‘Feel an acute need to “correct” what is before their eyes’
Move over “driving while black.” Now it’s just “living while black,” according to one prominent black sociology professor at Yale.
The recent series of highly publicized incidents in which black people have had officers called on them for mundane things like napping in a dorm room or chilling at Starbucks actually has a psychological explanation.
That according to Elijah Anderson, a professor of sociology at Yale University and author of the upcoming book “Black in White Space.”
In an op-ed on Vox headlined “Black Americans are asserting their rights in ‘white spaces.’ That’s when whites call 911,” Anderson argues that “many white people have not adjusted to the idea that black people now appear more often in places of privilege, power, and prestige — or just places where they were historically unwelcome.”
— Elijah Anderson (@ElijaAnderson) August 11, 2018
The highly decorated professor acknowledges the vast successes black Americans have earned, and suggests some whites can’t handle it and “may feel an acute need to ‘correct’ what is before their eyes,” continuing:
White people need to put the black interlopers in their place, literally and figuratively. Black people must have their behavior corrected, and they must be directed back to “their” neighborhoods and designated social spaces.
Not courageous enough to try to accomplish this feat alone, many of these self-appointed color-line monitors seek help from wherever it can be found — from the police, for instance. The “interlopers” may simply want to visit their condo’s swimming pool, something white people typically do without a second thought, or take a nap in a student dorm common room, make a purchase in an upscale store, or drive a “nice” car.
For the offense of straying — for engaging in ordinary behavior in public and being black at the same time — they incur the white gaze along with a call to the police.
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