Operatively White?: Exploring the Significance of Race and Class Through the Paradox of Black Middle-Classness

The black–white paradigm has been the crucial paradigm in racial geography of land use, housing and development. Yet it is worthwhile to consider that, in this context, distinctions based on race are accompanied by a powerful, racialized discourse of middle class versus poor. The black–white paradigm in exclusionary zoning, for example, involves the wealthy or middle-class white person (we need not even use the term white) protesting against or displacing the poor black person. (we also need not even use the term black). Another example of the racialized discourse of middle class versus poor is in the urban-gentrification context. The term gentrification suggests wealthier Whites displacing poor Blacks. Little attention has been paid to the significance of the increasing numbers of Blacks stepping into middle-class roles formerly held almost exclusively by Whites. Taking both race and class into account seems to demand exploration of the significance of Blackness and affluence within an existing societal structure that has evolved from white supremacy to a seemingly less-virulent, or more-benign, white norm - one in which normalcy, wealth, advantage, and presumptions of innocence are still implicitly predicated on Whiteness and in which an economic structure of white privilege and black disadvantage is inscribed into the geography of the physical landscape. The reality that middle class homeowners, whether Black or White, seek to avoid the disadvantages of poverty presents a divide in black racial solidarity based on class. However, because of structural disadvantage in racially segregated neighborhoods, the black middle class are not as successful at getting away nor in protecting their turf as white middle class are. In effect this is a racial disadvantage but certainly a paradoxical one. It involves a disadvantage in escaping the poor and disadvantage in exercising privilege at the expense of the poor. Using the example of the black middle class, it is possible to see that the vestigial oppression of slavery and the domination of white supremacy have morphed but have not been eliminated. Instead, those institutions have been disaggregated into discrete, wealth-based components of Blackness and Whiteness. Thus, Blacks with money are privileged in certain limited circumstances to be operatively white. Through their wallets and educational or professional attainments they gain access to some of the privileges, goods, and services formerly reserved exclusively for Whites. Thus, this article considers challenges and opportunities of Blackness and middle-classness in its twenty-first century context of being operatively white. Specifically, how should neighborhood land use conflicts be regarded if poor Blacks are disproportionately, negatively affected in relation to affluent Blacks? That racialized impact should not be dismissed as being purely about class just because the affluent are also black. Problems of class in the United States are racialized; they are never separate from the racial structures of subordination that still operate here. Accordingly, problems currently cognizable as being merely about class are necessarily still cognizable as problems of race. In order to enrich our ability to give race and class the sophisticated and probing account that their complex interaction calls for, this paper takes the concept of racialized class to its logical end and explores the ways in which racial identity and racial social position are affected by class. Because race and class are structurally inscribed into the landscape, racial justice is considered to require economic liberation. Economic liberation comes, however, at the expense of the black poor. Therefore, there cannot be racial justice without economic justice

Putting the Public Back into Public-Private Partnerships for Economic Development

Public-Private Partnerships are viewed quite positively. In the context of working with local government for economic development, the interests and concerns of the private appear to dominate the development decision-making. This Essay explores eminent domain decisions and community benefits agreements for standards for measuring the efficacy of these partnerships. It suggests ways in which we can begin to think about public accountability and public benefits to be derived from these partnerships

The New Inner-City: Class Transformation, Concentrated Affluence and the Obligations of the Police Power

This article examines the role of local government in the process of urban spatial restructuring (gentrification). In light of the disparate needs and competing interests of different racial and socioeconomic groups seeking a place in the city, there are limits to local government\u27s ability to facilitate redevelopment projects that deliberately aim to accomplish class transformation and exclusively reconfigure the inner city for the affluent. These limits exist by virtue of implied obligations of the police power

Redevelopment and the Four Dimensions of Class in Land Use

This essay begins with the proposition that the battle over the exercise of eminent domain as a question of the extent to which we accept local economic development as a proper exercise of local governmental authority. In light of the reality that economic development seeks to accomplish redevelopment to meet the social needs and consumption tastes of the affluent, the issue of local governments\u27 autonomy to engage in redevelopment for economic development purposes is suffused with socioeconomic class struggles over land use. Therefore, the changes wrought by redevelopment challenge us to think and talk about class in ways for which we are inadequately prepared. The class issue is possibly most difficult to acknowledge in the redevelopment context because class permeates the existing system of property ownership and land regulation. As a first step in addressing the inherent conflicts surrounding class in the issue of redevelopment, this essay delineates a typology of four dimensions of class as it affects, interrelates, and operates with land use law and argues that the dimensions illustrate points of tension that must be considered and resolved in formulating redevelopment practices

Race, Space and Place: The Internal Critique of the Empowerment Zones Program

This Article examines the extent to which the Empowerment Zones Program is properly viewed as a neutral, rational, and beneficial program for poor, inner-city communities and their residents by exploring the limits and potential of its chief mechanism, economic development, as a tool to achieve social justice for the inner cities. This Article grounds its exploration within the contested terrain of the city, not simply as a legal or juridical concept, but in terms of its reality as a lived place on the eve of the 21st century

The Properties of Integration: Mixed-Income Housing as Discrimination Management

Mixed-income housing is an increasingly popular approach to providing affordable housing. The technique largely went unnoticed until developers of mixed-income housing constructed buildings containing separate entrances for rich and poor residents. The ensuing “poor door” controversy illustrated that mixed-income housing, as both a method of affordable housing production and an integration strategy, is in unacknowledged tension with itself. This Article argues that, mixedincome housing is implemented as a surreptitious form of racial and economic integration that accommodates and replicates prevailing race and class assumptions detrimental to the needs and interests of low to moderate-income individuals in need of housing. The mixed-income housing strategy, at its heart, serves as a form of discrimination management—a way to work around the race and class discriminatory impulses of residents within a development and within a particular jurisdiction. The paper recommends ways in which to think more critically about this important question of community design in ways that account more honestly for the limits and possibilities of how we may choose to use affordable housing for race and class integration

The Properties of Instability: Markets, Predation, Racialized Geography, and Property Law

A central, symbolic image supporting property ownership is the image of stability. This symbol motivates most because it allows for settled expectations, promotes investment, and fulfills a psychological need for predictability. Despite the symbolic image, property is home to principles that promote instability, albeit a stable instability. This Article considers an overlooked but fundamental issue: the recurring instability experienced by minority property owners in ownership of their homes. This is not an instability one might attribute solely to insufficient financial resources to retain ownership, but instead reflects an ongoing pattern, exemplified throughout the twentieth century, of purposeful involuntary divestment of land owned by members of racial minorities, particularly Black Americans. The subprime mortgage crisis, the most current manifestation of this involuntary land loss, can be attributed to property doctrine’s policy embrace of markets and importation of contract principles such as the “freedom of contract.” This embrace of markets and contracts ignores the reality that real estate markets are racially segregated, and due to the nature of those disparate markets, easily exploitable. The current racially concentrated subprime mortgage crisis has torn the stable property image apart by revealing longstanding truths: that fraud, exploitation, and desperation are not anomalous. These truths present a disquieting reality: that the persistent and enduring experience for minorities is instability. They also present an overlooked insight that there is a dark side of property ownership: that fraud, exploitation, and desperation are the bad that enables the good of property markets. Because this “bad” is both ubiquitous and geographically situated, it suggests that stability for some within the system of property ownership is provided at the expense of instability for others. This Article argues that we should begin to pay attention to an under-theorized stick in the bundle of property rights: “the right to keep.

Empowerment Zones: Urban Revitalization Through Collaborative Enterprise

The federal government recently designated six empowerment zones in selected urban areas as an urban revitalization demonstration program. The program is derived from the enterprise zone strategy promoted by former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp that sought to address urban poverty by encouraging business growth through deregulation and tax incentives. The Clinton administration modified the original concept and now refers to the target areas as empowerment zones. As the definitions of enterprise and empower indicate, renaming the zones reflects a significant shift in emphasis-from a focus on stimulating business enterprise through reducing regulation to one in which regulation is used to enable local governments and communities to devise and implement their own collaborative approaches to human, economic, and community development. This article reviews the process by which enterprise zones became empowerment zones and the program benefits available to urban empowerment zones. I also discuss the innovative aspects of the program\u27s recent implementation and its implications for significant community participation in planning and development

The Properties of Instability: Markets, Predation, Racialized Geography, and Property Law

A central, symbolic image supporting property ownership is the image of stability. This symbol motivates most because it allows for settled expectations, promotes investment, and fulfills a psychological need for predictability. Despite the symbolic image, property is home to principles that promote instability, albeit a stable instability. This Article considers an overlooked but fundamental issue: the recurring instability experienced by minority property owners in ownership of their homes. This is not an instability one might attribute solely to insufficient financial resources to retain ownership, but instead reflects an ongoing pattern, exemplified throughout the twentieth century, of purposeful involuntary divestment of land owned by members of racial minorities, particularly Black Americans. The subprime mortgage crisis, the most current manifestation of this involuntary land loss, can be attributed to property doctrine’s policy embrace of markets and importation of contract principles such as the “freedom of contract.” This embrace of markets and contracts ignores the reality that real estate markets are racially segregated, and due to the nature of those disparate markets, easily exploitable. The current racially concentrated subprime mortgage crisis has torn the stable property image apart by revealing longstanding truths: that fraud, exploitation, and desperation are not anomalous. These truths present a disquieting reality: that the persistent and enduring experience for minorities is instability. They also present an overlooked insight that there is a dark side of property ownership: that fraud, exploitation, and desperation are the bad that enables the good of property markets. Because this “bad” is both ubiquitous and geographically situated, it suggests that stability for some within the system of property ownership is provided at the expense of instability for others. This Article argues that we should begin to pay attention to an under-theorized stick in the bundle of property rights: “the right to keep.