Christina Jackson

This past June, the U.S. Congress opened a hearing to consider a bill that would create a commission to explore options for reparations for the descendants of enslaved people. Central to this conversation is the question of what is owed to African Americans, and what reparations would look like. Many Americans believe reparations are unnecessary, agreeing with Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who said that he believes the harms of slavery were made right by the civil rights movement and the election of an African-American president. This view serves to bypass the deep, systemic ways that wealth has been taken from the majority of African Americans. It's a history that shapes-and disempowers-Black, largely urban, neighborhoods to this day. The legacy of that history can be seen in places like the Northside neighborhood of Atlantic City, New Jersey, whereas an ethnographer from nearby Stockton University-I recently interviewed longtime residents. Described as the "World's Playground" at the beginning of the 20th century, Atlantic City centered around the glitz, glam, and exclusivity of the boardwalk for white, middle-class tourists. With desegregation of the late 1960s, white middle class residents moved in masses to the suburbs, and from the 1960s to 1980s were the largest racial group to leave the city. As tourism declined, Atlantic City's infrastructure deteriorated, and the city became increasingly stigmatized as a dangerous and dirty place. Casinos were brought to Atlantic City in the 1970s to resuscitate it, but over time they economically polarized the city further. For Black residents, Atlantic City had always been a Jim Crow town, as they were prohibited from being on the boardwalk and "white beaches," except for work. These residents were forced to create their own community in neighborhoods that were substandard and designed through waves of government-sanctioned exclusionary policies of redlining, racial covenants, racial steering, racial zoning, and urban renewal. While these practices are illegal today, they formed a narrative linking Blackness and Black people with financial risk and deleterious effects on neighborhood development that remains.

Advertisements and slogans of “new and improved” places either bypass older residents already living there in a kind of Columbus-style or colonial way, or they repackage the culture that was there in ways to promote more consumerism, like in the cases of Atlantic City.

This case study ethnographically analyzes the propositions made by current residents of color in two gentrifying neighborhoods that endured large scale
urban renewal. Many of the propositions are informed by intergenerational disinvestment into neighborhood ecosystems affected by past renewal. I analyze the visceral ways in which race and class structure
Black intraracial relationships with institutional stakeholders within these neighborhoods that today possess high levels of urban redevelopment and
gentrification. Residents of previously renewed neighborhoods display profound root shock or substantial emotional trauma from the displacement of
a person’s physical environment and the loss of foundational social and economic capital within them. Given this, relationships with invested institutional
entities are fractured and lead to weak social and political engagement. I insert an analysis of trust into redevelopment conversations to focus
more on relationships.They act as a foundation for a stable neighborhood ecosystem leading to the potential for healthy interactions between existing residents and future stakeholders.

We examine WEB Du Bois’s writings about the arts in the NAACP journal The Crisis from 1910–1934 in order to construct a Du Boisian social theory of the arts. The key elements of this
theoretical framework are: artists, money, freedom, organization, truth, beauty, and propaganda.
The most surprising element is propaganda, which for Du Bois meant that art needs to address racial politics. There is a strong sense in Du Bois’s writings that art can and should have socially
transformative effects. Comparing Du Bois’s work to current theories from the sociology of art, we find that Du Bois emphasizes the role of art in social change, while current work treats art primarily as a tool for social reproduction. We argue for expanding the theoretical toolbox of the sociology of the arts through greater consideration of Du Bois’s propaganda concept.

You Just Don’t Go Down There: Learning to Avoid the Ghetto in San Francisco” (co-authored with Professor Nikki Jones) examines how newcomers to the Fillmore neighborhood in San Francisco use racially encoded language to mark parts of the neighborhood and, in turn, the bodies of poor Black residents, as spaces and objects to be avoided and the consequences of this framing for urban redevelopment.

At the start of the twentieth century, the pre-eminent black sociologist, W.E.B. DuBois, identified the color line as America's great problem. While the color line is increasingly variegated beyond black and white, and more openly discussed than ever before as more racial and ethnic groups call America home, his words still ring true.

Today, post-racial and colorblind ideals dominate the American narrative, obscuring the reality of racism and discrimination, hiding if only temporarily the inconvenience of deep racial disparity. This is the quintessential American paradox: our embrace of the ideals of meritocracy despite the systemic racial advantages and disadvantages accrued across generations.

This book provides a sociology of the Black American experience. To be Black in America is to exist amongst myriad contradictions: racial progress and regression, abject poverty amidst profound wealth, discriminatory policing yet equal protection under the law. This book explores these contradictions in the context of residential segregation, labor market experiences, and the criminal justice system, among other topics, highlighting the historical processes and contemporary social arrangements that simultaneously reinforce race and racism, necessitating resistance in post-civil rights America.

Focusing on the body as a visual and discursive platform across public space, we study marginalization as a sociocultural practice and hegemonic schema. Whereas mass incarceration and law enforcement readily feature in discussions of institutionalized racism, we differently highlight understudied sites of normalization and exclusion. Our combined effort centers upon physical contexts (skeletons, pageant stages, gentrifying neighborhoods), discursive spaces (medical textbooks, legal battles, dance pedagogy, vampire narratives) and philosophical arenas (morality, genocide, physician-assisted suicide, cryonic preservation, transfeminism) to deconstruct seemingly intrinsic connections between body and behavior, Whiteness and normativity.