Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Opportunity hoarding on H St NE

In preparation for my urban class today, I was looking at Thomas Sugrue's The Origins of the Urban Crisis and saw this quotation that rang true to me here in DC:
Sociologist Charles Tilly describes "opportunity hoarding" as one of the major contributors to historical inequalities -- and the story of American metropolitan areas, like Detroit, is a history of the ways that whites, through the combined advantages of race and residence, were able to hoard political and economic resources -- jobs, public services, education, and other goods -- to their own advantage at the expense of the urban poor. (p. xxxvi)
This made me think of the amazing photos of H St NE by Joseph Young and his commentary about disinvestment, today's forms of white segregation (and opportunity hoarding), displacement, and anti-gentrification protests. His photo essay is worth going through slowly and reading carefully. 

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