Mango Fufu Kimchi Yucca: The Depoliticization of Diversity in Washington, D.C. Discourse

The rise of the commodified city has encouraged new attention to the symbolic systems that structure our understandings of difference and inequality in urban areas. This paper analyzes one of those systems, namely discourse. I examine how the term diversity has developed multiple meanings over the past 10 years in Mt. Pleasant, a gentrifying neighborhood in Washington, DC, and I trace these developments and their connections with changes in the local economy, politics, and demographics. In the mid-1990s, diversity indexed community discourses about social justice and equal opportunity. Later, diversity began to signify a commodified resource. As real estate prices drastically rose, the term's meaning became associated with the lifestylization of urban space: Diversity has come to reference stimulating cultural experience, and is used to promote commercial investment in the neighborhood and sell upmarket real estate. Analyzing such shifts in discourse illuminates the micro-mechanics of how local visions of multicultural urban spaces can lose their focus on justice and equality.