Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap

by Tanya Maria Golash-Boza

Draws a direct line between redlining, incarceration, and gentrification in an American city.
 
This book shows how a century of redlining, disinvestment, and the War on Drugs wreaked devastation on Black people and paved the way for gentrification in Washington, DC. In Before Gentrification , Tanya Maria Golash-Boza tracks the cycles of state abandonment and punishment that have shaped the city, revealing how policies and policing work to displace and decimate the Black middle class.

Through the stories of those who have lost their homes and livelihoods, Golash-Boza explores how DC came to be the nation's "murder capital" and incarceration capital, and why it is now a haven for wealthy White people. This troubling history makes clear that the choice to use prisons and policing to solve problems faced by Black communities in the twentieth century—instead of investing in schools, community centers, social services, health care, and violence prevention—is what made gentrification possible in the twenty-first. Before Gentrification unveils a pattern of anti-Blackness and racial capitalism in DC that has implications for all US cities.

Genres: Nonfiction, History

311 pages, Paperback

Published September 5, 2023

Reviews

[Lo · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is lovely to hear from a DC native about the realities of gentrification wielded with racialized capitalism. Tanya taps into 5 specific neighborhoods about their journeys through criminalization of majority Black men to disinvestment of Black communities to a return of amenities for White, richer communities.

It’s impactful because we are actively seeing this disinvestment and reinvestment in Chinatown and in Bowser’s planned budget for the RFK Stadium and the rest of her god awful proposed budget plan.

We cannot see Bowser’s budget come to fruition. Between the rollback of initiative 82 to what would be the largest stadium subsidy in US history, this is an all out attack on the working class people of DC. What we saw with the construction of MCI center doing to Chinatown and Nats Stadium to Navy Yard is going to happen to stadium-armory as well.

What Tanya harps on is that gentrification and colonization run on similar narratives that “there was nothing there worth saving,” which extends the idea of gentrification internationally to places like Puerto Rico and Palestine. The Esencia project in Puerto Rico relies on this narrative so they can accommodate a majority white, rich, and tourist clientele to an area that is crucial for the ecological, archeological, and cultural space of Puerto Rico. This further happens in Palestine from 1948 to now where Trump jokes about putting another branded tower in Gaza.

Gentrification is the chickens coming to roost in the belly of the beast. We must oppose any undemocratic changes that happen to our neighborhoods as well as to indigenous lands throughout the world. “There is one reason home values increase when White people move in: racism. There is one reason homes are assigned value at all: capitalism. The only real solution to these cycles of displacement and dispossession, then, is to dismantle both racism and capitalism.”

[Mark Hagerstrom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impressive piece of work and a must read for anyone interested in contemporary urban DC and the issue of gentrification. The author is explicit about why she wrote the book, and her presence and sympathies in the detailed exposition. She presents a compelling narrative but does not in my mind achieve what she set out to do, as regards wealth accumulation among a group of black males now being released from prison. This wealth was to be real property passed along by older family members. Ironically, these same men bemoan the vanishing of the neighborhoods they themselves helped to destroy through their criminal and violent activities. She notes that property values increased with gentrification, but she suggests that these values were somehow "lost" to those that sold out to the newcomers. This is a bit lazy. These values would not have been achieved without the sales. Moreover, while she notes that many moved to Prince Georges County she does not account for wealth accumulated there. PG Country is the largest majority African-American county in the US and the second most prosperous. Her overall conclusion is also lazy and seems more like a salute to her ideological flag. For her, abolishing capitalism would have righted all the wrongs she details in the book, but she never makes a case for another system with better outcomes.

[Claudia · Rating 2 out of 5]

It meant a great deal to me to learn more about pre-2000 DC, including its racial history, and I appreciated the lens of disinvestment/carceral investment/reinvestment, so the book was certainly educational. I also don't question that the author did a tremendous amount of research. The book was really dry, though, plus I don't like it when social scientists try to pass off a pile of facts as incontrovertible proof. Even my kids know that in order to make a persuasive argument, you have to address alternate/opposing points of view.

[Miles Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learned so much. I hadn’t read a book on DC-specific trends before, and this was able to pack so much into just over 200 pages (and the argument flowed chronologically really well). Also cited my old prof. Alvarado which was super cool. The book was so new that the binding wasn’t fully there but that’s not exactly a content complaint lol. Helped me better understand the gentrifying process and some of DC’s unique challenges with race and public investment.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got stuck in an airport for over 8 hours and completing this book entirely during that time helped tether me to reality and prevent me from losing my mind. Also it's a pretty good book, Tanya Maria Golash-Boza does an incredible job both describing concepts related to urban planning, poverty, policing, and incarceration as well as weaving them together into a solid narrative in Washington DC.
While that alone would make for a great book, she also weaves her own experience growing up in the District and how these dynamics affected her and those around her. I appreciated the additional texture onto the concepts she discussed, though some of these more autobiographical elements didn't feel as cohesive as the other parts of the book.

[Sonya]

Very approachable in how it is broken down. Enjoyed the interviews and the personal stories and learning more about this issue specific to DC and the DC neighborhoods I know. Recommend to those in DC wanting to learn more about contributors to gentrification.