The Raced–Space of Gentrification: “Reverse Blockbusting,” Home Selling, and Neighborhood Remake in North Nashville

Abstract

Proponents of gentrification often use some rendition of a “rising tide lifts all boats” justification when assessing the impact that gentrification has on original residents in a gentrifying area. One of the benefits that is widely accepted by proponents and opponents of gentrification is that homeowners experience an increase in property values that can easily be transferred to family wealth or cash. Yet, there is virtually no research that provides an evidence base to support this seemingly direct relationship. Through a case study of prominent historically black neighborhoods in North Nashville, we find that the process of potential home equity realization for original homeowners in a gentrifying area is complicated by a variety of factors. We theorize that, in addition to class and socioeconomic phenomena, home buying in the context of gentrification operates much like reverse or inverted “blockbusting” during the era of urban renewal. These processes involve the creation of value out of the racialization of space whereby black homeowners and residents are incentivized and often forced to leave as a precursor to predominantly white populations entering. We comment on how these findings fit into the history of discriminatory and exploitative housing practices in the United States.

The racial and colonial dimensions of gentrification

“…The coloniality perspective is generative here, as it argues the production of the bourgeois "ethno-class" of Man (Wynter, 2003) is a foundational social formation of Eurocentric capitalist modernity shaping its intricately connected social problems, such as racism, colonialism, genocide, capitalistic exploitation, and epistemic violence. "Ethno-class" distinctions work to legitimize and drive the discourses of gentrification projects (Hightower & Fraser, 2020) as white middle-and upper-class residents and consumers are tacitly celebrated by urban elites as adding new life and value to neighborhoods racially denigrated as in decline (also see Mele, 2017). Meanwhile, long-time Black and Indigenous residents are physically, culturally, economically, and politically blocked out of sharing in the celebrated "renewal" of the neighborhood (e.g., Hightower & Fraser, 2020;Hyra, 2017).…”

“…"Ethno-class" distinctions work to legitimize and drive the discourses of gentrification projects (Hightower & Fraser, 2020) as white middle-and upper-class residents and consumers are tacitly celebrated by urban elites as adding new life and value to neighborhoods racially denigrated as in decline (also see Mele, 2017). Meanwhile, long-time Black and Indigenous residents are physically, culturally, economically, and politically blocked out of sharing in the celebrated "renewal" of the neighborhood (e.g., Hightower & Fraser, 2020;Hyra, 2017).…”

“…For example, Launius and Boyce's (2020) Summing up, these cases foreground the gendered settler colonial dimensions and foundations of city-building, highlighting how settler colonial histories of conquest, genocide, and exploitation and their ongoing present shape the production of urban space and its role in the formation of racialized, colonial, and gendered subjectivities and ideologies. The analysis of the ongoing structure of settler colonialism in urban space urges us to retool our approaches to the political economy, politics, and branding of gentrification by looking beyond the taken-for-granted purview of urban politics of gentrification which seldom makes deep connections with earlier histories of racial and colonial dispossession (Hightower & Fraser, 2020). This move can be made by incorporating histories of settler colonialism and how they continue to operate in the present, reproducing relations of property which privilege the white possessive individual through the abstraction of urban space from Indigenous histories and relations with the land (Bhandar, 2018), and justifying urban dispossession through producing pathologizing stereotypes of Indigenous people.…”

Chinatowns Lost? The Birth and Death of Urban Neighborhoods in an American City

“…Elite actors actively engaged in processes of gentrification, displacing longstanding organizations, cultures, and residents who either engage in acquiescence or futile resistance (Pattillo 2008;Zukin 2016). Scholarship often emphasizes the displacement and costs of gentrification (Brown-Saracino 2010;Hyra 2012;Laska and Spain [1980] 2016; Pérez 2004), its benefits for poor minority residents (Atkinson 2004;Hightower and Fraser 2020), or simply ignores the residents themselves (Helmuth 2019), indicating that they will probably be displaced into other low-income neighborhoods (Newman and Wyly 2006). Gentrification is thus often done to poor minority neighborhoods.…”

Race matters (even more than you already think): Racism, housing, and the limits ofThe Color of Law

“…While, based on survey data, some claim such an abatement is being realized, even in the face of retrograde trends in American politics (Hopkins & Washington, 2019), more probing and sophisticated analysis strongly suggests otherwise (see Goetz et al, 2020). 32 Among nonmarket remedies a major program of racial reparations such as trumpeted by Coates (2014) is an obvious public policy choice, and one endorsed by many who of late have carefully studied aspects of the racist theory of value (see, for example, Darity Jr. et al, 2018;Hightower & Fraser, 2020;Markley et al, 2020;Ray & Perry, 2020;Taylor, 2019b). While the debate over reparations is wide-ranging and complex, it is clear that this policy option faces significant political and technical obstacles, especially if the effort is serious and consequential (see, for example, Reed, 2000).…”