René Esparza, "From Vice to Nice: Midwestern Politics and the Gentrification of AIDS" (UNC Press, 2025)

Dec 11, 2025

René Esparza, a historian and assistant professor at Washington University in St. Louis, dives into the intersection of LGBTQ politics and the AIDS crisis in Midwestern America. He reveals how assimilationist strategies among white gay activists led to the gentrification of vibrant queer spaces, diluting radical activism. Esparza discusses the criminalization of marginalized groups during the AIDS epidemic and the contrasting dynamics of privacy and protection in political discourse. His insights shed light on urban change and envision a future beyond homonormativity.

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ANECDOTE

Childhood In West Town Sparked The Project

René Esparza grew up in Chicago's gentrifying West Town and encountered surveillance as a queer youth of color seeking community.
That personal tension inspired his research on privacy, housing, and sexual citizenship.

INSIGHT

Middleness Reshaped Gay Politics

Minnesota's gay movement split into liberation and assimilation but was reshaped by a regional culture of moderation called "middleness."
Proximity to whiteness and Democratic-Farmer-Labor institutions pushed mainstream activists toward respectability and privacy.

INSIGHT

Policing Became A Path To Inclusion

Gay activists in Minneapolis aligned with police by framing anti-gay violence as a problem requiring law-and-order solutions.
That alliance protected white middle-class gay men while criminalizing and excluding marginalized queer people.

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Shifting the focus of AIDS history away from the coasts to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, this impressive book uncovers how homonormative political strategies weaponized the AIDS crisis to fuel gentrification. During the height of the epidemic, white gay activists and politicians pursued social acceptance by assimilating to Midwestern cultural values. This approach, Dr. René Esparza argues in From Vice to Nice: Midwestern Politics and the Gentrification of AIDS (UNC Press, 2025), diluted radical facets of LGBTQ activism, rejected a politics of sexual dissidence, severed ties with communities of color, and ushered in the destruction of vibrant queer spaces.
Drawing from archival research, oral histories, and urban studies from the 1970s through the 1990s, Dr. Esparza illustrates how the onset of the AIDS epidemic provided a pretext for further criminalization of perceived sexual deviance, targeting sex workers, “promiscuous” gay men, and transgender women. More than the criminalization of people and behaviors, this time period also saw increased targeting of urban venues such as bathhouses, adult bookstores, and public parks where casual, anonymous encounters occurred. Cleansing the city of land uses that undermined gentrification became a protective measure against AIDS, and the most marginalized bore the brunt of the ensuing surveillance and displacement. From Vice to Nice illuminates how, despite purporting seemingly progressive values, LGBTQ Midwestern politics of conformity leveraged the AIDS crisis to further instigate racial and sexual exclusion and fundamentally alter the urban landscape.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.

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