Ethnocide and Gentrification
Earlier this week, a friend reached out to me and asked me to explain how ethnocide is related to gentrification. I had already explained this connection to her, but as she perceived the growing gentrification happening in Washington, D.C. she recognized how my explanation helped her understand her transforming city, and she wanted me to share it with the wider SCL community.
D.C.’s gentrification is both subtle and abrasive. It can be hard to miss while also slapping you across the face. For decades, D.C. was over 50 percent Black and had transigent residents move in and out of the city based on who occupied the White House, but now this is changing. People who used to move to D.C. and then leave five years later are now making D.C. their new home, and while Black people remain the majority, we are no longer more than 50 percent.
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D.C.’s new residents are putting down roots, and objectively speaking, none of this is bad. I am not native to D.C. either, but this city has become my home. There is nothing wrong with creating a home in a new city, and gentrification is not merely the act of moving into a new city or neighborhood. Gentrification refers to the philosophy people express as they attempt to live in the world.
D.C.’s gentrification is subtle because the city is used to people from across America moving into the city, but as the rate of them moving out of the city decreases, the cultural and environmental changes of D.C. become more apparent.
This subtly only increases the necessity of understanding how ethnocide explains gentrification.
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Ethnocide, Gentrification, and City Planning
An ethnocidal society relies on the existence of a community of people who exist within that society to be exploited. Clearly, the exploited, or ethnocidee, do not resign themselves to a life of exploitation, and they work hard to make the best out of their unjust circumstances. However, one’s desire to not be exploited does not mean that your society is not committed to exploiting you.
Within ethnocide, the ethnocider lives off of exploiting the ethnocidee, and it is impossible to exploit people if they live far away. The exploited need to be within reach.
For example, during the antebellum South, slaveowners could exploit enslaved people because they were within reach. Enslaved people were forced to live on the property of the people who owned them, and laws were passed, such as the Fugative Slave Act, to make it illegal for enslaved people to escape. Slaveowners made the perpetual and generational exploitation of Black people the bedrock of their society and the South’s plantation elite became wealthy because they could exploit Black people in perpetuity.
If enslaved Black people escaped the property of a slaveowner and found refuge in the northern States, Canada, or even the Sea Islands off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina, this specific exploitative relationship would come to an end, but America’s status quo of racial division would merely mean that another and more subtle form of exploitation would take its place.
Black people were forcefully brought to America to be exploited, and while chattel slavery is the most abrasive, it is not America’s only method of systemic exploitation. America’s ethnocidal culture also means that our cities have exploitative, ethnocidal foundations and this corrupted root creates gentrification.
American cities reflect our society’s reluctance to equitably fund communities of color, so the areas with the worst schools and most affordable housing are often found in communities of color. Normally, these areas are not too far from the more affluent white neighborhoods and/or business districts because people of color often have to commute into these predominantly white environments to find work. These jobs are often low-paying and consist of the vital services that white Americans often need to survive such as raising their children, cleaning their homes, and taking care of their elderly relatives.
Additionally, these predominantly white environments place a priority on property values. They want to ensure that their homes grow in value, but this desire for short-term wealth makes it harder for the next generation of white Americans to afford to live in the neighborhoods that they grew up in. Despite having steady jobs and a great education, these white Americans struggle to find housing in their home neighborhoods, and now they must look for affordable housing that is not too far away.
Low-and-behold, they find affordable housing within the adjacent communities of color, and now they aspire to move in and hopefully increase the value of their property. This results in the people who have always called this neighborhood home being priced out of their own homes, yet when they move away they can’t move too far away because they probably still work in the predominantly white areas.
Years down the line, a new group of white Americans will move into the new areas that people of color were forced to relocate to, and this cycle of displacement and gentrification will continue ad infinitum. This is how an ethnocidal society attempts to sustain a divided, exploitative way of life.
Ethnocide, Gentrification, and Culture
America’s ethnocidal culture does more than merely influence where people choose to live within our society, but it also impacts how they behave within our society. The problem with gentrification is not simply that people do not like an influx of white people or new people into their communities, but how these people behave within their new community.
Ethnocide prioritizes money ahead of human life, and this fact should be clear because European colonizers worked to destroy Black life while also keeping Black people alive, so that they could obtain money from Black bodies, both in the labor of and trafficking in Black people.
Therefore, America’s ethnocidal culture articulates that the infusion of white money into Black neighborhoods is inherently beneficial regardless of how it disrupts and erodes the culture of this Black community. Within ethnocide, money is more valuable than existence, so it is acceptable to disrupt Black existence to make white money.
This ethnocidal philosophy often results in gentrifiers believing that their presence and wealth will naturally benefit the community they are moving into, and they often look down upon the less affluent residents who have long lived in these neighborhoods. They embrace cultural “disruption” because they believe that disrupting another’s way of life for their financial gain is beneficial to society as a whole.
This destructive, disruptive theory could not be further from the truth, but our ethnocidal society built upon mauvaise foi encourages all of us to embrace disruption and disregard the destructive collateral damage.
A toxic culture is encouraged to invade these communities, and Americans struggle to articulate and identify the problem because we have been taught that this toxicity is a good thing.
As a relatively new resident of D.C.––I’ve lived here about 10 years––I remember how when I first moved into the city some people accused me of being a gentrifier and expressed how it was supposedly “unfair” that Black people could not be seen as gentrifiers but white people could. At the time, I struggled to adequately respond to their perspective, but the problem with their perspective was always clear to me. They wanted to have a conversation about race, and I wanted to have one about culture.
As a Black man, I knew that I wanted to become a part of a Black city. D.C. had a Black mayor, Barack Obama was the president, and I lived not too far from Howard University. I did not move here with the idea of disrupting the city’s culture. I came here to be a part of the culture, so this is why I am not a gentrifier. I know my neighbors, my mailman, my UPS driver, the people who work at the corner stores and the restaurants in my community. I know their names because philosophically I have decided to not forge ethnocidal, exploitive relationships with people in my community; so instead I actively work to cultivate community.
The cultivation of community combats ethnocide and gentrification, and SCL works to give people the perspective, language, and actions to create sustainable communities. I’m glad that my friend has benefited from understanding how ethnocide creates gentrification, and hopefully, all of us can work together to build stronger, less exploitative communities.