Browsing by Subject "Gentrification"

ABSTRACTThis thesis is offers exilic texts as the basis for restoration for communities traumatized by displacement. The scriptural focus for the thesis is Jeremiah 30-33, the Book of Restoration. The purpose of the thesis is to provide tools for inner-city pastors to navigate the opportunities and challenges of displacement caused by gentrification. The thesis is fueled by the contrast between numerous studies that report the benefits of gentrification versus its ills experienced as a pastoral witness of the machinery of displacement in the northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. In Dr. Ellen Davis’ work on Jeremiah, she shows Jeremiah’s painful growth into his prophetic role. This growth occurs through laments or “protests addressed to God” thus making it possible to “lay claim to realistic hope.” This birth of hope is in the beginning of the book in Jeremiah 1:10, “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant,” with building and planting as themes for Jeremiah 30-33. Dr. Davis further explicates hope’s placement. Hope finds a concrete place economically through Jeremiah’s land purchase (Chapter 32:6-15) and socially through community building (chapters 30 and 31). Building upon this work, my thesis concludes that Book of Restoration provides a relevant and effective model of restoration for today’s church.

“Building Community Across Walls: A History of an Integrated Church Amid a Gentrifying Neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina” is a study focused upon the integrated history of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, the congregation I serve in downtown Charleston. The church, which was an African American congregation for much of the twentieth century, integrated in the late 1980’s following the gentrification of our Ansonborough neighborhood. This ethnographic study, centered upon formal interviews with both black and white members of my church who experienced this integration together, in addition to clergy and community leaders, is an attempt to both accurately share this history and to critically examine it to mine how it might inform St. Stephen’s present and future. This study makes the argument that St. Stephen’s history of integration must be understood amid the backdrop of urban gentrification and the ways in which this social phenomenon is impacting downtown congregation’s like my own.

This project will therefore be critically examining the intersection of race and gentrification and the ways in which these forces impact any church trying to build community across the “walls” of various social boundaries in urban areas. The argument of this thesis is that no such community can be sustained without awareness of these forces and an ongoing and intentional commitment to diversity, to combating racism and the ongoing reality of white supremacy in our country.

This thesis will have four parts. The first part will aim to offer critical background meant to put St. Stephen’s story into proper context. Chapter one will detail a short overview of the issue of gentrification and focus specifically on its impact upon African Americans. Chapter two will offer a brief reflection on the significance of the black church to African American identity, culture, and collective memory. This chapter intends to impress upon the reader what is at stake and what is potentially lost when an all-black church wrestles with whether to integrate. These chapters will enable a better understanding and more accurate interpretation of St. Stephen’s story of integration.

The St. Stephen’s story will be explored through a series of ethnographic interviews I’ve conducted with nearly twenty-five black and white members of the church – lay and ordained – who lived through that history together. Archival material will also be utilized and woven into a reflection on the interview responses to deepen learnings and glean insights. Prior to parts two, three, and four pertaining to St. Stephen’s, a brief author’s note will appear. This note will include a fuller description of my interview sample and size along with an acknowledgement of potential biases and the fallibility inherent in a project based upon memory.

The second part will outline and detail St. Stephen’s history leading up to integration. It will include a third chapter that consists of a short early history of my parish and a fourth chapter laying out St. Stephen’s eventful African American history from the early decades of the twentieth century to the late 1980’s. Chapter five will include a description of the gentrification of the church’s Ansonborough neighborhood through historic preservation efforts, spearheaded by the Historic Charleston Foundation, that led to the integration of the parish.

Part three will focus on the parish’s intentional integration. Chapters six through thirteen will constitute the heart of this thesis: an accounting of St. Stephen’s late 1980’s to early 1990’s collective experience and a critical reflection upon its successes, points of tension, and missed opportunities.

Part four will consist of a detailed accounting of St. Stephen’s story since its integrative period in chapter fourteen and fifteen. Chapters sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen will include reflections upon the what the lessons of our past offer us today. I will then highlight a few significant questions for further study and reflection in chapters nineteen and twenty followed by a conclusion.

Rising demographic diversity and persistent social inequality are two defining features of youths’ social worlds, and schools and neighborhoods are key developmental contexts where this component of contemporary life plays out. This dissertation aimed to better understand the developmental implications of these twin phenomena, focusing specifically on adolescence, a critical period of development characterized by profound neurobiological and social cognitive changes. Across three studies, I asked, (1) how does exposure to different types of diversity and inequality in schools and neighborhoods relate to adolescent mental health and academic engagement? and (2) how do these relations differ across contexts and according to individual socioeconomic and racial-ethnic identity?The first chapter examined the relation between how schools say they value diversity and adolescent belonging, mental health, and academic engagement across racial groups. Results indicate that when schools’ mission statements conveyed explicit support for diversity (versus exhibiting color-evasive ideologies), racial disparities in mental health, educational aspirations, and reading achievement were smaller. However, when there was a mismatch between how schools said they value diversity and how such values were put into practice, schools’ proclaimed support for diversity was negatively associated with mental health, especially among White youth. The second chapter examined how exposure to rising inequality within neighborhoods—vis-à-vis gentrification—may impact educational outcomes. I found small positive associations between living in a gentrifying (versus chronically disinvested) neighborhood and 12th grade cumulative grade point average, intentions to pursue higher education, and one dimension of school quality: exposure to experienced teachers. However, these potential benefits of gentrification were concentrated among youth who were not economically disadvantaged and White youth. Further, for Black youth, the relation between gentrification and postsecondary plans varied according to the degree of racial turnover occurring in gentrifying neighborhoods—Black gentrification was positively associated with intentions to pursue college, but White gentrification was not. The third chapter examined two psychological mechanisms through which living in a gentrifying neighborhood may impact reading and math achievement: educational aspirations and psychological distress. Overall, there was a positive direct association between gentrification and achievement, and limited evidence of mediation. However, the pathways linking gentrification to educational aspirations, psychological distress, and achievement differed across socioeconomic and racial groups in nuanced ways that illuminate the potential costs and benefits of living in a changing neighborhood during adolescence. These three studies contribute to advancing the education, adolescent, and neighborhood literatures by examining understudied aspects of schools and neighborhoods. Findings suggest that the relation between context, identity, and development is more nuanced than is often assumed, with policy implications for how schools and neighborhoods can better address rising demographic diversity and persistent inequality.