The Rise of the Creative Underclass

In this article, Tyler Denmead draws upon critical race theory to argue that the creative city discourse reproduces racial injustice for youth. In particular, the creative city invests in the property rights and profitability of whiteness by inscribing creative superiority on the bodies of young people who are more likely to be privileged by virtue of their race and class. Through evidence collected by both autoethnographic and ethnographic methods, Denmead discusses how his history as an arts educator has been entangled in the manifestation of this racist reconfiguration of urban space in one particular American city, Providence, Rhode Island. He discovered that the racial dynamics of the creative city discourse have productive power over how young people construct their identities and make life choices in this city and, further, that those dynamics operate in and through artist partnerships between those positioned as creatives and those positioned as troubled youth. As a result, Denmead argues that white arts educators, in particular, must disinvest themselves from notions of creativity that enhance the profitability and power of whiteness. This move requires advocating ceding land and resources that have been acquired through the creative city discourse and committing to reframing culture-led urban renewal in terms of the economic and creative flourishing of communities of color.