Grounded in Place: The Perspective of Latine and African Americans in a Gentrified Neighborhood in Boston

• In Event: Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 6: Race and Place

Abstract

The process of gentrification is rooted in racial politics that demonstrate the legacies of tethering property and value to White bodies/aesthetics. In gentrifying places and literature, people of color are portrayed as displaceable or evicted with little agency. This research project readjusts that lens to center Black and Latine (Dominican and Puerto Rican) folks in a gentrifying community as witnesses to the emplacement of Whiteness. By focusing on witnessing, this research shows how people of color make sense of their gentrifying community, neighborhood change, and varied forms of resistance. This research combines novel data sources, including semi-structured life histories, archival data (City Life/Vida Urban Collection), and community non-profit profile data, to examine how Black and Latine people remain in place, see beyond Whiteness, and center a long history of emplacement and resistance.

Author

• Miguel A Montalva Barba, University of Massachusetts-Boston