For long-time residents of Washington, DC's Shaw/U Street, the
neighborhood has become almost unrecognizable in recent years. Where
the city's most infamous open-air drug market once stood, a farmers'
market now sells grass-fed beef and homemade duck egg ravioli. On the
corner where AM.PM carryout used to dish out soul food, a new
establishment markets its $28 foie gras burger. Shaw is experiencing
a dramatic transformation, from "ghetto" to "gilded
ghetto," where white newcomers are rehabbing homes, developing
dog parks, and paving the way for a third wave coffee shop on nearly
every block.
Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City is an
in-depth ethnography of this gilded ghetto. Derek S. Hyra captures
here a quickly gentrifying space in which long-time black residents
are joined, and variously displaced, by an influx of young, white,
relatively wealthy, and/or gay professionals who, in part as a result
of global economic forces and the recent development of central
business districts, have returned to the cities earlier generations
fled decades ago. As a result, America is witnessing the emergence of
what Hyra calls "cappuccino cities." A cappuccino has
essentially the same ingredients as a cup of coffee with milk, but is
considered upscale, and is double the price. In Hyra's cappuccino
city, the black inner-city neighborhood undergoes enormous
transformations and becomes racially "lighter" and more
expensive by the year.
