For decades, this neighborhood has been the heart of Paris’s African and Caribbean diaspora. These hair salons have provided a safe space for women, particularly. A space to celebrate Black beauty. A place where, over the long hours of hairstyling, people chat, share knowledge and skills, and weave the networks of solidarity that keep this minority community afloat.

Yet a new policy is putting these Afro hair salons in jeopardy. In December 2024, the Paris police introduced a bylaw forcing salons around Château d’Eau to close at 8 p.m., citing noise, odors, and “public disturbances.”

Just minutes away, bars remain open until 11 p.m., their customers spilling onto the street, smoking and drinking until late. This has led many residents, business owners, and campaigners to denounce the policy as racist and discriminatory. Yet another attempt to whitewash a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood.

In these Afro hair salons, appointments used to stretch late into the evening. People with long workdays would finally find the time to sit down at 6 or 7 p.m., and hairstyles sometimes take hours to complete, as stylists add extensions, do intricate braids, or twist dozens of dreadlocks.

For the business owners, the measure has been devastating. One barber told Al Jazeera that the lost evening hours amounted to 30 percent of his turnover. The amount he loses each month is more than his rent.

The official reason for closing the hair salons was that neighbors complained about noise and smells emanating from them. The police order described late-night salon activity as generating “abusive occupation of public space” and even linked it to “a resurgence of delinquent acts.”

The president of a local neighborhood association complained to AFP that the sidewalks turned into “waiting rooms,” and that residents could no longer “open their windows in summer.”

This might be believable if it weren’t for the bars and restaurants in the surrounding streets, which remain open until 11 p.m., with crowds of smokers and revellers standing in front of them the whole time.

But that is different. Because those people are majority White and wealthy, the same demographic that has rapidly gentrified the area.

When residents complain about the noise from Afro hair salons, they are also repeating stereotypes of Black people as noisy, unruly, and out of place, even in neighborhoods where they have lived for generations.

Behind these complaints lies the reality of gentrification: the arrival of people who may have been drawn to diversity but are not interested in the culture of the neighborhood they are entering. The process of gentrification, in this sense, is often thinly veiled whitefication, squeezing longstanding communities out.

According to SeLoger, property prices in the tenth rose by 60 percent between 2010 and 2020, reaching a median of around €10 000 per square meter. INSEE data shows the area’s demographic profile shifting rapidly as wealthier households move in. What was once an affordable, immigrant-heavy district has become “très tendance,” in the words of real estate brokers.

Rising property prices put longstanding residents under pressure because, on average, Black and other minority communities in France have lower incomes and less accumulated wealth than white households.

This economic gap makes it increasingly difficult for them to afford rent or property in neighborhoods undergoing gentrification, effectively pushing them out. France’s legal framework complicates matters further: the collection of ethnic statistics is largely prohibited, making it hard to quantify the exact disparities or track precisely how gentrification impacts racialized communities. The result is a policy environment where the cultural and economic pressures on minority neighborhoods remain largely invisible.

Ironically, it is often the diversity of neighborhoods like Château d’Eau that draws newcomers. The streets are colorful, vibrant, alive. Instagram feeds highlight wax-print fabrics in shop windows, hookah bars, and international supermarkets with vibrant storefronts. Yet as residents and scholars note, these same newcomers rarely engage with local businesses or the culture beyond surface-level aesthetics.

People are attracted to the idea of living somewhere diverse, but rarely eat at African restaurants, shop at Afro grocery stores, or participate in community life. What they perceive as “noise” or “crowding” is often a social scene from which they are excluded. For some, it is less about disruption and more about discomfort at not being the central actor. In this sense, whiteness dictates whose presence is acceptable and whose is framed as disruptive.

This pattern is repeated across Paris and beyond: diversity becomes a selling point in real estate ads but an inconvenience once new residents arrive.

Scholars describe this process as “whitefication”—the transformation of spaces to suit the tastes, habits, and comfort of white, middle-class residents. Unlike gentrification, which emphasizes rising costs, whitefication highlights the cultural displacement that accompanies it: the way Afro hair salons are shuttered while wine bars thrive, or how traditional dishes are replaced with “fusion” menus curated for Instagram aesthetics.

A study of restaurants near Canal Saint-Martin demonstrated how cultural diversity is used as a selling point, stripped of its roots and made palatable for a White majority. What happens to the salons in Château d’Eau fits the same pattern. What is sought is convenient, curated diversity—where whiteness remains at the heart of everything. Exoticism becomes a seasoning atop the froth of a pumpkin spice latte; ethnic groceries or haircare products are out of place inconveniences.

Gentrification is not inevitable. It is, in fact, a deliberate erasure of minority cultures, keeping only those elements that appeal to a wealthy, white clientele. The bylaw forcing Afro salons to close early is a clear example of a policy upheld by authorities, for the benefit of some residents while further marginalizing others.

The regulation will remain in effect at least until November 2025, reviewed monthly by the prefecture, which has so far shown no sign of relenting. “It is not about transforming or changing the DNA of the neighborhood,” Alexandra Cordebard, mayor of the tenth arrondissement, said in August. She expressed hope for a future “equilibrium” between old and new residents. But many salon owners and customers fear that the balance has already tipped.