Respect space for Black life.

Written By Nicole Cardoza

Happy Sunday! And welcome back to the Anti-Racism Daily.

A few years ago, I was at a conference and remember talking to an architect who was studying the disparities of space, per square foot, that Black people are allocated compared to the white community – from affinity spaces on college campuses, square footage of houses, even the average space allotted to each person in a workplace. I haven't stopped thinking about it since.

I was overjoyed to see darryl's submission analyzing this topic further. I hope you find some insight from this too.

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Nicole

TAKE ACTION

  • Respect space for BIPOC – including their pastimes / extracurricular activities, wellness classes, affinity groups, and spiritual circles. 

  • For allies, ask yourself: How you can invite people into spaces where they are traditionally not welcome? How else can you ensure those spaces are preserved using your power and privilege.

  • Read Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body and Spirit by Mary Frances Winters to further understand the harmful effects of racism.

  • Support therapy initiatives for the Black community, like Black Men Heal and Therapy for Black Girls.

GET EDUCATED

By Juan Michael Porter II (he/him)

Last June, demonstrators, mostly Black, peacefully marched on Capitol Hill to protest police violence (Washington Post). As demonstrators held signs and chanted slogans denouncing racial violence, they were met with tear gas and sting balls. Earlier this month, mostly white people, wearing MAGA hats and Trump clothing, broke windows and doors, and assaulted uniformed police officers before storming into the Capitol Hill building during a session of Congress (NY Times). The stark contrast between the agency granted to white people – and the limited mobility of Black lives – has harmful effects on Black people. 

 

The daily anxiety linked to the threat of violent encounters with police can cause psychological stress. In Mary-Frances Winters’ Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body and Spirit, she calls this race-based traumatic stress injury. I would argue that at the center of race-based traumatic stress injury is race-based geography--the trauma caused by the limits of Black physical space.   

Controlling and limiting space is imperative to exercising power over Black lives. During slavery, enslaved Africans’ geography was confined to slave auctions, slave ships, slave quarters, and plantations. The enslaved were also falsely diagnosed with drapetomania, runaway slave syndrome (EJI.org). By limiting the physical, and mental, mobility of enslaved Africans, white supremacists were able to establish a legal society that excluded Black life. 

Following slavery, racial barriers placed many formerly enslaved back on plantations as sharecroppers, sometimes working the same fields they were enslaved on (PBS). During the 1950s, as the segregated Jim Crow era came to a close, Black people managed to carve out a life in major cities across the U.S. 

Despite this progress, Black communities still had limited mobility. Following the second wave of the Great Migration (1940-1970), Black people were regulated to their side of the tracks (African American Intellectual Historical Society). Laws, job ceilings, and housing covenants dictated where Black people could live and how much they could earn on their jobs. Many cities were still too racist and dangerous for Black people to travel to (for more about sundown towns, check out our previous newsletter). Living under the thumb of limited agency, and working with the understanding that, as minorities, one has to work twice as hard as a whites, is a heavy burden that can cause internalized oppression, low-self esteem, and self-doubt, among other issues (Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body and Spirit). 

Richard Wright’s celebrated narrative Native Son does a brilliant job detailing how limited space affects Black lives. Wright’s opus commences with the Thomas family waking up in a wooden floor kitchenette. The main character, Bigger Thomas, endures his mother singing a melody about being brave, which bothers Bigger. The thought of being a poor Black man living in a small kitchenette with his family seeps into Bigger’s psyche, leading him to question his worthiness.  Bigger grows frustrated when asked by his mother if he would accept a job offer from a wealthy white family. Bigger’s anger is connected to his exclusion from white space, yet he has to rely on a white family in order to sustain a living (Native Son). 

Less than a decade after the publication of Native Son, President Harry S. Truman signed the 1949 Housing Act (Truman Library). New, affordable housing seemed promising to Black families living in kitchenettes, shotgun houses, or multiple families sharing one house. But the construction of federally funded housing came with furtive forms of carceral power, such as surveillance cameras, curfews, police raids, onsite court, and metal detectors, as well as prison-like bars that covered windows, doors, and linked buildings throughout the housing projects. 

Living in government-controlled spaces, which are constructed like prisons, can psychologically prepare Black people for jail. As activist and author, George Jackson writes in Soledad Brothers: “Being born a slave in a captive society, I was prepared for prison. It only required minor adjustments.” Braving oneself for life in jail leads to a combative mindset, which for Black people, places them under stereotypes of being contentious.  

Also, colleges and universities have struggled with creating safe spaces for minority students. “Schools who are serious about creating safe spaces and fostering conversations around diversity need to give faculty the appropriate training and tools,” writes Emily Deruy (The Atlantic).

The lack of agency and freedom of movement Black people experience in their communities can also help explain why geography is important to gang members. Men who are locked out of jobs, stagnated at low-paying job sites, or have limited control inside their homes – as seen with Bigger Thomas – may exercise destructive ideals of masculinity outside of the home by controlling blocks, streets, parks, or entire neighborhoods. Living under the control of local, state and federal power can impel gang members to exercise patriarchal behavior through gang leadership and to exert dominance through territory (Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics).  

Race-based geography is also part of the prison industrial complex (The Atlantic). Created in Rikers Island Prison in 1993 as a way for Black detainees to protect themselves from the dominant Latin Kings, New York City’s Bloods gang has morphed into one of the most widespread gangs in the United States (Public Intelligence). Today, Bloods dominate Rikers Island, but the gang employs some of the same geographical barriers on non-gang members as Latin Kings placed on them prior to the Bloods formation. 

The joint effort between local, state and federal government to implement job ceilings, heavy policing, racial violence, discriminatory laws, and limited movement harms Black life and Black communities. Recently, Oakland, Calif. implemented “Slow Streets,” a program that restricts the movement of vehicles on 74 miles of residential streets, which mirrors the role infrastructure has played in upholding racism (Washington Post). “Slow Streets'' follows the disturbing historical narrative of limiting Black mobility (Bloomberg City Lab). 

For months, Black people have withstood rants from Trump about Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Yet nothing that these former groups have done remotely compares to the insurrection on Capitol Hill (Washington Post). How do Black people process the unfairness in Breonna Taylor losing her life while asleep in her home, yet white rioters are allowed to run rampant on Capitol Hill? 

If the U.S. was to strip these mobility limitations, spaces – such as universities, corporate America, and in the presence of police officers – would no longer hinder Black life. Freedom of agency would also close the wealth gap, which is roughly as large as it was in 1950, and build healthy relationships and trust between people of power, medical officials, and police authority (New York Times). 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • The daily anxiety linked to the threat of violent encounters with police can cause psychological issues.

  • The possibility of encountering violent police officers, discriminated against, or experiencing racial encounters can cause anger, aggression, and defensiveness in Black people. 

  • The lack of agency Black experience in their communities can also help explain why geography is important to gang members.

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Nicole Cardoza
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