Ep. 3 – A Conversation with Dr. Eric Tang on Gentrification, Racial Justice, and Changing Demographics in Austin, Texas

Eric Tang is an Associate Professor in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department and faculty member in the Center for Asian American Studies. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Sociology and serves as a faculty fellow with both the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis and the Division of […]

Eric Tang is an Associate Professor in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department and faculty member in the Center for Asian American Studies. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Sociology and serves as a faculty fellow with both the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. His first book, titled Unsettled: Cambodian Refugees in the NYC Hyperghetto (Temple University Press, 2015), is an ethnographic account of refugee life in some of New York City’s most impoverished and socially marginalized neighborhoods. A former community organizer, Tang has published several articles on race and urban social movements, including award-winning writing on post-Katrina New Orleans. He is at work on a second book, Fire In the Streets (Verso Books, 2018), which revisits the urban rebellions of the late-1960s. Locally, Tang’s research focuses on the past and present of racial segregation in Austin, Texas, paying particular attention the gentrification-driven displacements of the city’s longstanding African American residents. He co-authored the report “Outlier: The Case of Austin’s Declining African American population” which revealed that Austin was the only major growing city in the United States to experience an absolute numerical decline in African Americans.