Unseeing Racism: Naming Whiteness at the Intersections of Regimes of Data and Participation

Abstract

Pairing data-driven and participatory processes is an alluring approach for contentious urban issues. However, within these processes, the ongoing role of whiteness – an unnamed norm that privileges White people – is understudied and undertheorized. I examine how data and participation were positioned within conversations of gentrification in Lexington, KY. Beyond considering who participates, I analyse how the expectations and burdens of engagement associated with these processes were racialized. I argue that surfacing and problematizing racialized expectations of engagement disrupts how whiteness produces a strategic recognizing and disavowing – an unseeing – of racial oppression and thus diagnoses the whiteness of urban planning.