Gentrification is Not Exclusive to White People
When you think of communities subjected to gentrification and a typical gentrifier who may be complicit in displacing people from these communities, who comes to mind? Chances are, whoever you have in mind makes up only one part of the story.
Historically, the model minority myth has been used as a racial wedge – to minimize the role racism plays in the lives of other racial groups, such as Black Americans, and to pit non-white racial groups against each other. It also serves to flatten the diverse experiences that Asian Americans from very different backgrounds encounter, into one single monolithic experience digestible for White Americans.
The Asian American community is one of the fastest growing communities in the U.S., increasing by 81% in the last two decades culminating to 7% of the nation's population today. Furthermore, these 22 million or so people trace their heritage to over 20 different countries and vastly different ethnic identities. As such, Asian-Americans from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds live in very different neighborhoods across America. Indian-American households are the highest earning group and also have one of the highest levels of education. The suburbs of California, New Jersey, and Texas have the largest concentration of Indian-Americans making up about 41% of the Indian-American population. By contrast, Nepali-Americans, who earn significantly less than the median household income for both Asians and all Americans, primarily live in the neighboring urban areas such as in NYC.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2019 American Community Survey
Credit: Connie Hanzhang Jin/NPR
Gentrification is defined as the process through which the characteristics of a poor urban area is altered when wealthier people move in. The general narrative is that at first, poor, young, white artists gain interest in certain neighborhoods due to the lower cost of living and access to cultural capital, often in the form of “exotic” interests. This causes landlords and investors to up the cost of rent as they realize that they could increase their profits by appealing to a whiter, wealthier crowd. As the local ethnic mom and pop shops go out of business, landlords replace them with chic new businesses that begin attracting higher-income people as well. The older inhabitants are no longer able to afford all these new amenities as their rent and cost of living go up and are forced to move out, often into areas that lack transportation and infrastructure and are further from their workplace. Thus, while the gradual process of gentrification improves the quality of housing, infrastructure, schools, and attracts new business, it comes at the cost of displacing the original inhabitants and breaking apart communities.
What, then, is the role that Asians play in gentrification?
Surely, middle to higher-income white Americans aren’t the only group actively gentrifying urban neighborhoods (though they undoubtedly play a large role in the process of gentrification)? What happens when wealthier young South Asian-Americans from the suburbs look to move into the city? Are they more likely to move into the city center, like Manhattan, where getting by would require a bit more budgeting due to the immense monthly rental costs, or to the cheaper surrounding areas like Brooklyn or Queens, where they’d have access to trendy foods and ethnic enclaves?
What many young professionals don’t often realize is that they also play a role in this gentrification process. It becomes even more nuanced when young professionals from generally high-earning backgrounds claim proximity to lower-earning ethnic enclaves due to their shared “South Asian-ness” or “non-whiteness.” This practice, fueled by the model minority myth, erases a lot of the ways in which communities are not the same and propels gentrification much more deceptively. Race and socioeconomic status are intersectional, and one cannot filter out one part of a community identity without acknowledging the other.
As a born and bred New Yorker, many examples of this phenomenon come to mind, but one of the biggest and most recent instances is NYC's Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). Over the past month, New Yorkers have been protesting the museum's reopening in Chinatown with chants such as “Boycott MOCA'' and “Chinatown is not for sale.” Even though the opening exhibition, Responses: Asian American Voices Resisting the Tides of Racism, explores historical and recent instances of anti-Asian violence, the Chinatown community felt that there was a rift between grassroots struggles and the values MOCA was exhibiting. Protestors are denouncing Jonathan Chu— a landlord blamed for the gentrification of Chinatown and the closure of two unionized restaurants in the neighborhood—as well as other MOCA board members for accepting $35 million in concessions from NYC to support a jail expansion plan in Chinatown. Branded as a bribe by demonstrators, these funds are part of the “community give-back” initiative by the city to close the notorious Rikers Island jail complex and replace it with four large jails located around the city.
“They are trying to ignore us because they don’t want to admit to themselves that they are part of such a racist, hateful institution that uses the Asian-American community to prop itself up while beating it down at the same time.” – Jihye Simpkins
“We are calling for a boycott of all his businesses and establishments,” says Jihye Simpkins, one of the protest’s organizers and a member of Youth Against Displacement and Coalition to Protect Chinatown and the Lower East Side. “We want that money to go to the community. We want that money to be used to revitalize Chinatown, to protect people who are being displaced…They are trying to ignore us because they don’t want to admit to themselves that they are part of such a racist, hateful institution that uses the Asian-American community to prop itself up while beating it down at the same time.”
Current events, such as what’s happening in NYC’s Chinatown, demonstrate how wealthy Asians are not only distinctly disconnected from the needs of a lower-income neighborhood, but actively commodify the experiences of that community to benefit themselves. Though many high-earning Asians may not have as direct power of real estate as Jonathan Chu, they still play a unique role in benefiting off of displacing lower-income Asians through self-tokenization and claiming ownership over these communities.
As a recent college graduate myself, I have to remind myself to not be passive to these processes as I search for a new place to live. That gray luxury condo tower with gentrification font and metal balconies? It may be a nice place to live and close to all your favorite South Asian foods, but it might also cause all your favorite mom and pop shops to no longer be able to afford their rent. Support local businesses whenever you can, shop small, and be a conscious consumer. Investigate the histories and current demographics of the area as you plan your next move, consider your potential role in the community, and examine how you can support the ethnocultural roots without displacing them.
Shrutikona Das is a 21-year-old Bangladeshi-American writer and intern at SASMHA who is passionate about decolonizing South Asian history and exploring the social determinants of health. She is a recent graduate of Wellesley College and is based in NYC.