Concerning the “Starbuck While Black” Incident...
For black people in particular, white spaces vary in kind, but their most visible and distinctive feature is their overwhelming presence of white people and their absence of black people. When the anonymous black person enters the white space, others there immediately try to make sense of him or her—to figure out “who that is,” or to gain a sense of the nature of the person’s business and whether they need to be concerned. In the absence of routine social contact between blacks and whites, stereotypes can rule perceptions, creating a situation that estranges blacks. In these circumstances, almost any unknown black person can experience social distance, especially a young black male— not because of his merit as a person but because of the color of his skin and what black skin has come to mean as others in the white space associate it with the iconic ghetto (see Anderson 2011, 2012).
In other words, whites and others often stigmatize anonymous black persons by associating them with the putative danger, crime, and poverty of the iconic ghetto, typically leaving blacks with much to prove before being able to establish trusting relations with them. Accordingly, the most easily tolerated black person in the white space is often one who is “in his place”—that is, one who is working as a janitor or a service person or one who has been vouched for by white people in good standing. Such a person may be believed to be less likely to disturb the implicit racial order—whites as dominant and blacks as subordinate.
Strikingly, a black person’s deficit of credibility may be minimized or tentatively overcome by a performance, a negotiation, or what some blacks derisively refer to as a “dance,” through which individual blacks are required to show that the ghetto stereotypes do not apply to them; in effect, they perform to be accepted. This performance can be as deliberate as dressing well and speaking in an educated way or as simple as producing an ID or a driver’s license in situations in which this would never be demanded of whites.
Depending on how well the black person performs or negotiates, he or she may “pass inspection,” gaining provisional acceptance from the immediate audience. But others there may require additional proof on demand. In public white spaces, like upscale shops or restaurants, many blacks take this sort of racial profiling in stride; they expect it, treat it as a fact of life, and try to go on about their business, hoping to move through the world uneventfully. And most often, with the help of social gloss to ease their passage, they do (E. Goffman 1959); however, on occasion they experience blatant discrimination, which may leave them deflated and offended. White salesmen, security guards, and bouncers repeatedly approach black persons with a disingenuous question, “Can I help you?” The tone of voice and the circumstances belie a true offer of help and define the situation as slightly ominous. A young black male hears the question as “What is your business here?” Most defenders of such spaces prefer to be more indirect in their challenges and queries to avoid offending the black person or incurring lawsuits.
When the anonymous black person can demonstrate that he or she has business in the white space, by producing an ID card, or simply passing an initial inspection, the defending “agents” may relax their guard, at least for the time being. They may then advance from concern with the person’s deficit of credibility to his or her provisional status, suggesting a conditional “pass.” But as the iconic ghetto hovers overhead, this social plateau simply foreshadows further evaluations that typically have little to do with the black person’s essential merit as a person. When venturing into or navigating the white space, black people endure such challenges repeatedly.
via “The White Space” by Elijah Anderson (PDF)
