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Description of  Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City

For long-time residents of Washington, DCs Shaw/U Street, the neighborhood has become almost unrecognizable in recent years. Where the citys most infamous open-air drug market once stood, a farmers market now sells grass-fed beef and homemade duck egg ravioli. On the corner where AM.PM carryout used to dish out soul food, a new establishment markets its $28 foie gras burger. Shaw is experiencing a dramatic transformation, from ghetto to gilded ghetto, where white newcomers are rehabbing homes, developing dog parks, and paving the way for a third wave coffee shop on nearly every block. Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City is an in-depth ethnography of this gilded ghetto. Derek S. Hyra captures here a quickly gentrifying space in which long-time black residents are joined, and variously displaced, by an influx of young, white, relatively wealthy, and/or gay professionals who, in part as a result of global economic forces and the recent development of central business districts, have returned to the cities earlier generations fled decades ago. As a result, America is witnessing the emergence of what Hyra calls cappuccino cities. A cappuccino has essentially the same ingredients as a cup of coffee with milk, but is considered upscale, and is double the price. In Hyras cappuccino city, the black inner-city neighborhood undergoes enormous transformations and becomes racially lighter and more expensive by the year.