"In My Neighborhood, But Not For Me": Long-Standing African American Residents' Perceptions of Gentrification, Anchor Institution Expansion and the Paradox of Civic Engagement

Abstract

This dissertation explores perceptions and sentiments held about the presence and increased expansion of a private, urban university by the residents whose neighborhood shares its border. The historical and current engagement of a predominantly White institution, Fourdlet University, with the low-income, predominately African American Greatland community was elucidated through the voices of 10 long-standing residents. Long-standing residents were defined in this study as those members who have resided for a minimum of 20 years in Greatland. Recent expansion of the university into the residential neighborhood has resulted in the gentrifying of a community that once represented multiple generations of predominantly African American families. While the neighborhood population is increasingly younger and whiter, the African American population has been reduced to a small number of primarily older residents who have been able to maintain ownership of their homes. This was a narrative ethnographic study conducted over a five-month period wherein critical race theory (CRT) served as its foundation due to the historical racial tensions between the university and the neighborhood. With its emphasis on voice, counternarratives, and challenges to systemic societal racism, CRT illuminated the visceral understandings possessed by neighborhood residents about the expansion and changes in racial composition in their community. This research contextualized whiteness as property considering the significance of property ownership and the deliberate process of gentrification currently experienced in the lives of Greatland residents. Additionally, this study viewed its subject through the lenses of mere exposure theory and the ecological theory of social perception. These theories served to explore impression formation and how judgements made about the roles and responsibilities of the university and the civic mission of higher education translate into the sentiments and perceptions that residents hold regarding the expansion of the university. Scholarship detailing both how residents in gentrifying communities experience civic engagement efforts and the necessity of translating such efforts into the expressed civic mission of an anchor institution is at best difficult to locate in an explicit format; at worst, it is nonexistent. Frequently found is the problematic tendency to conflate the descriptions of the two, and was revealed as a challenge for Greatland residents who seek to understand the intention of Fourdlet University's progression into the neighborhood. From this challenge emerged the themes of this study: Underwhelmed by the Performance, Disrespecting the Community, and Invest in the Children of the community. The impression that the university has made within the context of engaging the community as its partner, has not engendered strong positive sentiments. Residents have expressed deep concern with the displacing effect of the increased expansion of the university through actions and attitudes that they view as disrespectful, particularly when the actions instigated by the university do little to strengthen the stability of the community. Finally, among the participants there was consensus that the university should more aggressively cultivate relationships with the young people of Greatland with the specific intent to admit and graduate them from the institution. Implications of these findings suggest an emerging understanding of the need for anchor institutions to become more instrumental in policy reform and to deliberately and strategically use their economic power to address educational, income, and wealth inequality based upon the shift in dialogue toward devising anchor missions and more clearly articulated civic missions. Historical precedence exists of residents achieving success in creating and maintaining wealth within the community, thus the enactment of initiatives such as Community Benefits Agreements, wherein the community voice would be more prominent in neighborhood planning efforts, would be well suited to assist the community in re-establishing self-sufficiency. Implications are that residents will continue to assume agency by relying upon their collective knowledge to push back against development that progresses as a result of university expansion, however, the findings of this study reveal that the implications of race and racism on the issue of institutional expansion is a foundational issue that must be addressed. A symbiotic relationship is a defining feature of an anchor institution and its surrounding community. However, the persistent racism that participants articulated experiencing as a result of university expansion would potentially render such a relationship difficult to achieve in the absence of concerted efforts to elucidate for the community how it will benefit from the university's presence.Ed.D., Educational Leadership and Management -- Drexel University, 201