Gentrification and Cultural Genocide

            Last semester, I took a seminar on the 1970s in the United States. During that seminar we read a book called The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Postwar New York. When I was trying to think about something relevant to write concerning genocide, this book immediately came to mind because of Raphael Lemkin’s definition of cultural genocide, and how that can be equally as damaging as the physical genocide of a people.

            In gentrification, better well-off people begin moving into poorer areas, cleaning up houses, starting new businesses, and overall overhauling the image and state of the area to be “better” than it was. However, in this process, the poorer population that lives in those areas is often slowly pushed out to make more room for a wealthier population that will keep the place “nicer”.  In the process of gentrification, it is not uncommon for the poor population of a neighborhood to be completely pushed out of an area because of rising house prices, etc. because of the influence of their new, wealthier neighbors and what they have done to improve the houses, the streets, etc. Additionally, both in trying to reinvigorate the area and in sometimes literally pushing the residents out of the area, I think that in some ways Lemkin’s definition of cultural genocide can be applied.

            Obviously, looking at the gentrification of a neighborhood such as Brooklyn is not the same as looking at the dynamics of a whole country. However, I think it is relevant because gentrification is something that a lot of people generally see as positive or don’t think about either way (though I know some disagree), but I do not think that those people think about the culture that was there before the wealthier people arrived and what could be gained from preserving part or all of that culture that had been created.

            I see gentrification, and specifically the gentrification of Brooklyn beginning in the 1970s, as a microcosm of cultural genocide. One group (poorer persons) lived somewhere, and then another group (wealthier persons) moved in, wiped away anything they saw as unsavory and imposed what they thought a neighborhood should be like on top of that, effectively overpowering the culture that was there before and in many cases causing it to be lost entirely.

            One could possibly argue some kind of stance about what pushing the original residents out of gentrifying areas is, but I don’t think that it is ethnic cleansing or anything like that because the people moving in generally do not have the intention of pushing out the residents, but it ends up happening extremely often because when they improve houses and streets, they raise house values, which raises taxes, and makes it more difficult for the poor to stay. I would say that gentrification ‘cleanses’ the neighborhood of unsavory aspects, but really as a byproduct of what the new residents’ goals are – making an area better and more suitable for themselves.