Us Versus Them : Race, Crime, and Gentrification in Chicago Neighborhoods

Crime and gentrification represent hot button issues in racially diverse neighborhoods. Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork, this book provides a detailed analysis of community conflict in Rogers Park and Uptown, two Chicago neighborhoods. The book shows how competing views about neighborhood change divided residents into two political camps, which prioritized either the fight against crime or the fight against gentrification. This division frequently materialized as a type of racial conflict, because antigentrification activists and their allies charged that grassroots anticrime initiatives were, in truth, barely covert racist practices that were meant to foster racial displacement and marginalization. Chapter by chapter, the book traces these conflicts in different areas of community life. It examines the strategies of public safety work that residents used to fight crime and how their efforts contributed to gentrification; how antigentrification activists resisted criminalization and gentrification; how politicians sought to actively use or downplay community divisions in their electoral campaigns; and how residents of different racial and ethnic backgrounds positioned themselves in these battles. "Crime and gentrification represent hot button issues in racially-diverse neighborhoods. Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork, Us Versus Them provides a detailed analysis of community conflict in Rogers Park and Uptown, two Chicago neighborhoods. The book shows how competing views about neighborhood change divided residents into two political camps, which prioritized either the fight against crime or the fight against gentrification. This division frequently materialized as a type of racial conflict, because anti-gentrification activists and their allies charged that grassroots anti-crime initiatives were, in truth, barely covert racist practices that meant to foster racial displacement and marginalization. Chapter by chapter, the book traces these conflicts in different areas of community life. It examines the strategies of public safety work that residents used to fight crime and how their efforts contributed to gentrification; how anti-gentrification activists resisted criminalization and gentrification; how politicians sought to actively use or downplay community divisions in their electoral campaigns; and how residents of different racial and ethnic backgrounds positioned themselves in these battles"-- Provided by publisher Crime and gentrification are hot button issues that easily polarize racially diverse neighborhoods. How do residents, activists, and politicians navigate the thorny politics of race as they fight crime or resist gentrification? And do conflicts over competing visions of neighborhood change necessarily divide activists into racially homogeneous camps, or can they produce more complex alliances and divisions? In Us versus Them, Jan Doering answers these questions through an in-depth study of two Chicago neighborhoods. Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork, Doering examines how activists and community leaders clashed and collaborated as they launched new initiatives, built coalitions, appeased critics, and discredited opponents. At the heart of these political maneuvers, he uncovers a ceaseless battle over racial meanings that unfolded as residents strove to make local initiatives and urban change appear racially benign or malignant. A thoughtful and clear-eyed contribution to the field, Us versus Them reveals the deep impact that competing racial meanings have on the fabric of community and the direction of neighborhood change.