Jasmin Jones

12/17/2014
Neoliberal Urbanization and the Displacement of People of Color: The Gentrification of Fox
Point Community and Brown Universitys Expansion
The historical redevelopment of the Downtown Providence area has been at the mercy of
Brown Universitys expansion since its relocation to College Hill in 1770. As a result,
surrounding neighborhoods, predominantly communities of color, have suffered from this
expansion. A Cape Verdean neighborhood called Fox Point has suffered the expansion of Brown
dormitories and faculty buildings, especially in the 1950s through the 1970s. In observing the
history of the Fox Point community in relation to Browns expansion, this paper examines how
gentrification and neoliberal urbanization work together to remove and erase poor communities
of color, by implementing policies that dismiss systemic structures that have historically
devalued and segregated people of color.
Cape Verdeans have an established history in New England, beginning with their early
migrations in the 1800s. Whaling vessels from New Bedford and Nantucket regularly sailed to
Cape Verde to pick up sailors desperate for crews to work in the dangerous and low-paying
whaling industry.1 Cape Verdeans fled to the New England area for this kind of work in
exchange for escaping severe drought, starvation, perennial economic hardship and colonial
neglect.2 Immigration laws closed the migration of Cape Verdeans to the United States in 1922
and then reopened immigration in 1968.3 Today, the Cape Verdean population in New England
is 300,000, larger than the actual population of Cape Verde.4 In Rhode Island, Cape Verdeans
settled in the Fox Point neighborhood, located on the South East side of Providence.
Cape Verdeans established settlement in Rhode Island holds a specific history of culture,
community and close-knit family structures. The relocation of Cape Verdeans in order to seek
more opportunity in the United States, due to their neglectful colonial histories and impoverished
country, Cape Verde, resulted in their dependence on low-paying jobs in order to support their
families in the U.S. and abroad. With this circumstance, Cape Verdeans in the Fox Point
community created a strong supportive network that included bi-lingual schools, community

Claire Andrade-Watkins. Telling Our Own Story as a First Voice Narrative. Last modified 2014. Accessed
November 18, 2014. http://foxpointcapeverdeanproject.com/site/?p=1.
2
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
4
Ibid.

Jasmin Jones
12/17/2014
churches, and a community with fellow creole Portuguese speaking neighbors.5 This small
community thrived with cultural capital and support that Cape Verdeans used in order to survive.
This form of cultural capital provided strong resources to the Cape Verdeans of Fox Point and
accommodated their experiences and support for one another for many generations.
Perhaps the most notable displacement of the Fox Point community took place in the
1960s when Brown wanted to expand dormitories to meet student desires to live off-campus.6
So, rather than building new dorms on campus, Brown began to allow students to move offcampus.7 This move primarily affected the Fox Point community, as the low-income Fox Point
housing units were attractive to landlords to house Brown students. As a result, rent prices
increased and Fox Point residents had to move out because many could not afford the new
housing prices. This expansion continued for decades and Fox Point residents were continually
forced further away from the community. The displacement of the Fox Point residents explains
how neoliberal ideologies and gentrification work together in the privatization of space by
relocating and replacing poor people of color, in the primary interest of profitability.
Gentrification in the Fox Point community served as the primary vehicle for displacing
the Fox Point residents. Gentrification is a process by which property owners and those in power
displace and/or evict existing communities in order to attract new incoming residents with higher
symbolic capital to extract higher rents from them.8 In this case, property owners in Fox Point
allowed Brown to privatize the Fox Point housing units because landlords would be able to
charge Brown students higher rent prices. Thus, Fox Point housing units became a space in
which rich Brown students would spend money, pay rent, and bolster the economy in the area.
According to Claire Andrade-Watkins, PhD., in Telling Our Own Story As a First Voice
Narrative, an oral history on the redevelopment of Fox Point, she says:
The Cape Verdean community was totally destroyed by gentrification and
urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s. It was an urban massacre that displaced
5

Gold, Mia. "Forgotten Fox Point: The Expansion of Brown University & Displacement of the Cape Verdean Fox
Point Community." Remembering Race at Brown. Accessed December 17, 2014.
6
Simmi Aujla. U.'s Expansion Just One Concern for East Side Neighborhood
Associations. Brown Daily Herald. 12 October 2006.
7
Simmi Aujla. U.'s Expansion Just One Concern for East Side Neighborhood
Associations. Brown Daily Herald. 12 October 2006.
8
Stefano Bloch. "Gentrification." Lecture, Brown University Lecture: Crime In the City from Brown University,
Providence, December 2, 2014.

Jasmin Jones
12/17/2014
three generations of families, friends, neighbors to make way for highways,
expansion for Brown University, and historic preservation.9
The poor Cape Verdean community utilized spaces in Fox Point for their own survival
establishing bi-lingual schools, surrounding themselves with neighbors who speak Portuguese
and Cape Verdean churches. However, landlords and the city found it more valuable to allow
Brown redevelop the space. There was minimal value in the urban communitys ability to sustain
and support themselves, rather, the value lies in the ability to economically increase the
profitability of space, regardless of outcome.
The decision to relocate the Cape Verdean community, and urban communities alike
across the United Sates is a result of neoliberal ideologies that believe primary use of space to
increase the economic value, known as neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is the belief that open,
competitive, and unregulated markets, liberated from all forms of state interference, represent the
optimal mechanism for economic development.10 Brown monopolizing the Fox Point
community was framed by neoliberal ideals that the potential of space to thrive economically is
the best outcome for that space. This ideology includes the privatization of public space. An
example in the Fox Point community is the Boys Club on 226 Main St. Claire Andrade-Watkins
explains the importance of the club for the community.
[It was a] venerable institution and the home away from home for generations of
boys from the Point. From the moment the doors opened in 1916, the Boys Club
on S. Main Street served the urban poor and kept the boys away from dangers of
the streets and juvenile delinquency.11
The clubs function served as an important outlet for the Cape Verdean community to keep
young teens off the street. Poor communities usually have few resources for young people to
engage in productive activities. So, the club served as a public space to meet the needs of the
community by providing a space for young men to safely engage with one another. However,
this use of space does not contribute to the overall economy of the space, in a neoliberal society,
as most of the people using it were poor and did not have a lot of capital. Watkins also notes that

Claire Andrade-Watkins. Telling Our Own Story as a First Voice Narrative. Last modified 2014. Accessed
November 18, 2014. http://foxpointcapeverdeanproject.com/site/?p=1.
10
Neil Brennerand, Nik Theodore. Cities and the Geographies of actually Existing Neoliberalism 34, no. 3
(2002): 2.
11
Claire Andrade-Watkins Telling Our Own Story as a First Voice Narrative.

Jasmin Jones
12/17/2014
the club had a poor indoor plumbing system. The demolition of the Boys Club happened in the
1950s during the trend in which Brown and the state government bought cheap land in Fox
Point.12 The Boys Club was a public facility considered a building unworthy of saving, due to its
blighted conditions. Even though the club served as a public resource for the Cape Verdean
community in Fox Point since 1916, keeping the community save and providing productive
spaces for young people, Brown and the local government had the power to end this resource
without considering how the Fox Point community was affected.
Race and redevelopment have historically defined capital in neoliberal societies.
Although race is technically excluded from conversations for legal reasons, this color-blind
ideology can reveal the racial (and racist) implication of urban redevelopment. According to
Christopher Mele in Neoliberalism, Race and the Redefining of Urban Redevelopment,
neoliberal urbanism does not retreat from race, rather racial dynamics are reconstituted to
accommodate processes of capital accumulation and uneven urban development in poor and
minority cities.13 Those in power have the ability to make the decisions as to how redeveloped
communities is better for everyone. However, everyone does not include the poor people of
color, who are not in power to assert what their idea of the community should look like. This is
because historically people of color have never had the power to be in positions to have a voice
in what happens to their communities.
Claire Watkins says it best in her journey to voice the narratives of the Cape Verdean
community of Fox Point, Our history and voices were erased before we had a chance to inscribe
our stories.14 Even though the attempts for redevelopment are not technically racist or
racialized, the point of redevelopment seeks to increase economic capital to serve and meet the
needs of those who are capable of contributing the most money. This is, and historically has
always been, white people -- specifically in the context of the United Stated. The cultures and
contributions of communities of color are not acknowledged as value. These segregated
communities have been subject to decades of having to create internal economies in which they

12

Mia Gold. "Forgotten Fox Point: The Expansion of Brown University & Displacement of the Cape Verdean Fox
Point Community." Remembering Race at Brown. Accessed December 17, 2014.
13
Christopher Mele. "Neoliberalism, Race and the Redefining of Urban Redevelopment." International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 37.2 (2013): 598-617.
14
Claire Andrade-Watkins, Telling Our Own Story as a First Voice Narrative.

Jasmin Jones
12/17/2014
support each other, due to the fact they have been historically excluded, economically and
racially, from utilizing the resources that white people had outside of the inner city.15 Along with
redevelopment and the subsequent displacement of communities of color, erasure of their
histories and narratives leave with it. Poor communities of color have cultural and social capital
in their abilities to sustain by creating neighborhoods that support their specific needs. These
neighborhoods were established in response to the segregation and economic disadvantages
many poor people of color have faced in this country.
Neoliberal redevelopment dismisses these legacies by not acknowledging that spaces for
poor people of color are more than just occupied spaces for monetary accumulation. This kind of
displacement is also accomplished by annihilation of public spaces in which poor communities
use as resources, which do not necessarily contribute to the greater economy of the city. The
annihilation of space reserves spaces for the means of producing capital therefore, business and
corporations that seek to create revenue are seen as contributing to the functioning economy of a
space.16 The annihilation of space in the expansion of Brown University did not re-imagine a
space for the Fox Point community, rather, completely re-imagined the neighborhood without
their presence. As a result, public spaces like the community center Boys Club and various
community churches were replaced with dormitories and faculty buildings for the use of
Browns campus. Instead of laws being created to illegalize activities, activities in communities
that function in the interest of Neoliberal urbanism make activities unaffordable through
gentrification. According to Christopher Mele, enclaves of high-end residential
entertainment, sports and leisure developments have appeared in sections of inner cities that were
largely written off by private developersArmed with sets of neoliberal policieslocal
governments, along with private partners have regenerated targeted areas within inner cities.17
Land is overlooked and given to poor people of color, then once a better use is figured out for
it, not necessarily in the interest of those living in the community, it is taken over. This kind of
powerlessness devalues the existence and legacies of people of color in poor communities.

15

Stefano Bloch. "Inner City Development." Lecture, Brown University Lecture: Crime In the City from Brown
University. Providence , October 16, 2014.
16
Don Mitchell. The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of Anti-Homeless Laws in the
United States 29, no. 3 (1997): 303-335.
17
Christopher Mele. "Neoliberalism, Race and the Redefining of Urban Redevelopment." International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research 37.2 (2013): 598-617.

Jasmin Jones
12/17/2014
Neoliberalism and gentrification work together in the privatization and profitability of
space. The relocation poor communities of color is not a coincidence, rather an active vision.
Race and redevelopment have historically defined capital in neoliberal societies. Low-income
communities of color function in resistance to systems of oppression that resulted in their
disadvantages. The Fox Pointers were forced to leave because of the increase in rent prices and
commercialized areas that they would no long be able to afford. However, their culture,
traditions and long-lived legacy in Fox Point was also erased form this community.
Acknowledging the racial tensions that exist between Fox Point and Brown is a critical step in
analyzing the gentrification that harmed the community. Fox Point residents were forced to leave
in order to make room for students of Brown University, a traditionally primarily white and
wealthy institution. Neoliberalism in society values whiteness, and seeks to other people of color.
The Cape Verdean population and their history in the Fox Point community was
unacknowledged by Brown and state government in their attempts to expand and utilize those
spaces. Neoliberal ideologies and gentrification not only value spaces in order to accrue money
and capital, but also to redefine homogenous racialized spaces in which poor people of color
sustain their legacies, culture and way of survival in a country that has historically forced them to
do so.

Jasmin Jones
12/17/2014
Bibliography
Andrade-Watkins, Claire Telling Our Own Story as a First Voice Narrative. Last modified 2014.
Accessed November 18, 2014. http://foxpointcapeverdeanproject.com/site/?p=1.
Aujla, Simmi. U.'s Expansion Just One Concern for East Side Neighborhood
Associations. Brown Daily Herald. 12 October 2006
Bloch, Stefano. "Gentrification." Lecture, Brown University Lecture: Crime In the City from
Brown University, Providence, December 2, 2014.
Bloch, Stefano. "Inner City Development." Lecture, Brown University Lecture: Crime In the
City from Brown University. Providence , October 16, 2014.
Brenner, Neil and Theodore, Nik. Cities and the Geographies of actually Existing
Neoliberalism 34, no. 3 (2002): 2.
Gold, Mia. "Forgotten Fox Point: The Expansion of Brown University & Displacement of the
Cape Verdean Fox Point Community." Remembering Race at Brown. Accessed
December 17, 2014.
Mele, Christopher. "Neoliberalism, Race and the Redefining of Urban Redevelopment."
International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37.2 (2013): 598-617.
Mitchell, Don. The Annihilation of Space by Law: The Roots and Implications of AntiHomeless Laws in the United States 29, no. 3 (1997): 303-335.