Black in White Space

November 15, 2021
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.