Gentrifier

black schools in integrated neighborhoods so that if black families wanted their children to go to school they had to move to the Eastside neighborhood, where the city intended to segregate and concentrate African Americans. In another example of what may be a new argument to some readers, Rothstein argues that the Internal Revenue Service sanctioned the segregationist activities of churches and universities that promoted racially restrictive covenants through the protection of their taxexempt status. In Los Angeles, a pastor of a church in the city’s Wilshire District sued to remove a black family who had moved to the neighborhood in ‘‘violation’’ of the neighborhood’s restrictive covenant. The pastor lost the lawsuit and was strongly reprimanded for his racism in the court’s ruling. ‘‘Yet,’’ Rothstein writes, ‘‘the IRS took no notice; Reverend Wright’s activities didn’t threaten his church’s tax subsidy’’ (p. 104). As in the second example, some of Rothstein’s cases are acts of omission rather than commission: the failure of police departments to protect black citizens from house bombings when they moved into white neighborhoods; the failure of the Fair Employment Practices Committee to prosecute discriminatory employers contracted by the government during the Second World War; the failure of bank regulators to act on early evidence that blacks were disproportionately being targeted for subprime loans. These are moments when government agencies ‘‘defaulted on their constitutional obligations’’ (p. 113), which Rothstein sees as equally contributing to de jure segregation. The Color of Law foregrounds the argument that racial segregation violates core constitutional principles expressed, primarily, in the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and that is why it must be dismantled. But what is missing from the book is any troubling of racial integration as a social and political strategy. Racial segregation is foremost a tactic that allows for the uneven and unequal distribution of resources across space (e.g., good schools, parks, health care facilities, grocery stores, etc.), as well as the unfair siting of noxious facilities, and Rothstein gives examples of both of these outcomes. Yet he does not interrogate the possibility of equalizing resources and opportunities as a route to integration (or justice) as opposed to integration as a route to equalizing resources. Nor does he give accounts of debates within black communities about the desirability or expediency of racial integration as a political strategy. In other words, since sociologists in this field have, for the most part, not ‘‘forgotten’’ the history that Rothstein chronicles, and since we continue to study present-day examples of state discrimination, some readers may be looking for a more critical interrogation: perhaps new theorizing or empirical evidence about the use of law to maintain racial inequality, or explanations for why the law has often proven ineffectual for remedying discrimination, or ways that law and policy might proactively be used to equalize resources. To be fair, however, critiquing a book for what it does not include is all there is to do when what the book does include is so unimpeachably rigorous and persuasive. Rothstein also makes a compelling case for assigning this book in your classes. He was motivated to write The Color of Law after reading several Supreme Court opinions that overlooked or denied the facts of the government’s role in producing racial segregation and that employed the fallacious distinction between de facto and de jure segregation. We cannot know if the justices ‘‘forgot’’ the history or never knew it. But insofar as we are all teaching future voters, lawyers, and justices, Rothstein concludes with a call to action: ‘‘Whether a future Court is better educated is entirely up to us’’ (p. 239).

by neighborhood. In the 1920s, Austin closed black schools in integrated neighborhoods so that if black families wanted their children to go to school they had to move to the Eastside neighborhood, where the city intended to segregate and concentrate African Americans.
In another example of what may be a new argument to some readers, Rothstein argues that the Internal Revenue Service sanctioned the segregationist activities of churches and universities that promoted racially restrictive covenants through the protection of their taxexempt status. In Los Angeles, a pastor of a church in the city's Wilshire District sued to remove a black family who had moved to the neighborhood in ''violation'' of the neighborhood's restrictive covenant. The pastor lost the lawsuit and was strongly reprimanded for his racism in the court's ruling. ''Yet,'' Rothstein writes, ''the IRS took no notice; Reverend Wright's activities didn't threaten his church's tax subsidy'' (p. 104).
As in the second example, some of Rothstein's cases are acts of omission rather than commission: the failure of police departments to protect black citizens from house bombings when they moved into white neighborhoods; the failure of the Fair Employment Practices Committee to prosecute discriminatory employers contracted by the government during the Second World War; the failure of bank regulators to act on early evidence that blacks were disproportionately being targeted for subprime loans. These are moments when government agencies ''defaulted on their constitutional obligations'' (p. 113), which Rothstein sees as equally contributing to de jure segregation.
The Color of Law foregrounds the argument that racial segregation violates core constitutional principles expressed, primarily, in the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and that is why it must be dismantled. But what is missing from the book is any troubling of racial integration as a social and political strategy. Racial segregation is foremost a tactic that allows for the uneven and unequal distribution of resources across space (e.g., good schools, parks, health care facilities, grocery stores, etc.), as well as the unfair siting of noxious facilities, and Rothstein gives examples of both of these outcomes. Yet he does not interrogate the possibility of equalizing resources and opportunities as a route to integration (or justice) as opposed to integration as a route to equalizing resources.
Nor does he give accounts of debates within black communities about the desirability or expediency of racial integration as a political strategy. In other words, since sociologists in this field have, for the most part, not ''forgotten'' the history that Rothstein chronicles, and since we continue to study present-day examples of state discrimination, some readers may be looking for a more critical interrogation: perhaps new theorizing or empirical evidence about the use of law to maintain racial inequality, or explanations for why the law has often proven ineffectual for remedying discrimination, or ways that law and policy might proactively be used to equalize resources.
To be fair, however, critiquing a book for what it does not include is all there is to do when what the book does include is so unimpeachably rigorous and persuasive. Rothstein also makes a compelling case for assigning this book in your classes. He was motivated to write The Color of Law after reading several Supreme Court opinions that overlooked or denied the facts of the government's role in producing racial segregation and that employed the fallacious distinction between de facto and de jure segregation. We cannot know if the justices ''forgot'' the history or never knew it. But insofar as we are all teaching future voters, lawyers, and justices, Rothstein concludes with a call to action: ''Whether a future Court is better educated is entirely up to us'' (p. 239). Half a century after its introduction, urban sociologists continue to struggle with the conceptually ambiguous yet politically loaded term ''gentrification.'' Processes of capital Reviews 625 reinvestment, demographic turnover, and cultural upscaling in cities are often euphemistically referred to as ''revitalization'' or ''economic development'' and celebrated by many civic leaders, scholars, and activists working to counteract decades-long patterns of disinvestment in the nation's urban centers. But few will defend or celebrate ''gentrification,'' which in its common manifestations is simply another word for the same set of phenomena. If ''gentrification'' often provokes a negative reaction, then certainly the same can be said of the ''gentrifier,'' the person who, the term implies, does the gentrifying. The term ''gentrifier'' carries such a negative reputation in popular discourse and among anti-gentrification activists that individuals labeled ''gentrifiers'' can be subjected to harsh recrimination and blame, and they may experience guilt, regret, or self-doubt over their own residential choices and the potential effects those choices have on their neighbors and neighborhoods.

Gentrifier, by
Gentrifier addresses, probes, and challenges that guilt, primarily by examining it from the first-person perspectives of the three authors, John Joe Schlichtman, Jason Patch, and Marc Lamont Hill, all of whom acknowledge their own identities as former and current gentrifiers within neighborhoods in Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Providence, and San Diego. Armed with a profound sociological and historical understanding of the contentious process of gentrification, Schlichtman, Patch, and Hill present an insightful and remarkably honest autoethnography that is likely to resonate with progressive readers who struggle to reconcile their own criticisms of the urban social and economic changes they witness around them with their own participation and complicity in the lifestyle and consumption patterns that often facilitate those very same changes.
Beyond the individual experiences of the authors themselves, much of Gentrifier is dedicated to developing portraits of various ideal types of ''gentrifiers.'' This begins in the book's second chapter, where the authors explain how the motivations of gentrifiers shift as they move through the life course and enter a neighborhood at different moments in that neighborhood's transition.
Here, the authors create and describe characters like ''the early gentrifier,'' ''the late gentrifier,'' and ''the gentrifier with kids.'' In these character studies, the authors discuss how gentrifiers at varying stages of life take into consideration seven elements of a community-''monetary,'' ''aesthetic,'' and ''authentic,'' to name a few-when making residential decisions. Collectively, these seven elements make up what the authors refer to as an ''analytical multi-tool,'' which they use to evaluate the actions and impacts of gentrifiers.
In Chapter Four, the authors recategorize gentrifiers according to a different rubric, describing them as ''conquerors,'' ''colonizers,'' ''consumers,'' ''competitors,'' ''capitalists,'' or ''curators,'' and they go on to create additional character studies of these various ideal types. Taken together, these multiple typologies, all of which engage the array of considerations contained within the ''multi-tool,'' are difficult to keep straight, but that confusion itself serves as a useful illustration of how inchoate and imprecise the term ''gentrifier'' continues to be, despite its common use as one of the most broadly applied pejoratives in the contemporary city.
Many of Gentrifier's strongest contributions can be found in the frank self-criticism and moral wayfinding that the authors engage in, sometimes alone and sometimes in the company of their spouses, colleagues, and neighbors. The authors, their families, and their peers frequently question their own choices. While seeking out the location, price point, and lifestyle amenities they prefer, these gentrifiers face severe self-doubt, fearing their decisions may contribute to the ultimate demographic displacement and cultural transitions that epitomize gentrification in its most despised forms. They constantly strive to make ''responsible, ethical choices,'' while understanding that ''a middle-class housing choice is always fraught with complexity'' (p. 75).
For example, in a particularly poignant section that many readers will identify with, Schlichtman and his wife, Monique, face the dilemma of living in a gentrifying section of Chicago while dealing with the uncertainties of finding desirable schooling options for their children within an urban school district marked by uneven educational quality. ''What, exactly, are the values we are clinging to by insisting that we live in the city?'' Monique asks, evoking a moral theme that courses through much of the book (p. 84).
Gentrifier is infused with concerns over the morality and ethics of middle-class housing and lifestyle choices. This focus is useful insofar as it truly does reflect how gentrification is often talked about by progressive middle-class urbanites and critical observers of contemporary cities, but it leads to a rather one-sided portrayal of the causes and manifestations of gentrification that is likely to irk those who adopt a more structuralist approach to the study of urban social and economic change. Perhaps the longestrunning and most acrimonious argument in urban studies over the past 40 years has pitted those who prioritize structural and macroeconomic explanations of gentrification against those who prioritize cultural and microeconomic explanations. The authors correctly acknowledge early in the book that this debate has worn out its welcome and should be transcended, yet they proceed from there to offer a mostly monolithic view of gentrification that locates almost all agency-as the title makes clear-in the individual gentrifier. Despite a brief interlude in Chapter Three where they examine the process from a more macro-level perspective, the authors remain committed to a consumption-driven model of gentrification, at the center of which stands the prototypical gentrifier.
This view of the gentrifier as the prime agentic force driving neighborhood change underlies the recriminations-directed both inward and outward-that pervade the text. Gentrifiers in this book are constantly striving to justify their choices, to blend in, to affect an air of authenticity, or to apologize for the deleterious impact they believe they have on their own neighborhoods. In the final chapter, the authors rightly challenge the tendency to blame the gentrifier; in fact, much of their most pointed rhetoric is reserved for the critical social scientists who are presumably responsible for gentrifiers' bad reputation. The authors are right that it is not reasonable to hold individual gentrifiers (primarily) responsible for the problematic consequences that often result from urban upscaling, yet it is precisely the type of gentrifier-focused view promoted by Gentrifier that facilitates such a moralistic micro-level diagnosis of the problems of gentrification.
Gentrifier concludes with an examination of potential policy strategies that might alleviate the problems that gentrification can bring about. Schlichtman, Patch, and Hill astutely boil down the fundamental urban dilemma that makes gentrification such a difficult phenomenon to contain: ''There are middle-class people who want to live in cities . . . and cities want and need a broad, stable tax base'' (p. 186). Rejecting as impracticable or insufficient what they refer to as ''neoliberal'' and ''ameliorative'' approaches to remediating gentrification's negative externalities, the authors instead come out in favor of a series of ''transformative visions,'' which include deemphasizing market logic in the provision of social goods, promoting property tax ''circuit breaker'' policies to rein in rapidly rising costs for moderate-income homeowners, adopting inclusionary zoning ordinances, and embracing regional metropolitan governance. These are all good suggestions for structural reform, and cities facing runaway gentrification would be smart to follow them. However, they seem a bit out of place in a book that puts so much emphasis on the individual gentrifier as the economic, political, and moral force behind gentrification.
In Gentrifier, Schlichtman, Patch, and Hill have produced a very personal and selfreflective account of urban change that should demonstrate to all urban scholarseven the most macro-oriented among usthat, as participants in contemporary urban life, we all have skin in the game. Arguments about the benefits and drawbacks of gentrification-held in university seminars, city council meetings, and street protests alike-will not fade anytime soon, and Gentrifier is highly recommended for anyone who wants to participate, in a self-aware and reflexive manner, in those arguments.