Is gentrification racist?

By Meg E. Cox

I live in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, one of the most ethnically and socioeconomically diverse neighborhoods in the country. Lately hundreds of families are being forced out by gentrification: rents go up, then people are evicted so the buildings can be redeveloped as condos. The condo buyers as a group are much whiter and wealthier than the residents who preceded them.

The other day, Walter, a 50-something black man in our congregation, was in front of our youth pastor’s house because he was helping him move some boxes. While he was waiting, he was talking to a white woman who was out walking her dog. Plain-clothes police officers whistled to Walter and told him to come over, then slammed him up against the car to search him. They checked his ID and saw that he has a perfectly clean record. Before they left, they told him, “We don’t want to see you around here.” Walter explained that he lived in the neighborhood and that he was helping a friend move some things. “We don’t care,” the officers said. “Unless you’re actually carrying boxes while you help someone move, we don’t want to see you here.”

Perhaps it’s worth mentioning that Walter is soft-spoken and clean-cut. Of course that shouldn’t matter; I certainly don’t have to dress nicely and speak softly outside of my home to avoid unpleasant encounters with the police. Walter told me that he’s endured four or five such incidents since he moved to the neighborhood two years ago.

Meanwhile, when we meet people moving into the new condos and they learn that we’ve lived here for nine years, they invariably say, “You must be so relieved that the neighborhood is changing!”

Meg E. Cox is a freelance writer and editor in Chicago.

Comments

[Pascale Soleil]

I don't know that gentrification per se is racist, but those cops certainly are.

If Walter hasn't filed a complaint with the police and his city council member, and written a letter to the local paper detailing these incidents with names and badge numbers, then he (and anyone else who's had this experience) ought to.

[Jason Smith]

Gentrification does not seem to diversify, if that is what you are asking? It simply re-situations populations.

[Mennonite mama]

The post seems to be pointing to something more than the yes-or-no answer that the headline calls for.

Maybe the author of the post didn't write the headline.

[Jason Byassee]

A good guess by Mennonite mama. I do think Meg is trying to say that racism is intrinsic to gentrification though, such that cases like this are no accident.

[Meg E. Cox]

If I had titled the post, I think I would have included the phrase Manifest Destiny.

Many of us enjoyed Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books as children without realizing that her family was part of a catastrophic larger process.

Likewise, my new neighbors are just settling in a new place.

But the underlying story is how those homes came to be available and how neighborhoods are tranformed from mostly nonwhite to mostly white.

The Manifest Destiny language of rescuing the land from savages (which I've heard passed from developer's rep to potential buyers to new neighbors and beyond) points to that underlying story.

[Rich]

Call me cynical, but most of what we call "development," as it relates to economics in the U.S. is geared toward the "haves." Racist? Yes, in an indirect way. Fixable? Not without intervention by some of those same "haves" and the government.

[Meg E. Cox]

Let me tell you a story.

When I was working as an adult educator for a large faith-based agency on Chicago's West Side, I once heard our shelter social worker talking to one of the shelter residents:

"No, Ms. Jones. What I'm trying to tell you is that those apartments are affordable! That means you can't afford them!"

An ironic statement, and completely accurate.

My GED students were excited about the new apartments the agency was developing, so I inquired about rents. I learned that to receive the form of city funding the agency was using to do the rehab, the agency had to require that all renters have an income three times the rental amount. So even if rents were kept fairly low, almost none of my students would have been able to rent an apartment in a rehabbed building. I wouldn't have been able rent one!

You can call it prudent fiscal management on the part of the city if you like, but these folks were used to rent taking a large part of their monthly income, and they budgeted accordingly. Now they were being priced out by a city policy dictating minimum income, apparently regardless of credit history or a record of steady employment.

It was tragic. Well-intentioned redevelopment efforts by a community-based institution were turned into a tool to draw higher income people into the neighborhood rather than to provide people already there with decent housing.

Robust public policy could encourage balanced development that helps to revitalize economically distressed neighborhoods without pushing existing residents out. But that would require "haves" to vote against their economic self-interest.

[Dan Ruth]

One of the big issues in discussing racism/gentrification is one's definition of racism. One of the more helpful definitions that I have heard comes from the Minnesota Collaborative Anti-Racism Initiative (MCARI). They distinguish racism from racial prejudice by saying racism = racial prejudice + the power of systems & institutions.

The story about Walter is certainly one of extreme racial prejudice, but the real tragedy here is that those people being pushed out of Rogers Park by the forces of gentrification have no power (economic, political, or otherwise) to fight against it.

This form of racism goes much deeper than the prejudices of the wealthier white people moving into the neighborhood.

The racism in this situation of gentrification (and many others) is seen by asking, "who has the power?"

[postmodernegro]

I believe the 'racism' sneaks in when urban planners build without considering the historical precedent of segregation and inequitable distribution of resources and jobs in the very communities they occupy. This is a subtle form of racism: to be indifferent to the ghetto and its century long making. When I talk with gentrifiers there is a certain naivete regarding the legacy of institutional racism that created low cost properties in the first place. The indifference and ignorance of history and particular legaces, and the naivete are all expressions of white supremacy. Of course, most of this is unconscious.