Lured in by click bait titles, short running time, and
quirky video editing, I’ve always turned to Buzzfeed’s videos in my times of
need (and by times of needs, I mean when I’m procrastinating really hard.)
Recently, I fell into a rabbit hole of videos and came across this one, and I was surprised when it fell quite nicely in line with we have been exposed
to so far in class. Most people will happily discuss issues and the
intersections of race and gender but often leave out class, a very essential
and defining factor in someone’s place in society. America values the bootstrap
theory, the myth that class mobility is possible for everyone and that there is
nothing holding them back. America is “classless” by nature; however, the reluctance
and exclusion of discussion about the socio-economic state of American’s
citizens, especially those face with more than one oppression, just perpetuates
the vicious cycle of poverty.
As we watched in the documentary “Race the Power of
an Illusion: Part II: The House we Live In”, racist
housing practices along with white flight and urban migration, also known as
white flight into the suburbs, helped to uphold de facto segregation. Many of
the housing projects, with the loss of capital, jobs, and reputations, began to
deteriorate, and the property values fell. However, in came gentrification!
Huzzah! (Not really) As seen in the Buzzfeed video, it’s when usually
upper-class white people come into neighborhoods that are viewed as deteriorating
with the hopes of reinvesting and renewing the “undesirable” neighborhoods.
However, this only benefits those who belong to the upper-class not the
residents who already live there. In the video, Kai mentions that his family
used to live in his house for $800 a month, but due to the Ellis Law, were
kicked out and had it sold for $1.3 million with no benefit to them. The
rapidly rising cost of living leaves so many unable to afford or even recognize
the neighborhood that was once theirs.
It was very
hard for me to understand this assumption of space and belonging under the
guise that the new people were trying to make the neighborhood better, not for
those already there, but for the new upper-class neighbors. Gentrification is
not something natural and necessary, but just the way in which classist and
racist systems intersect in order to maximize profit, serving a higher class
while alienating the supposed middle class and excluding the lower class fully.
These new
residents come in and make assumptions about the people and practices of the
neighborhood, and while all are not at fault, there is a sense of privilege and
entitlement. They make no efforts to learn the history of the neighborhood, and
a whitewashing of the neighborhood begins. These marginalized people have
created a community out of their exclusion from society, and yet once again,
they have been displaced. As seen in Aimee Meredith Cox’s Shapeshifters, if you devalue the neighborhood, you also devalue
the people who live there and easily transfix the descriptions of the
neighborhood onto the people who previously lived there. Poverty easily distorts people's visions and expectations of those steeped in it.
Have you
seen gentrification in neighborhoods before? Do you feel it is necessary? If
you have personally been affected or had a hand in gentrification, what do you
think you can do to alert everyone to these practices and possibly
better/eliminate them? What other intersections of race and class are not as
obvious in society?
