Gentrification specifically in America occurs when white investors and business people (dominant society) from outside of a oppressed and depressed minority community financially gain from the physical displacement of, and financial disenfranchisement of these oppressed and depressed minorities communities.
How does this occur? Gentrification does so by inflating the property values in these oppressed and depressed minority communities. Gentrification does so by investing in new predominately white owned or controlled businesses; while simultaneously financially forcing out and buying out the local minority businesses and property owners. Gentrification then forces out the remaining local minority renters & owners via increased rent and property taxs. All of which forces the minorities that once populated the gentrified community into sprawling out into other depressed and oppressed communities. Eventually dominant society begins to again look outwards and beyond the communitiy they've just gentrified. Then once again the process of gentrification begins anew, like bacteria spreading in a petri dish.
This phenomenon of gentrification is only part of what has occurred in for instance Bed-Sty Brooklyn over the last decade.
I address how these social justice, economic, and environmental issues intersect in the final notes of the latest edition of my book of poetry entitled JIKU. Here is a link to a free copy of the book.
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