McNair Scholar 2018 Yadira Damazo
Yadira Damazo is a senior at the University of Minnesota, majoring in sociology and minoring in social justice. Her research interests revolve around addressing racial and economic inequalities and racialized forms of dispossession. Ms. Damazo plans on getting a Master of Human Rights or a Ph.D. in Sociology.
My dream is to contribute towards finding solutions for a more equitable world. A world where basic human needs are met.
Research project
Gentrification as Structural Violence: A Critical Literature Review
Abstract: Gentrification is not only an expression of class inequality; race is also an important factor. The purpose of this critical literature review is to explain the ways in which gentrification works as structural violence. It addresses the forces behind gentrification and the racialized forms of dispossession in the context of gentrification. This research will identify and scrutinize the state government and agents of capital (such as developers and the Real Estate) as key gentrifiers. These constituents work together to decide where new development is conducted without addressing the racial disparities present in neighborhoods concretely (Mele 2013). Such a work of redress requires a new direction, specifically considerations toward the rectification of historical injustices visited upon them. It then turns to a case study in Minneapolis, where a new Comprehensive Plan was introduced to address such inequalities. This paper will highlight its inadequacies.
Faculty mentor
Dr. Yuichiro Onishi is Associate professor of African American and African Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where he also received his Ph.D. in history. His research interests include the study of Black radicalism and internationalism, African American intellectual history, transnational American studies, critical race studies, and Asian American studies. He is the author of Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa (NYU Press, 2013). His work is included in several edited volumes, including: Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies (Routledge, 2017) and Traveling Texts and the Work of Afro-Japanese Cultural Production: Two Haiku and a Microphone (Lexington Books, 2015).