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.
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