Settler Colonialism, the White Child, Gentrification, and Gensociocide

The reproduction of Whiteness, White supremacy, and settler colonialism focus on taking over land, space, and bodies, and this research argues that the image of the White child is used to rationalize these processes. By focusing on interviews with self-identified progressive White gentrifiers and archival research in a borough of Boston, Massachusetts, this research demonstrates how White folks resettled into a heteronormative Whiteness with the physical arrival or the construction of the image of the White child. The physical and imaginary of the White child becomes a tool for resource hoarding and taking over lands and justifies all forms of violence by referencing the vulnerability and potentiality of a White person in the making. In the end, White parents use the figuration of the White child to rationalize changing and taking over communities at the expense of everyone else. This research argues that the figuration of the White child becomes a tool for the generational killing of the social, what the author calls gensociocide.