Reproducing race in the gentrifying city: A critical analysis of race in gentrification scholarship

Abstract

ABSTRACT While the term gentrification in an American context often incorporates racial turnover, the role of race in gentrification remains undertheorized. Employing a critical race lens, this study explores the historical relationship between race and gentrification in academic studies. I conduct a systematic review and a discourse analysis of 331 empirical studies of gentrification from 1970–2019. Findings show that although studies frequently employ racial categories, they do so in imprecise ways, subsuming race under class. Race-based theory is rare; race is primarily used as a variable of measure to examine conflict-oriented outcomes, such as displacement. This creates oppositional and homogenizing racialized typologies of “poor minority incumbents” and “wealthy White newcomers,” which remain steady despite an increasingly complex urban landscape. I argue that this limits our ability to understand how race, class, and power operate in space and underscores the need for a more clearly defined role of race within gentrification that focuses on positionality and power in lieu of a groupist emphasis on antagonistic racial categorization.