What’s Going on in Rat City? An Analysis of Queer Space in White Center

Abstract

This paper assesses ongoing change occurring in White Center, an unincorporated community directly south of Seattle. Beginning in the 1970s, several waves of immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Central America came to Washington state and settled in White Center. This community now faces gentrification and displacement, amid a rise in prominence of a burgeoning LGBTQ community in White Center. Using media narratives, interviews with key informants in White Center’s LGBTQ community, and my own personal observations, this thesis investigates the changes that White Center has experienced, and looks towards the future of this unincorporated community. This investigation includes an assessment of how the gentrification of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood has ramifications on the gentrification that White Center is experiencing.