Any anti-welfare redistribution tactics further the existing structures of anti-blackness. Only active reparations such as the aff can solve

[Sawyer Phinney - Department of Geography., Rethinking geographies of race and austerity urbanism, 1-21-2020, https://compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gec3.12480]\\SShah

Taking Roberts and Mahtani (2010) conceptualization of race as central to the reproduction of neoliberal urbanism, rather than simply a consequence or unfortunate outcome of it, calls on scholars to do more than map how processes of neoliberalization have racialized results and instead focus on the ways neoliberalism is fundamentally raced∂ understanding that such policies reinforce racial hierarchies and racist ideologies in society. To show this, they draw∂ on shifts in media discourses that previously demonized new immigrants to now a focus on the utility and productivity of immigrants for benefitting Canada's economy growth—depicting a relationship between racialization representation in fostering neoliberalism (p. 251). They call on scholars to explore austerity urbanism post-2008 in the∂ context of ongoing state rescaling as a social process that is connected to neoliberal regulatory regimes that draw on∂ discourses of individual responsibility and anti-welfare redistribution that actively produced racialized bodies∂ (Roberts & Mahtani, 2010, p. 248).∂ To address the interconnections between race and austerity that is sensitive to the inter-scalar conditioning of∂ governance and policy, Bonds (2013) refers to as a “relational racialization” that examines the co-production of race∂ and economic processes, and how racialized difference is constitutive of the economy—where race is not only∂ embedded but also a precondition for the functioning of economic systems. Such approach requires a “centralizing∂ of race” (Price, 2010, p. 3) on topics of political economy. Geographic studies on recent topics such as residential∂ segregation, redlining and racist lending practices, transportation agendas, all demonstrate the ways in which race is∂ linked to forms of governance, certain cultural ideologies, and state apparatuses, to provide certain elements to sustain the circulation of capital that is geographically embedded. In the work on austerity urbanism, this means thinking∂ about the uneven spaces of austerity policies, decades of downloading public service responsibilities to local governments that has intensified post-2008 in conjunction with systems of institutional racism to narrow-in on who∂ “austerity bites” within cities themselves, and why the consequences of austerity impact racialized groups the most∂ severely.∂ 4 | RETHINKING AUSTERITY URBANISM THROUGH THE LENS OF∂ RACIAL CAPITALISM∂ Critical theories of race have given scholars the analytical tools to unpack the ways in which capitalism engages with∂ racialized concepts to further reproduce itself in the urban. A growing number of scholars (Lowe, 2015; Pulido,∂ 2016, Ponder, 2018; Ranganathan, 2017;Bonds, 2019 ; Danewid, 2019 ; Ponder & Omstedt, 2019) are conceptualizing austerity urbanism as part of a larger process of racial capitalism. Those writing on racial capitalism argue that∂ capitalism depends upon the social construction of race to reproduce and extract value whereby “economic value is∂ derived from devaluing spaces, places, and labour of racialized groups of people” (Ponder, 2017, p. 15). As Melamed∂ (2015) asserts, “capitalism is racial capitalism” (p. 77), and this is revealed by two historical examples of processes of∂ racial capitalism that have shaped geographies of development in the North American context: settler-colonialism∂ and chattel slavery.∂ Within geography, there is increasing attention on racial capitalism as it relates to how racial difference and∂ inequality are produced, and most importantly, how is that relative valuation gets operationalized in the contemporary urban (Lowe, 2015; Ponder, 2017). This means exploring not only how ideas and practices of the devaluation of∂ race circulate throughout state restructuring processes but also how they become institutionalized, and the implications this has for the racially subordinate and dominate. To attend to the racialization of urban austerity through the∂ lens of racial capitalism, geographers are exploring topics of social reproduction (Ponder, 2018; Bhattacharya, 2018),∂ financialization (Bonds, 2019; Ponder & Omstedt, 2019; Danewid, 2019), and political ecologies of racial capitalism∂ (Pulido, 2016; Ranganathan, 2016). This growing literature centers on the notion that capitalist relations depend∂ upon the social construction of race to provide and extract value. This means thinking about how processes of∂ racialization are being baked into the social and material workings of capitalism itself, and how state-restructuring∂ regimes are connected through institutions that facilitate capital accumulation in ways the perpetuate racial hierarchies. Understanding such correlation cannot be fully grasped by simply examining austerity urbanism as reduced∂ only to class relations, but instead, urban state restructuring needs to be understood as part of a larger historical and∂ ongoing imperialist terrain (Danewid, 2019, p. 4).∂ Looking at the financialization of racial property regimes, Bonds (2019) examines property in Milwaukee∂ through the lens of racial capitalism and centers property as a race-making institution. Her work shows the ways∂ in which the criminalization of Blackness augmented Milwaukee's segregation and constituted disinvestment in∂ Black neighborhoods. Bonds theorizes the politics of residential property, which include policies protecting of∂ white properties and resistance to this, as connected to practices of policing of urban space (p. 5). Race is shown∂ to work not as an intersecting force, or as the literature on austerity urbanism suggests, as an unequal outcome∂ of capitalist processes. Instead, anti-Blackness is essential to the very workings of capitalism and its reproduction∂ over time and space.∂ Similarly, Bledsoe and Wright (2019) go further in their work on racial capitalism to illuminate how antiBlackness in fact conditions the realization of capitalist reproduction. They suggest that capitalism's recent round of∂ accumulation requires “spaces that were once marginal or peripheral to the perpetuation of capital accumulation∂ becomes sites of appropriation precisely because the (Black) populations occupying them receive no recognition as∂ viable spatial actors” (p. 13). This assumed from of “a-spatiality” of Black populations contributes to places in need of∂ appropriation and removal. Such spatial arrangements devalue Black populations as inhuman and spaces attached to∂ Black populations are deemed as lacking a legitimate form of occupation and usage for capital accumulation. The reliance on capital through such notions of “empty, lifeless, Blackened spaces” have contributed to practices of uneven∂ development through practices such as white flight, gentrification, urban renewal, incarceration, and policing (p. 13).∂ Austerity urbanism, then, needs to be understood as a governance strategy used to facilitate such practices that rely∂ on the ever-present logics of anti-Blackness. To understand race working as a process, both Bonds (2019) and∂ Bledsoe and Wright (2019) show the ways in which anti-Blackness works as a precondition for capitalism allowing it∂ to constantly renew itself by associating spaces with Back populations as open for dispossession, occupation, and∂ appropriation.