Race and the Making of Southeast San Francisco: Towards a Theory of Race-Class

San Francisco is engaged in a redevelopment project that could bring millions in investment and community benefits to a starved neighborhood—and yet the project is embedded in an urban development process that is displacing residents. In trying to unsettle these contradictions, this paper achieves two aims. First, I unearth a little known history of redevelopment activism that frames debate around the current project. Second, I use this history to argue for a reframing of the language of race. To wit: although the social construction of race and racism is well established, race is still deeply understood in everyday life as natural. This paper offers a theoretical fusing of race and class, “race-class”, to help us think race through a vital constructionist lens. Race-class makes present the economic dynamics of racial formation, and foregrounds that race is a core process of urban political economy. Race-class works both “top-down” and “ground-up.” While it is a vehicle for capital's exploitation of people and place, race-class also emerges as a mode of power for racialized working-class residents.