ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how the discursive construction and mediation of white emotions played a role in the politics and production of space during New York City’s housing crisis from 1945 through the early 1960s. Using scholar Sarah Ahmed’s framework of “affective economies,” I examine scholarly articles from the social psychology of housing, the aims and effects of New York City’s Fair Housing Practices Law, and the operations of the New York City Commission on Intergroup Relations. I argue that the ways in which these institutions mediated white emotions in the context of postwar race and housing issues fostered an ideology of liberalism that ultimately privileged the symbolic value of integration at the expense of material transformation and autonomy for racialized populations of New York City. As a counterpoint, this chapter also expounds on the Mitchell-Lama Housing Program, a postwar limited-equity housing initiative that accounted for both the material and affective capacities and desires of residents impacted by the housing crisis.
