Accessing racial privilege through property: Geographies of racial capitalism

Abstract

This paper examines racial capitalism through the lens of housing and urban development. We compare two disparate places Kabul, Afghanistan and Boulder, Colorado in order to illustrate the commonalities of property rights regimes, and the (ill)logics of economic development that reinforce racial-economic privilege. By exploring housing specifically, this paper explicates the ways in which availability, affordability, and desirability are intertwined with racialized conceptualizations of space. Both Kabul and Boulder are dominated by legacies and contemporary practices of white privilege and economic inequality based on neoliberal racial capitalism. Housing in Kabul has been a key part of international and national economic development programs, while the influx of international funds and workers included a form of gentrification that significantly marginalized local-Afghans from several spaces in the capital city. In Boulder, property values have increased exponentially in recent decades due to the growth of information technology jobs and influx of wealth. The racial and economic marginalization of nonwhite and low-income persons in Boulder remains consistent within housing and work sectors. The racialization of Afghans by international development workers in Kabul, and the racialization of poverty and marginalization of nonwhite minorities in Boulder explicate the tensions and conflicts between property rights regimes and the “right” to be housed. This paper examines the ways in which discursive representations of wealth and poverty become geopolitical and geo-economic tools of racialized socioeconomic ostracism. Analyzing these disparate places through the lens of racial capitalism explicates the common forms of reductionism used to reinforce market privilege over the lives and livelihoods of bodies racialized as “other”. While the specific histories of domination differ by location, the effects of racial capitalism are visible in each, particularly through relations of private property.