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How do gentrifiers take over a place culturally, racially, and socioeconomically different from themselves?

How do gentrifiers take over a place culturally, racially and socioeconomically different from themselves?”

“…Good Neighbors brings together culture and politics to show how such tastes can lead to political power for gentrifiers, creating a wedge with which they penetrate neighborhood organizations and assume authority over others. The process of forming a neighborhood elite …happen[s]… through voluntary associations that…wield.. considerable power—interior design or park conservation is not just a hobby…

Through such benign-sounding activities as philanthropy, historic preservation, and serving on committees for parks and liquor licenses, gentrifiers solidified their position in the community and began to erase the cultural presence of those who preceded them. Tissot draws on years of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, as well as historical material on the South End … to demonstrate how culture was used as a cudgel in a protracted battle of neighborhood realpolitik.

Newcomers—armed with more time, education, connections, and “cultural authority”—professionalized the community groups they joined in ways that discouraged broad participation while extoling the virtues of involvement. Under the banner of community improvement and civic-mindedness, gentrifiers were able to concentrate on issues they found important, often over the objections of long-term residents…

Tissot makes clear that this new community concern was not just an innocent refocus, based on gentrifiers’ group interests, but a deliberate ordering of what culture matters at the expense of less “worthy” subjects like rent control and subsidized preschool.

Good Neighbors powerfully demonstrates how gentrifiers often fixate on the old …and the marginally political… so that they do not have to think about the displacement involved in neighborhood change and their own role in it…”