Aversive racism, gentrification, and graffiti studies

Abstract

Bloch and Meyer's article argues that critical gentrification studies need to stop being beholden to mapping and counting of dislocated bodies, focusing mostly on “measuring the invisible,” and instead should understand displacement as an ongoing phenomenon, one that not only removes bodies from an environment, but is materially felt within spaces through technologies of racial discrimination, exclusion, and delinquency. This commentary relates the authors' ideas to graffiti studies and specifically argues how this subfield is part of gentrification studies. At its best, graffiti studies explore how graffiti and street art flow through the veins of the body of a city where racial capitalism is its beating heart. To understand displacement's affect, one can start by reading the walls of a city. The commentary also makes brief comments about gentrification in the FX series The Bear and the current shocking state of public education in Florida.