Conclusion

The concluding chapter revisits a discussion about how racism and other forms of inequality that take place on H Street, and in D.C. generally, are not overt, but subtle, where euphemisms like “creativity,” “diversity,” and “cultural vibrancy” are used to disinvite. The chapter discusses the spatial and economic impact of gentrification-induced displacement on the relocation of Black Washingtonians to its neighboring suburban regions. The chapter concludes with a comparative look at Oakland, CA as another post-chocolate city, and the potential for Black geographic theory to provide a rubric for envisioning an alternative future.

Introduction

The introductory chapter introduces readers to black aesthetic emplacement, the book’s central theoretical claim about the value and representation of blackness in the contemporary urban landscape. The chapter further highlights a theoretical shift in African American, sociological, geographical, and visual studies of how blackness is thought and deployed—where blackness does not always signal abjection—to situate how blackness has contributed to the redevelopment of the H Street NE corridor. The remaining space of the chapter introduces additional key terms: gentrification, authenticity, neoliberalism, and diversity and situate the book within scholarly debates in geography, sociology and urban studies literature.

The Changing Face of a Black Space

This chapter offers an analysis of a neighborhood historical survey, a cultural tourism brochure, and a preservation-based community revitalization program on H Street to show how the processes of making spaces authentic take place through the production of official (state-and corporate-sanctioned) narratives about the area, which involves a devaluing of H Street’s undesirable Black history and a rebranding and revaluation of H Street as historically diverse—only momentarily Black. The revaluation of the built environment not only requires investment, it also entails a discursive shift in how the space is seen. Part of that work involves revising the narrative. These documents and programs, generated to offer present-day narratives of the past, expose the power of the state and elite actors to shape both the perception and development of the space. Together they highlight the many conditions and strategies that undergird the transformation of urban space, and the ways that racialization and capital structure these changes.

The Corner

This chapter discusses the excess of blackness and how this excess works alongside diversity. Specifically, it asks, how does a Black corner interact with a diverse corridor in ways that aesthetically impact the transformation of space? This chapter focuses on the center of the corridor as an important site for the spatial corralling of blackness in a specific location. The chapter explores the spatial production of blackness through design, architecture, planning, and other means, and how blackness concurrently produces space. This chapter also highlights how blackness is spatialized on H Street, thereby imagining the role of geography in the production of blackness and the concurrent structuring of space through the aesthetic emplacement blackness. The intersection of Eighth and H Streets, NE, or “the Corner,” metaphorically speaks to the transition of the H Street corridor and how Black people move within and through the space and is an illustration of how blackness has been mobilized into an aesthetic.

Consuming Culture

This chapter considers the significance of “authenticity” and “quality-of-life” aesthetics as they relate to city life. Authenticity has become a means by which people attach meaning to things and experiences rather than people—hence the proliferation of boutiques, craft breweries, and cafés alongside the practice of branding neighborhoods in terms of distinctive cultural identities. The policing of “quality-of-life” relates to the notion that white residents are more interested in improvements to lifestyle (bike lanes, farmer’s markets) and Black residents want equitable social and economic opportunities. While displacement, through a loss of access, is certainly taking place on H Street, this chapter argues that it is this exact tension between the polar class/race/lifestyles that spurs attraction to the area. At the same time, one can be stern or exhibit anger over the changes (as aesthetic, not critique), as long as the fundamental power relations of society, founded on broad appeal to white buyers, remain intact. Therefore, blackness in the marketplace must be that which sells, and that which can be easily transacted by proprietors of capital.

Capital Reinvestment

This chapter focuses on the uprisings following the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., and their aftermath of urban renewal and commercial redevelopment. This chapter also maps changes to the built environment on H Street onto changes in how blackness and capital intersected. The chapter charts the unique history of the H Street NE corridor to illustrate the ways in which the meaning of blackness shifted over time as well as the development and designation of H Street as a Black space. The chapter explains how the devaluation of H Street, as a Black space, and the strategic deployment of visual rhetoric depicting the space as a “blighted,” “slum,” “ghetto” prepared the space for its eventual re-valuation and re-elevation for neoliberal times. Ultimately, this first chapter tracks the long march of blackness to become diversity and considers the ways in which blackness became synonymous with the urban ghetto.

Washington’s Atlas District

This chapter highlights the relationship between race, diversity, belonging, and urban development in the historical devaluation of H Street as a Black space, and its revaluation as an emerging multicultural neighborhood. In light of H Street’s violent past, the narrative describing its history reinvents itself in order to write the violent times away and repurpose the neighborhood for a new market and a new time. The chapter also focuses on local programs with intended race-neutral policies that have racial consequences. The chapter further explores how “diversity” is institutionalized as a valuable social commodity to market and constitutes the political economy of the corridor. In other words, the aestheticization of blackness and space contribute to the structuring of H Street as both universal and exclusive. Corporate brands, as well as local public/private partnership organizations, strategically incorporated “diversity” as part of their official language to justify their introduction to the space – signaling affective cohesion with the neighborhood.