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

Bibliographic Data

ID2187152
AuthorsAj Golio (0000-0002-7215-6333, Tulane University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume5
Issue1
Pages48-72
Publication date2024-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Race Ethnicity and the City (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2688-4674 • E-ISSN: 2688-4682
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/26884674.2023.2234275
OpenAlexW4384822988
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited114

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

Aesthetics · Art · Capitalism · Categorization · Criminology · Economic geography · Economic growth · Epistemology · Gentrification · Geography · Ideology · Political science · Politics · Racialization · Sociology · Gender Studies · Law · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Urban Planning and Governance · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies

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