When Diversity is Desirable: Neighborhood Preferences of Young White Elites

• In Event: 4445 - Elite Networks and Elite Viewpoints

Abstract

Despite the durable neighborhood inequalities and persistent racial residential segregation in the US, gentrification offers a deviant empirical case where we observe in-migration of whites into nonwhite neighborhoods. By focusing on young white elites’ residential choice and neighborhood preferences, I investigate why and how some whites perceive and evaluate nonwhite neighborhoods as desirable. Drawing on in-depth interviews with young white elites who live in San Francisco or Oakland, I illustrate their neighborhood preferences as an evaluative process through which elites both signal and reproduce their status. I argue that the interviewees’ neighborhood preferences parallel to the omnivorous cultural tastes of elites in other domains. Specifically, I identified three conditions under which young white elites valued diversity: by seeking social legitimation by in-group members, by differentiating “appropriate” social contexts, and by consuming desirably racialized commodities. This study has implications on the formation of new elite cultural tastes and how the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion play out in urban neighborhood contexts.

Author

• Hesu Yoon, Stanford University