Thu, Oct 13, 7 – 8 pm
Miller Branch
Register at bit.ly/hclscashin
Sheryll Cashin discusses her new book, White Space, Black Hood, which traces the history of anti-Black residential caste — boundary maintenance, opportunity hoarding, and stereotype-driven surveillance. It unpacks the current legacy so we can begin the work to dismantle the structures and policies that undermine Black lives. The iconic Black hood, like slavery and Jim Crow, is a peculiar American institution animated by the ideology of white supremacy. Politicians and people of all colors propagated “ghetto” myths to justify racist policies that concentrated poverty in the hood and created high-opportunity white spaces.
Drawing on nearly two decades of research in cities around the U.S., Cashin traces the processes of residential caste and contends that geography is now central to American caste. Poverty-free havens and poverty-dense hoods would not exist if the state had not designed, constructed, and maintained this physical racial order.
Cashin calls for abolition of these state-sanctioned processes. The ultimate goal is to change the lens through which society sees residents of poor Black neighborhoods from presumed thug to presumed citizen, and to transform the relationship of the state with these neighborhoods from punitive to caring.
Deeply researched and sharply written, White Space, Black Hood is a call to action for repairing what white supremacy still breaks.
Cashin is the Carmack Waterhouse Professor of Law, Civil Rights and Social Justice at Georgetown University and an active member of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council. Follow her at sheryllcashin.com and on Twitter @sheryllcashin.
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