Embracing White Renaissance: Educational Advocacy and Responses to Gentrification in the New Latinx Diaspora

• In Event: Who's Telling the Story? Interrogating Narratives of Latinidad Across Geopolitical Educational Contexts

Abstract

Like many other cities throughout the Rust Belt, Allentown, Pennsylvania had seen a dramatic drop in its non-Hispanic, White population due to White flight and deindustrialization since the 1970s (Adams, 2000). Simultaneously, it has seen a substantial increase in its Latinx population, which as of 2021 stands at 54.3 percent (United States Census Bureau, 2021). This growth led to Allentown being named the fastest growing city in the state of Pennsylvania (Assad, Kraus, & Tauber, 2011), spurring neoliberal, tax-subsidized development initiatives throughout the city. These initiatives, and the development spurred by them, have been painted as a “Renaissance” by the city (City of Allentown, n.d.), even though quickly rising rents have contributed to a city-wide housing crisis.
Through this research, I seek to understand how Latinxs in a majority-minority city within a White-dominant region navigate neoliberal city politics to respond to gentrification and engage in educational advocacy. Drawing on a conceptual framework that combines tenets of Critical Race Theory with Omi and Winant’s (2017) racial formation, I consider how race and racialization of Latinxs in this White-dominant geopolitical context impacts how Latinx educational advocates engage in the racial project of city-level resource allocation. Conceptualizing educational advocacy and resources broadly, I employ critical ethnographic methods to examine how Latinx community members both embrace and resist the city’s so-called, neoliberal “Renaissance” in order to access educational resources. Conceptualized broadly, these resources include affordable housing, transportation, safe neighborhoods, and food security. I demonstrate that, in doing so, Latinx community members work to improve educational outcomes for the Latinx community at large, often without addressing race or structural racism within and among ethno-racial groups in the city.
The implications of this research suggest that Latinx community members (across similar New Latinx Diaspora contexts) must address racial disparity both within the Latinx community and the region in order to increase racial solidarity with Black and Afro-Latinx community members, many of whom are left to work separately towards the same goals. Increasing solidarity remains the only way to address the reproduction of racial hierarchies within and among community members and to move towards more equitable and improved educational outcomes for majority-minority communities, especially as they are being displaced by gentrification.

Author

• Erika L. Davis, Swarthmore College
  Presenting Author