White Privilege and Gentrification: El Paso and Denver
I was recently reading “White Privilege and Gentrification Denver” (The Guardian, July 14, 2016) and could not help compare what has
happened in Denver to El Paso.
Caroline Tracy, the author talks of herself, a White person gentrifying
Denver neighborhoods.
However, when I thought about it, I specifically I
thought of young Hispanic professionals being “used as tools for landlords to
gentrify neighborhoods.” In Denver, Tracy says Whites, even progressive Whites
are used as tools.
She talks about I-25 and I-70 cutting off neighborhoods,
similar to I-10 and Highway 54 cutting off the Chamizal, Barrio del Diablo, and
Lincoln neighborhoods.
Also mentioned is a beautification project done in
north-east Denver. The city took out dumpsters and replaced them with cute
trash bins like you see in better neighborhoods. Is this similar to what has
occurred in Union Plaza, the city built it up, but now has marked it with
demolition carefully excluding properties of the rich, a U.S. congressman, and
the El Paso Times.
