In this talk, I'll discuss the Big-D discourses of gentrification and the ways they serve as a form of abstract liberalism to obscure the racialized nature of change. I'll demonstrate how the ways Anacostians talk about their space counters those Big-D discourses at the discourse level, at the narrative level, and at the morphosyntactic level, and then I'll back out to look at the bigger questions of the ways gentrification is considered an a-racialized process and how the residents' talk brings race to the forefront, rejecting the colorblind racism assumptions inherent in the abstract liberalism appeal.
