Protecting Suburban America

Neoliberal multiculturalism in Dallas: The discursive foundations of diversity-led gentrification in an aspiring U.S. global city

“…Further, the performance of neoliberal multiculturalism-enacted to bolster Dallas' position in the network of global capital flows-functions to erase the Dallas International District area's history as a Black and Latino community, particularly its early history as a freedmen's town founded shortly after the American Civil War. Although renewal efforts in some other districts have relied upon the so-called preservation of historic cityscapes or the co-optation and/or revision of an area's past as part of a gentrification strategy of history "commoditization" (Herzfeld, 2010;Summers, 2019;Lawrence-Zuñiga, 2020;Meskell, 2019), the Dallas International District shifts instead toward a form of urban renewal and gentrification steeped in neoliberal multicultural discourse. Because the history of Black dispossession in the Dallas International District area is not one that may be readily romanticized and commoditized, this painful history is erased, evinced by its absence in the discourses surrounding the International District.…”