Why Black Spaces Matter
“Sociologist and historian, W. E. B. Du Bois, famously noted back in 1903 that the central issue of the twentieth century would be the question of the color line. While on the surface, Du Bois was clearly referring to the figurative place of race in the collective imagination, it’s helpful to take his statement about the color line literally to think about the spatialization of race. Race—and its various expressions through culture, legislation, and social mores—has been historically enacted and regulated through physical lines drawn in space. In many ways, the history of racial discrimination and anti-Black sentiments in the United States can be reduced to the prohibitions—both implicit and explicit—against Black bodies in public spaces. The rallying cry of “Black Lives Matter” suggests also that Black spaces matter, a sentiment that makes explicit what most of us have known, if only intuitively, for centuries—that social differences (perceived or real) are instituted through spatial differences.”
- “Why Black Spaces Matter,” in Radical Good Trouble, edited by Barrett Blaker, Rossana Franco Gillian Gingher, Julie Ju-Youn Kim, Katie Reilly, and Will Reynolds (Atlanta, GA: Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021).