Gentrification: The Oppressed and the Oppressor in Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun

Countless scholarly sources on Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun focus on the black experience. This essay directs attention to how the black experience came about, and how Hansberry’s literary piece is prophetic in that inequality did not cease post-slavery but evolved. The research will explore how the play foresaw gentrification and its racist ways. The concept of gentrification causes division and wealth gaps and defeats the purpose of the Fair Housing Act. Blacks are impacted most in America due to the result of gentrification as it is the low-income and impoverished neighborhoods infiltrated. There is an investment-disinvestment-reinvestment under capitalism factor along with supply and demand, which shows Marxist theory as the best theoretical lens to approach the concept of gentrifying. Concepts like gentrification play a role in why the Black community has a harder time getting ahead or reaching success. That could be hard to do when your community or neighborhood’s stability is compromised since the fact is that gentrification is not something happening in neighborhoods, other than those that are minorities or the marginalized. One of the causative effects of gentrification is displacement, which challenges the essence of equality. The objective is to gain more knowledge and awareness of the Black community and its disparities as it inspires me to find solutions to make a change or at the very least the motivation to always keep in the forefront of the public.