Feeling Displaced, Enacting Resistance: Race, Place, and Schooling in the Face of Gentrifying Forces

Abstract

Detroit is a dynamic city with a dynamic history, yet it has come to symbolize both White flight (beginning in the 1940s and accelerating in the late 1960s) and Black flight (beginning in the 1990s and reaching its apex in 2000). While Detroit’s Black population continues to decline, its White population increased by 22% between 2010 and 2015. Along with these shifting demographic trends comes shifting residential and educational landscapes that amplify the racial, economic, and spatial inequalities marking present-day Detroit. Drawing upon the literature of human geography and sociology of education, and utilizing GIS software, we overlay the mapping of demographic realities with the mapping of human stories. As a case study of how a non-profit, public charter school can be a vehicle for resisting gentrification, this paper examines the role of “place” in one school’s navigation of an increasingly gentrified Detroit and its commitment to primarily serving youth of its neighborhood. Using a multimodal and multiscalar approach, we find evidence of endogenous gentrification, intergenerational topophilia, and the school enacting resistance within a dialectic of its market-driven charter school status.