Aversive racism and community-instigated policing: The spatial politics of Nextdoor

Abstract

I bring an understanding of the concept and practice of “aversive racism” to scholarly thinking about community formation. I argue that the exclusionary contours of community are in part a product of racialized in- and outgrouping from which people’s capacities for place-making are judged and localized policing is instigated. In bringing these concepts, formations, and practices together, this paper contributes to how urbanists might continue to think about the role of race in displacement, particularly as it plays out in the context of neighborhood change and gentrification more broadly. In the penultimate section I provide a discussion of the popular Nextdoor app as a means of illustrating a contemporary example of community-instigated policing and platform for what Dána-Ain Davis calls “muted racism.”