Neil Smith’s article on gentrification demonizes capitalism and gentrifiers without giving them a fair shake or even a voice. Instead of letting the actual people or their advocates speak for themselves, Smith builds straw men and pretends like it is the same.
“The poor and working class are all too easily defined as “uncivil,” on the wrong side of a heroic dividing line, as savages and communists. The substance and consequence of the new frontier imagery is to tame the wild city, to socialize a wholly new and therefore challenging set of processes into safe ideological focus. As such, the frontier ideology justifies monstrous incivility in the heart of the city.”[1] Clearly these are major claims, but if you hope that Smith will ever back them up, you will be disappointed. What he tries to pass off as arguments are nothing more than assertions. He does not present cases where people spoke this way or interviews with people who expressed this idea. All he does is set up a straw man that he easily labels as a racist.
But gentrification is not inherently racist. No more than my personal choice to move from one place to another. Let us grant for a moment that he is right, that people who gentrify communities use lots of frontier metaphors. It still is not inherently racist. The frontier is the frontier not because there are people there who are different, but because it is dangerous out there. Crime rates in New York were astronomical, often more than double what they are today. To say that it is only racism that makes rough parts of town similar to a frontier community is to deny that there are differences between neighborhoods other than race.
Smith is not just dissatisfied with capitalism in the US however. He is opposed to the use of capital abroad as well. “Immigrants come to the city from every country where US capital has opened markets, disrupted local economies, extracted resources, removed people from the land, or sent the marines as a ‘peace-keeping force.'” [2] Smith lets his curtain fall too far here. He admits that he is less interested in arguing his point than he is in attacking the capitalist system. With one breath he decries capitalism for going into neighborhoods and improving them, and with the next he blames capitalism for neighborhoods for getting bad in the first place. He does not bother to argue this second point either. He references articles, but never gives evidence or reasoning behind his claims.
It is also worth noting that he is just wrong. The foreign born population in the US has continued to rise since this article came out in 1996, but the “Third-Worlding”[3] he refers to has not taken place. Crime rates across the country are down not up, and this is in spite of a massive economic meltdown since the Great Depression. Repressive police action still exists but no clearing people out of neighborhoods. His causal story does not hold water. Even if there is use of frontier rhetoric, it has not had the horrible effects he said it would. Gentrification continues or even accelerates in this country, but race relations have certainly improved since 1996.
[1]Smith “‘Class Struggle on Avenue B’: The Lower East Side as the Wild Wild West” 316.
[2] Smith “‘Class Struggle on Avenue B’: The Lower East Side as the Wild Wild West” 318.
[3]Smith “‘Class Struggle on Avenue B’: The Lower East Side as the Wild Wild West” 318.