Would it then be possible for the United States to move beyond such a racialized notion of space and place when the very basis of its creation has been the exploitation and discrimination of “non-normative” populations? Will such populations ever maintain any status of power or level of exclusiveness that is primarily associated with white communities?
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