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Tuesday, May 26, 2020

White Americans Who Fear Non-Whites, Prefer Authoritarian Govt - Living In White Space While Black



This certainly isn't surprising.  From NBC News:
 "Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled "White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy." Their study finds a correlation between white American's intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy."

White Space - someone linked to this sociology paper in response to the Amy Cooper video calling the police saying she was being attacked by an African American male, who simply asked her to get her dog on its leash as required in Central Park as he videos her reaction.
"Abstract
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
2015, Vol. 1(1) 10–21
© American Sociological Association 2014 DOI: 10.1177/2332649214561306 sre.sagepub.com
                  Since the end of the Civil Rights Movement, large numbers of black people have made their way into settings previously occupied only by whites, though their reception has been mixed. Overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, restaurants, and other public spaces remain. Blacks perceive such settings as “the white space,” which they often consider to be informally “off limits” for people like them. Meanwhile, despite the growth of an enormous black middle class, many whites assume that the natural black space is that destitute and fearsome locality so commonly featured in the public media, including popular books, music and videos, and the TV news—the iconic ghetto. White people typically avoid black space, but black people are required to navigate the white space as a condition of their existence."
And yet one more on the same subject.  

"#LivingWhileBlack: Blackness As Nuisance
American University Law Review, Vol. 69, 2020
Rutgers Law School Research Paper
52 Pages Posted: 4 Mar 2020
Taja-Nia Y. Henderson
Rutgers Law School
Jamila Jefferson-Jones
University of Missouri at Kansas City - School of Law
Date Written: February 10, 2020
Abstract
In 2018, the powerful combination of high-quality cellphone video and social media brought to light a barrage of incidents involving 911 calls reporting that Black people were occupying spaces that the callers believed they ought not occupy. In nearly all of these cases, the targeted men, women, and children were in places in which they had a legal right to be and engaging in activities in which they had a legal right to engage. Widely circulated and debated on social media, these incidents all went “viral,” spawning a series of social media hashtags, most strikingly “#LivingWhileBlack.”
One might see in these incidents a new phenomenon in need of new legal tools. In this Article, we argue that these incidents are not emblematic of anything new, but rather a technology-enhanced incarnation of a much older tradition: the invocation of the property law concepts of nuisance and trespass to exclude Blacks from spaces racialized as “white.” This Article examines both the historical and modern incarnations of this “Blackness as Nuisance” tradition and argues that these efforts to distort property law norms arise from discomfort with racial integration and perceived Black physical mobility. The Article concludes with the suggestion that policymakers carefully consider the intersections of property law and criminal law, and the historical origins of these types of incidents, in order to craft effective responses to these highly charged and potentially dangerous encounters."

I don't think white folks can read too many of these accounts.  We can intellectually understand them, but I'm constantly reminded by friends of color how pervasive this is.  It's part of daily life for them.  

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Mildred Nash, our cross the street neighbor for many years, told us how they adopted their son in Seattle, because the Anchorage adoption agency said, "Sorry, we don't have any black babies" and it didn't matter that Mrs. Nash said she'd take any color baby., They were driving through Idaho and were turned away not only at hotels but also at grocery stores when trying to buy milk. Someone finally told them where blacks were allowed to get milk. So, yes, we went to see Green Book when it came out.

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