Narrating the Racialization of Space in Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee
Narrating the Racialization of Space in Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee

Summary/Abstract: People of color in the United States have been obligated to move through public space in particular ways, dictated by law and social custom. Narrators create cognitive maps of movement in the city shaped by racial codes of behavior. The maps change over time as law and social custom changes. The fluidity of the maps is also influenced by status, gender, class, and skin tone. This paper examines a rich body of oral narratives co-created with African Americans in Austin, Texas and Nashville, Tennessee from 2004 to 2014, focusing on how men and women narrate their concepts of racialized space. It moves from narratives about the larger landscape – the city – to smaller, more personal public places – the sidewalk and the store – to intimate sites of contact in the public sphere. Many of the narratives describe complex flows of controlled movement dictated by racial boundaries in the context of capitalism. The narratives form an urban ethnography of the power relations inscribed on the landscape by racializing movement in space.

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