The urban process under racial capitalism: Race, anti-Blackness, and capital accumulation

Drawing on Black and Indigenous intellectual traditions, this article applies racial capitalism and settler colonialism as twin frameworks essential for understanding gentrification in a city whose growth is predicated on historical storytelling. Challenging the hegemony of neoliberal and colorblind urbanisms, it is argued that the longue durée world system of racism is always already structuring capitalism and the urban process. The case study of St. Augustine, Florida, shows the role of White nationalist place-making in consolidating the material and ideological structures of racial capitalism and settler colonialism, past and present. Using ethnographic and textual data, I show how what I call the “heritage industrial complex” produces and is produced by racist ideology, promoting diversity and inclusion in historical storytelling about “the oldest city” at the same time as urban processes of gentrification, redevelopment, and disenfranchisement characterize contemporary race relations in the city and the state. Although we have a firm understanding of spatialized inequalities, bringing together the sociology of race and ethnicity’s attention to ideology with urban sociology’s emphasis on the city and landscape can help us understand how race is constitutive of the capitalist project.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Political Economy/ Culture Divide and Colorblind Urbanismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Capitalizing on Heritage: St. Augustine, Florida, and the Landscape of American Racial Ideology

Petersen

2022

“…In this section, I explain how the theory of racial capitalism is useful for understanding gentrification. I draw on both the literature on racial capitalism and prior applications of racial capitalism and racial economies, 3 as well as prior applications of racial capitalism, racial economies, and critical race theory in the gentrification literature (Anderson and Sternberg 2012;Boston 2021;Brahinsky 2014;Dantzler 2021;Hightower and Fraser 2020;Huante 2019;Lipman 2012;Moore 2009;Powell and Spencer 2002;Summers 2019;Zimmer 2020).…”

Section: Gentrification In the Context Of Racial Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a racial logic beyond capitalism, which manifests in how value is assigned (valuation) and diminished (devaluation) from products, places, and people (Dantzler 2021;Dantzler and Reynolds 2020;Laster Pirtle 2020;Leong 2013;Matlon 2016;Melamed 2015;Pulido 2016Pulido , 2017Ralph and Singhal 2019;Summers 2019;Taylor 2019). 4 The valuation process primarily benefits White products, places, and people, while devaluation disadvantages non-White people (Dantzler 2021;Dantzler and Reynolds 2020;Gilmore 2002;Leong 2013;Melamed 2015;Pulido 2017;Taylor 2019;D. Wilson 2009).…”

Section: Gentrification In the Context Of Racial Capitalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Theorizing Gentrification as a Process of Racial Capitalism

Rucks-Ahidiana

2021

Academics largely define gentrification based on changes in the class demographics of neighborhood residents from predominately low-income to middle-class. This ignores that gentrification always occurs in spaces defined by both class and race. In this article, I use the lens of racial capitalism to theorize gentrification as a racialized, profit-accumulating process, integrating the perspective that spaces are always racialized to class-centered theories. Using the prior literature on gentrification in the United States, I demonstrate how the concepts of value, valuation, and devaluation from racial capitalism explain where and how gentrification unfolds. Exposure to gentrification varies depending on a neighborhood’s racial composition and the gentrification stakeholders involved, which contributes to racial differences in the scale and pace of change and the implications of those changes for the processes of displacement. Revising our understanding of gentrification to address the racialization of space helps resolve seemingly contradictory findings across qualitative and quantitative studies.

“…1 Early works on urban sociology called attention to the problem of the color line in producing differentiation in capitalist development (Du Bois [1903Bois [ ] 1994. Nevertheless, a color-blind analytical treatment of capitalism has understated how race affects urbanization processes and shapes value-of places and people (Dantzler 2021). Nor has it fully considered how the modern triad-colonial, racial, and capital-is deeply implicated as power modalities (da Silva 2019:161).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Race and Space in the Postcolony: A Relational Study on Urban Planning Under Racial Capitalism in Brazil and South Africa

Melgaço

Coelho

2022

This article analyzes two planned cities—Belo Horizonte (Brazil) and Bloemfontein (South Africa)—to investigate connectivities across geographies and temporalities and reveal the role of urban planning in racial capitalism. Early works in urban sociology underscore the color line in producing differentiation in capitalist development. But color-blind analyses of capitalism have undermined the role of race in the urbanization process and formation of value—of places and people—and how the modern triad—colonial, racial, and capital—is deeply implicated in power modalities. Based on policy analysis, we historicize political choices in discuss urban planning and national developmentalist schemes after redemocratization that produced racial-spatial inequalities. We argue that color-blind urban policies still neglect the role of race in the production of Brazilian and South African cities under the guise of “planning innocence.” This discussion expands our understanding of urbanization and capital accumulation as a dialectical process of black dispossession and the protection of white property in the postcolony.