Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap by Tanya Maria Golash-Boza. University of California Press, 2023. 311 pages. Paperback. $27.95.
Amazon.com's description:
"Before Gentrification shows how a century of redlining, disinvestment, and the War on Drugs wreaked devastation on Black people and paved the way for gentrification in Washington, DC. Golash-Boza tracks the cycles of state abandonment and punishment that have shaped the city, revealing how policies and policing work to displace and decimate the Black middle class.
Through the stories of those who have lost their homes and livelihoods, she explores how DC's "troubling history makes clear that the choice to use prisons and policing to solve problems faced by Black communities in the twentieth century—instead of investing in schools, community centers, social services, health care, and violence prevention—is what made gentrification possible in the twenty-first. Before Gentrification unveils a pattern of anti-Blackness and racial capitalism in DC that has implications for all US cities."
This book is a personal project: as Golash-Boza states, “I have a personal investment in understanding how and why my neighborhood became plagued by violence, why so many of my childhood friends were murdered, why a generation of Black boys and men was put behind bars, and why so few of my childhood friends can afford to live in the neighborhood where we were raised” (p. 24).
Regarding the book's reception, Golash-Boza posted in her Twitter (X) account: "I just read the first published review of Before Gentrification and it's a good reminder my book is not for everyone. The book clearly generates a different response in different readers - and that's fine. So far, the audience I most wanted to reach has responded positively."
Read the abstract of the book review in the December 2024 Social Forces.
Read the December 2023 Twitter (X) post.
