Barrio Dreams

The rapidly increasing situation of gentrification in East Harlem (and Harlem in general) is something that I have recently become very exposed to. Interning uptown in East Harlem with an organization that tackles this issue (among many others), reading Davila's book was something like an intellectualized version of a Monday afternoon at my job. (One of her picture inserts even includes a photo of my coworker's mom!) The issues that she talks about, from naming to self-naming to "marketable ethnicity"to the production of belief and adherence to certain ideals of capitalism are all, in my mind, on-point with what is occurring today. Her analysis of "slumlords" and the problems they produce for residents in the Barrio is also very accurate. I think that the idea of "slumlords" has become romanticized and fictionalized in the white spatial imaginary, so it's important that an intellectual piece like this, clearly intended for higher-educated people, speaks to the presentness of this reality.

The notion of "upward mobility" was one that I found especially interesting. Davila explains in her intro the ways that upward mobility is consumed as an ideology by people in the Barrio, and how that internalization of this ideal actually helps to destroy their neighborhood. She claims that oftentimes it is because the people are afforded a false sense of autonomy and mobility within larger structures that are designed to prevent such movement, and while I do think her point is very valid, I can't help but feel that this rhetoric strips the people in East Harlem of their agency, to a certain degree. It is important to point out the ways that people become duped by "the system," but I have found increasingly in my studies that it seems to be a challenge for most scholars to talk about victimization without making the victims sound completely powerless. She later remedies this by including testimonials and channeling the voices of multiple Puerto Rican activists in the community.

I found her analysis of culture and space especially powerful. Chapter 2, linked with some comments in the introduction, talk about how "ethnic" cultures are often detached from their histories in order to be prepared for and consumed by the mainstream. She says, "simply put, cultural enthusiasts were asking themselves about the price of recognition from general audiences, fully aware that it could potentially transform and 'mainstream' them along with the audiences they serve," (89), and references "cultural gentrification" (90). It is a fetishization, then, of Puerto Rican/Nuyorican culture that plays such a strong role in the cultural sale of El Barrio. Bringing it back home, I can clearly see the ways that this neighborhood is changing through the lens of her book. On my three block walk up Lexington from the 103rd St. station to 106th St, for example, there is a coffeeshop that is new, beautiful, funky, frequented by young white folks, but whose name promises authenticity: "El Barrio Cafe" is the name, I believe. On the other hand, I hear an acquaintance, born and raised in East Harlem, say that he enjoys the new, nice lounges in the neighborhood, because young adults from the community never really had a nightlife infrastructure before now. Does this make him complicit in gentrification, in the mainstream consumption and cultural selling of El Barrio? I think not, but perhaps Davila would think otherwise?

Japanese and Black in America

The two articles for this week through into tension the realities of Japanese Americans and African Americans, exploring the points of similarity, difference, and potentials for solidarity work. Yamamoto's piece, "A Fire in Fontana," mentions her process of politicization and how she came to understand the black American struggle as implicated in her own struggle. She says, "sometimes I see it as my inward self being burnt black in a certain fire" (Yamamoto 150). What makes this statement so interesting, powerful, and controversial is the ways that she proceeds to explain how she basically passes as white in many cases in her life. She uses the "white" bathroom at rest stops in the South, she lives in a white neighborhood, she bears the responsibility of being assumed to be a "white" thinker and receiving racist comments that are believed to be shared by her. Sometimes she mentions challenging these people, but other times she talks about her inner frustration, while she sits and does not do much. Ultimately, her conlcusion that the Watts riots symbolized the fire in Fontana and the fire in her leaves me wondering how exactly racial solidarity work plays out in her life. I understand how her emotions around African Americans and Japanese Americans inform this link, but I do not see a clear, tangible action coming out of this.

Grace Hong calls Yamamoto out on exactly this point. Much of Hong's article explores Harris' idea of whiteness as property, then talks about how Japanese Americans, through measures like the Alien Land Act, have been denied property rights, and thus excluded from white America (like blacks in America). If we use this framework, we begin to see how black and Japanese people in America do not have a same history, but do have a shared denial of access to whiteness and property in America. However, this still does not change the fact that Yamamoto describes access that seems to include "passing" as a white person. Hong speaks about the lack of resolution in Yamamoto's work, which is exactly what frustrated me. I wonder if Yamamoto and Hong ever engaged in a dialogue about this work? I would love to hear/read a conversation between the two of them discussing the issue of cross-racial solidarity work.

Cultural Citizenship and Assimilation

The keywords and grander concepts of "cultural citizenship" and "assimilation" (and the relationship between the two) carried me through my readings this week on Chinese Americans, Chinese immigrants, and the structuring of the Chinatown in America. The tangible production of the nuclear family as national pride and survival, as Cindy I-Fen Cheng points out in her essay "Out of Chinatown and into the Suburbs," is central to understanding her concept of "cultural citizenship." As she highlights the politics of oversexualization of Chinese people in the white American imagination, she also points to the ways that motherhood and marital status secured a place for Chinese women in the realm of American cultural citizenship.

Still, it seems that a thread that pulls the articles together is the idea of the "othering" of Chinese in America, and a lack of full social equality, despite assimilation and access to "cultural citizenship." It is clear that cultural citizenship does not necessarily mean cultural sameness. From Chinese suburbanization to Chinatownization, the white power structure does not appear disrupted by any geographic placement of Chinese Americans. Kay Anderson asserts that "Chinatown has been a victimized colony of the East in the West," exploring the ways in which Chinatown was created and maintained by both a white expectation of "orientalism" and white geographic dominance; "indeed, it requires a more fundamental epistemological critique of the twin ideas of 'Chinese' and 'Chinatown,' of race and place" (Anderson 581).

One thing that did bother me was the use of the term "ethnic banks" in the Li et al. article "Chinese-American banking and Community Development in Los Angeles county (Li et al. 780). I understand the importance of distinguishing the "ethnic" bank from the "white" bank, but the blatant labeling of non-white-owned banks as "ethnic" clearly speaks to the markedness of non-white identities, both naming a problem and further perpetuating it. It's hard to mediate when the terms necessary to expose a social ill are terms that in themselves contribute to said ill.

American Apartheid and Wealth in America

The three texts from this week deal with the intersections of race, class, wealth, and housing in America, particularly in the context of the discriminatory attitudes and institutionalized practices that maintain inequalities. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton point out the ways that the ghetto has been constructed and the ways that it is perpetuated today. They specifically focus on the black (non-Latino) community/ies in the U.S., stating that this is because "no other group in the contemporary United States comes close to this level of isolation within urban society" (77). While I strongly agree with and am impressed by their analysis of this situation of urban isolation in general, I kept expecting them to mention Native Americans. The fact that Native Americans are completely marginalized from their discourse performs a work very similar to what they are trying to counter. Their omitance erases a history that is not dead, but continues today. Their argument about hypersegregation as a combination of at least four of the five dimensions of segregation undoubtedly could be applied as a lens for reading the reservations in America.

Back on the note of economic inequality between black and white people in America, Thomas Shapiro's article "Race, Homeownership and Wealth" supplements the point of American Apartheid by pointing out ways that wealth inequalities are maintained in the United States. His idea that homeownership should be viewed as a continuum with homeownership as the goal is a great new perspective to understand homeownership and sustainable wealth. The second article that he co-wrote with Melvin Oliver zooms in on how the sub-prime crisis was a crisis for Black Americans. This article highlights the specific ways that structural discrimination comes to fruition and maintains what Massey and Denton call "American Apartheid." I especially think that this idea of homeownership as a continuum is useful, because homeownership in itself does not signal wealth, as we see in the article by Oliver and Shapiro. Homeownership is a tenuous, not necessarily stable thing, especially when you factor in appreciation rates (or lack thereof). Thus, it is essentially addressing a fruit and not a root of the problem of wealth distribution if we pay attention to homeownership rates independently of these other ongoing societal issues.