A Lighter Shade of Brown? Racial Formation and Gentrification in Latino Los Angeles

Abstract

Conventional gentrification literature has meaningfully demonstrated how economic inequality is perpetuated in urban settings, but there has been a limited understanding of how racial inequality is maintained. Drawing from participant observation, interviews, and digital ethnography in the barrio of Boyle Heights in Los Angeles that were collected over five years, this study examines how gentrification functions as a racial project and supports new forms of racialization to maintain uneven development along racial lines. Examining the ways that racial formation processes unfurl at the local scale expands conventional understanding of racial formation theory and practice while, simultaneously, illustrating the centrality of place in race-making. This study finds new race and class formations are developed by casting the barrio itself and significant portions of the Mexican American population as “honorary white.” Despite colorblind and post-racial ideologies espoused in majority-minority cities like Los Angeles, this landscape fostered emerging racial formations alongside gentrification processes which have increased racial, political, and economic inequality.

Place Attachment and Alienation from Place: Cultural Displacement in Gentrifying Ethnic Enclaves

“…Third, though gentrification is often understood as a political-economic process reproducing class inequality, some gentrification scholars call for increased attention to racial segregation and diversity in gentrifying neighborhoods (Hwang, 2016; Summers, 2019). Here, I extend Huante’s (2019) identification of gentrification as a “racial project” (Omi and Winant, [1996] 2014) and highlight how this process can shape the experience of place. Examining the transition of Washington D.C.’s H Street corridor from a “Black ghetto” to a multicultural destination, Summers (2019: 120) notes, “the affective dimensions of gentrification and displacement structure who belongs in the space and who does not.” I elaborate upon this point by examining concurrent place attachment and alienation as a dynamic response to neighborhood conditions and transformations.…”

On place and privilege: Varieties of affluence in cities and neighborhoods

“…For instance, in Chicago, the selling of racial heritage may be done by middle‐class minority intermediaries (Betancur & Smith, 2016); in D.C., those profiting from selling “Chocolate City Beer” are not so chocolate themselves (Summers, 2019). In Huante's (2021) account of gentrification of a Latino neighborhood in Los Angeles, contentious lines emerge, with whites and middle‐class Latinos collectively pushing a version of neighborhood revitalization that sells culture and grants honorary whiteness to middle‐class Latinos, against those Latinos who support gentefication , a version of neighborhood uplift focusing on access to affordable housing achieved through working‐class solidarity. These works and others show that race and class tensions play out through gentrification, often over whether good neighborhoods are those that promote culture or that protect vulnerable residents (Berrey, 2015; Doering, 2020).…”

Planning the Barrio: Racial Order and Restructuring in Neoliberal Los Angeles

“…Such political actions reflect the ways privatism is actively pursued in favor of alternatives while, simultaneously, prioritizing norms and values that advance White interests through resource allocation historically not afforded to aggrieved minorities. The culmination of these actions created a new approach for both areas that would set the stage for development and gentrification trends in the subsequent decades (Couture and Handbury 2020; Huante 2019).…”