Elijah Anderson

Provides an insider's look at the life of inner city Black America

Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City

race and civility in everyday life

The cosmopolitan canopy

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.

The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life

Black in White Space

This edition marks the 25th anniversary of Elijah Anderson's classic study of street life among a gang of people congregating around a bar called 'Jelly's' on Chicago's South Side.

A Place on the Corner, Second Edition

This paperback edition of A Place on the Corner marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elijah Anderson's sociological classic, a study of street corner life at a local barroom/liquor store located in the ghetto on Chicago's South Side. Anderson returned night after night, month after month, to gain a deeper understanding of the people he met, vividly depicting how they created—and recreated—their local stratification system. In addition, Anderson introduces key sociological concepts, including "the extended primary group" and "being down." The new preface and appendix in this edition expand on Anderson's original work, telling the intriguing story of how he went about his field work among the men who frequented Jelly's corner.

"In Black in White Space, Elijah Anderson chronicles moments in which Black people are jarringly and often violently treated as outsiders-- a birder in Central Park, a jogger in a rural Georgia town, or a college student lounging on an elite university quad. Anderson shows that due to expansions in racial equality over the past fifty years, Black Americans increasingly gain access to elite white spaces. But instances of discrimination and harassment serve to remind us that racial barriers are firmly entrenched-- for the elite, the middle-class, and the poor alike. Anderson also delves into the stratifications and stereotypes that have made black and white spaces so persistently separate and difficult to break through, showing that regardless of the social or economic position of a Black person, the stereotype of the iconic ghetto looms in the white imagination, associating all Black people with crime, drugs, and poverty. From conversations on the street corners of Philadelphia with Black men who can't get work to Anderson's own morning jogs through a Cape Cod vacation town, he gathers a wealth of stories to shed new light on the urgent and dire persistence of racial discrimination in the United States"--

Elijah Anderson, called "one of our best urban ethnographers" by the , introduces the concept of the "cosmopolitan canopy": the urban islands of civility amid segregated ghettos, suburbs, and ethnic enclaves.

Elijah Anderson

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