Table Of ContentHow Racism
Takes Place
George Lipsitz
How Racism
Takes Place
temple university press
Philadelphia
TemPle UniversiTy Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122
www.temple.edu/tempress
Copyright © 2011 by Temple University
All rights reserved
Published 2011
Permission to revise and reprint selections from three of the author’s earlier publications
is hereby acknowledged:
“The silence of the rams: How st. louis school Children subsidize the super Bowl
Champs,” in John Bloom and michael nevin Willard, eds., Sports Matters: Race,
Recreation and Culture (new york: new york University Press, 2002), 225–245. Copyright
2002 new york University Press.
“The racialization of space and the spatialization of race: Theorizing the Hidden
Architecture of landscape,” Landscape Journal 26, no. 1 (march 2007), 10–23. Copyright
University of Wisconsin Press.
“new Orleans in the World and the World in new Orleans,” Black Music Research Journal
31, no. 2 (2011). Copyright 2011 by the Board of Trustees of the University of illinois.
Used with permission of the University of illinois Press.
library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
lipsitz, George.
How racism takes place / George lipsitz.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
isBn 978-1-4399-0255-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — isBn 978-1-4399-0256-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
isBn 978-1-4399-0257-8 (e-book)
1. United states—race relations. 2. United states—social conditions. 3. racism—economic
aspects—United states. 4. income distribution—United states. 5. African Americans—social
conditions. 6. African Americans—economic conditions. 7. Human geography—United
states. i. Title.
e185.615.l5765 2011
305.800973—dc22
2010045079
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American national
standard for information sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed library materials,
Ansi Z39.48-1992
Printed in the United states of America
2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1
Contents
introduction: race, Place, and Power 1
SECTION 1 Social Imaginaries and Social Relations
1 The White spatial imaginary 25
2 The Black spatial imaginary 51
SECTION II Spectatorship and Citizenship
3 space, sports, and spectatorship in st. louis 73
4 The Crime The Wire Couldn’t name: social Decay and 95
Cynical Detachment in Baltimore
A Bridge for This Book Weapons of the Weak 115
and Weapons of the strong
SECTION III Visible Archives
5 Horace Tapscott and the World stage in los Angeles 131
6 John Biggers and Project row Houses in Houston 149
vi Contents
SECTION IV Invisible Archives
7 Betye saar’s los Angeles and Paule marshall’s Brooklyn 169
8 something left to love: lorraine Hansberry’s Chicago 191
SECTION V Race and Place Today
9 new Orleans Today: We Know This Place 211
10 A Place Where everybody is somebody 238
notes 257
Acknowledgments 291
index 293
How Racism
Takes Place
Introduction
Race, Place, and Power
it is an aspect of their sense of superiority that
the white people of America believe they have
so little to learn.
—martin luther King, Jr.
What happened to the hopes of the civil rights movement? What
has become of Dr. King’s dream? How can it be that decades
after the adoption of comprehensive civil rights laws, racial iden-
tity remains the key variable in shaping opportunities and life chances for
individuals and groups in the United states? Why does race still matter so
much? The most popular answers to these questions lead us in exactly the
wrong directions. since the 1970s, politicians, pundits, and publicists have
argued that Black people have shown themselves to be simply unfit for free-
dom. They argue that in a time when civil rights laws clearly ban discrimina-
tion, the persistence of racial inequality demonstrates that Blacks have been
unable to take advantage of the opportunities afforded them. equal opportu-
nity exists, they contend, so unequal outcomes have to be attributed to what
they perceive to be the deficient values, beliefs, and behaviors of Black people
themselves. At times those who adhere to these positions concede that past
generations of Blacks had legitimate grievances about slavery, segregation,
vigilante violence, and disenfranchisement, but they argue that the problems
that Black people confront today are of their own making. What was once
done to them by white racists, this line of argument contends, Blacks are
now doing to themselves. inequality between races today, they claim, exists
because Blacks allegedly commit more crimes, have lower rates of marriage,
and higher rates of children born out of wedlock. They contend that Black
students perform poorly on standardized tests because they and their parents
do not value education, and that they are disproportionately poor because
