Black in Place : The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City

While Washington, D.C., is still often referred to as "Chocolate City," it has undergone significant demographic, political, and economic change in the last decade. In D.C., no place represents this shift better than the H Street corridor. In this book, Brandi Thompson Summers documents D.C.'s shift to a "post-chocolate" cosmopolitan metropolis by charting H Street's economic and racial developments. In doing so, she offers a theoretical framework for understanding how blackness is aestheticized and deployed to organize landscapes and raise capital. Summers focuses on the continuing significance of blackness in a place like the nation's capital, how blackness contributes to our understanding of contemporary urbanization, and how it laid an important foundation for how Black people have been thought to exist in cities. Summers also analyzes how blackness--as a representation of diversity--is marketed to sell a progressive, "cool," and authentic experience of being in and moving through an urban center. Using a mix of participant observation, visual and media analysis, interviews, and archival research, Summers shows how blackness has become a prized and lucrative aesthetic that often excludes D.C.'s Black residents. Cover 1 Contents 8 Preface. Living in and Researching “Chocolate City” 12 Acknowledgments 18 Abbreviations in the Text 24 Introduction. Black Space Matters 26 1. Capital Reinvestment: Riot, Renewal, and the Rise of a Black Ghetto 53 2. Washington’s Atlas District: Inequality, Cultural Vibrancy, and the New Regime of Diversity 86 3. The Changing Face of a Black Space: Cultural Tourism and the Spatialization of Nostalgia 111 4. Consuming Culture: Authenticity, Cuisine, and H Street’s Quality-of-Life Aesthetics 136 5. The Corner: Spatial Aesthetics and Black Bodies in Place 168 Conclusion. A Chocolate City Is No Dream 193 Notes 202 Bibliography 226 Index 246 A 246 B 247 C 248 D 249 E 250 F 250 G 250 H 251 I 252 J 252 K 252 L 252 M 253 N 253 O 254 P 254 Q 254 R 254 S 255 T 256 U 256 V 257 W 257 X 257 Z 257 history,African American & Black "While Washington, D.C. is still often referred to as 'Chocolate City, ' it has undergone significant demographic, political, and architectural change in the last decade. No place represents this shift better than H Street, one of the neighborhoods devastated by the April 1968 riots after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. Over the last decade and a half, the H Street corridor has changed from a historically low-income, African American neighborhood--featuring black-owned businesses that catered to the local residents--to one of the most sought after commercial and residential areas in the nation, replete with art house theaters, fusion restaurants, and rising property values that have pushed out much of the original population. Brandi T. Summers explores this shift from chocolate city to cosmopolitan metropolis, looking at the role of race in urban environments and how the neighborhood's aesthetics--from fashion and language to foodways and black bodies themselves--have been commodified and branded. Through ethnography, interviews, archival research, and media analysis, Summers sheds new light on the relationship between race, space, and capitalism"-- Provided by publisher