This week’s materials focused on the ongoing process of gentrification in San Francisco and Los Angeles. “How to Kill a City” begins with background information on the assigned film “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” and how the film aims to tackle gentrification on both the large scale – by bringing awareness to the realities of displacement – and the personal – by supporting the artists who created it enough to keep living there. The piece goes on to examine the economic and political driving forces of gentrification in which governments and corporations maximize profit generated by a given piece of land leading to displacement. It highlights how more subtle forms of eviction go undetected in the data, masking the severity of the problem. Gentrification is accompanied by a loss of the city’s identity, culture, and its long-time residents. The mostly white individuals who instigate gentrification, “How to Kill a City” claims, do not do so intentionally or maliciously. They are simply trying to find affordable housing themselves without realizing the displacement they are indirectly causing.
Our second reading, “A Lighter Shade of Brown? Racial Formation and Gentrification in Latino Los Angeles,” would disagree and likely critique this view of gentrifiers. The article includes an anecdote about a white real estate agent who posted flyers encouraging home-buyers to look for cheaper options in Boyle Heights. When this rhetoric was criticised, the real estate agent was quick to deny malintent and present herself as a lesser evil and an ally against corporation driven gentrification in the area. I found this anecdote particularly salient because it captures many of the themes we have discussed this semester. We see a white person using a move to innocence, presenting herself as sharing a common enemy (corporation driven gentrification), as sympathetic to this “very sensitive nerve,” and as apologetic for offending anyone. She does all of this while refusing to change her behavior or offer material solutions. We also see whiteness as property. This woman frames gentrification as an unavoidable process in which white people will eventually take over the area in one form or another. More broadly, “A Lighter Shade of Brown?” tackles race as a central dynamic that is both shaping and being shaped by gentrification while “How to Kill a City” approaches race as a secondary correlate in the process. Both articles along with the film were tremendously impactful.
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