Racial Projects and Emotion in a Gentrification Conflict

• In Event: 4257 - Regular session: Racism and Antiracism II

Abstract

This paper conceptualizes gentrification and resistance against it as vying racial projects (Omi & Winant 2014) and highlights the emotional dynamics involved in mobilizing and strengthening a community organization in a neighborhood in which residents have felt powerless to confront the affect-laden tribulations of gentrification. Color-blind discourse, neoliberal ideals, and demonizing imagery of people of color hegemonize hardships produced by gentrification such as intensified policing and social control, community exclusion, cultural rebranding, and displacement. Neoliberal and color-blind ideologies cultivate sentiments of personal responsibility for such adversities that impedes mobilization against racial oppression. In the present case study, a small collective of anti-gentrification activists, the Community Organizers of Edgewood Park (COEP), disseminates critical, structural interpretations of gentrification to transform marginalized residents’ demobilizing emotions and generate activism against the racist, exclusionary, and hegemonic nature of the redevelopment they experience. In response, COEP has experienced backlash from actors promoting gentrification. Despite denunciation and intimidation tactics, COEP is ultimately emboldened and repurposes their emotionally-taxing experiences to mobilize indignation against hostile, pro-gentrification actors and thus, bolster their resistance. COEP empowers residents to recognize and stand up against gentrification’s racist and classist nature. In conclusion, I argue that resistance against gentrification must be situated within a broader struggle against neoliberal racial projects. Like COEP, other anti-racist organizations construct and disseminate counterhegemonic frames that strive to disrupt color-blind rationales for racially oppressive practices and accordingly, mobilize collective action for racial justice. Alliances between such groups are necessary to resist various facets of racial neoliberalism.

Author

• Melissa A. Alvaré, University of Delaware