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.