A01=Shani Adia Evans
Author_Shani Adia Evans
Black geographies
Black spatial imaginary
Category=JBSA
Category=JBSD
Category=JBSL1
displacement
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Gentrification
homeplace
Oregon
Portland
urban sociology
White Space
White spacemaking
Product details
- ISBN 9780226837765
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 07 Mar 2025
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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A landmark study that shows how Black residents experience and respond to the rapid transformation of historically Black places. Although Portland, Oregon, is sometimes called “America’s Whitest city,” Black residents who grew up there made it their own. The neighborhoods of Northeast Portland, also called “Albina,” were a haven for and a hub of Black community life. But between 1990 and 2010, Albina changed dramatically—it became majority White.
In We Belong Here, sociologist Shani Adia Evans offers an intimate look at gentrification from the inside, documenting the reactions of Albina residents as the racial demographics of their neighborhood shift. As White culture becomes centered in Northeast, Black residents recount their experiences with what Evans refers to as “White watching,” the questioning look on the faces of White people they encounter, which conveys an exclusionary message: “What are you doing here?” This, Evans shows, is a prime example of what she calls “White spacemaking”: the establishment of White space—spaces in which Whiteness is assumed to be the norm and non-Whites are treated with suspicion—in formerly non-White neighborhoods. Evans also documents Black residents’ efforts to create and maintain places for Black belonging in White-dominated Portland. While gentrification typically describes socioeconomic changes that may have racial implications, White spacemaking allows us to understand racism as a primary mechanism of neighborhood change. We Belong Here illuminates why gentrification and White spacemaking should be examined as intersecting, but not interchangeable, processes of neighborhood change.
In We Belong Here, sociologist Shani Adia Evans offers an intimate look at gentrification from the inside, documenting the reactions of Albina residents as the racial demographics of their neighborhood shift. As White culture becomes centered in Northeast, Black residents recount their experiences with what Evans refers to as “White watching,” the questioning look on the faces of White people they encounter, which conveys an exclusionary message: “What are you doing here?” This, Evans shows, is a prime example of what she calls “White spacemaking”: the establishment of White space—spaces in which Whiteness is assumed to be the norm and non-Whites are treated with suspicion—in formerly non-White neighborhoods. Evans also documents Black residents’ efforts to create and maintain places for Black belonging in White-dominated Portland. While gentrification typically describes socioeconomic changes that may have racial implications, White spacemaking allows us to understand racism as a primary mechanism of neighborhood change. We Belong Here illuminates why gentrification and White spacemaking should be examined as intersecting, but not interchangeable, processes of neighborhood change.
Shani Adia Evans is assistant professor of sociology at Rice University.
