Black in White Space
The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
From the vital voice of Elijah Anderson, Black in White Space sheds fresh light on the dire persistence of racial discrimination in our country.
A birder strolling in Central Park. A college student lounging on a university quad. Two men sitting in a coffee shop. Perfectly ordinary actions in ordinary settings—and yet, they sparked jarring and inflammatory responses that involved the police and attracted national media coverage. Why? In essence, Elijah Anderson would argue, because these were Black people existing in white spaces.
In Black in White Space, Anderson brings his immense knowledge and ethnography to bear in this timely study of the racial barriers that are still firmly entrenched in our society at every class level. He focuses in on symbolic racism, a new form of racism in America caused by the stubbornly powerful stereotype of the ghetto embedded in the white imagination, which subconsciously connects all Black people with crime and poverty regardless of their social or economic position. White people typically avoid Black space, but Black people are required to navigate the “white space” as a condition of their existence. From Philadelphia street-corner conversations to Anderson’s own morning jogs through a Cape Cod vacation town, he probes a wealth of experiences to shed new light on how symbolic racism makes all Black people uniquely vulnerable to implicit bias in police stops and racial discrimination in our country.
An unwavering truthteller in our national conversation on race, Anderson has shared intimate and sharp insights into Black life for decades. Vital and eye-opening, Black in White Space will be a must-read for anyone hoping to understand the lived realities of Black people and the structural underpinnings of racism in America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Yale sociologist Anderson (The Cosmopolitan Canopy) examines in this penetrating ethnographic study "the everyday interactions of Black and white Americans" in Philadelphia and other cities. Describing public spaces where people of different races, ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations intermingle as the "cosmopolitan canopy," Anderson notes that "at any moment the racial fault lines that underlie the canopy may suddenly emerge and shake this civility." He details such incidents, including the 2018 arrest of two African American men for "sitting in a Starbucks while Black," and draws from personal experience and research to explain the how the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow continue to shape interactions across the color line, despite the gains of the civil rights movement. He observes people's behaviors in a bar, a community recreation center, and his own gym, "a neutral place with a significant Black presence" that Blacks nevertheless perceive as a white space. While some whites "rush for the exits" when they feel "outnumbered or threatened" in the gym, Anderson notes, others "get their first real taste of Black culture" and "take the opportunity to see Black people up close." Though somewhat dry and academic, this is a fine-grained portrait of how systemic racism operates.
Customer Reviews
Interesting
The individual experiences of Black people dealing with and living with racial discrimination and mistreatment was interesting and sobering. It is focused almost entirely on experiences and race relations in Philadelphia so don’t expect wide coverage. This is a book about race relations in Philadelphia with a little bit of attention on class relations as well.