White Space, Black Hood

Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality

By: Sheryll Cashin

Narrated by: Lynnette R. Freeman

Shows how government created “ghettos” and affluent white space and entrenched a system of American residential caste that is the linchpin of US inequality - and issues a call for abolition.

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. In White Space, Black Hood, Sheryll Cashin traces the history of anti-Black residential caste - boundary maintenance, opportunity hoarding, and stereotype-driven surveillance - and unpacks its current legacy so we can begin the work to dismantle the structures and policies that undermine Black lives.

Drawing on nearly two decades of research in cities including Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, New York, and Cleveland, Cashin traces the processes of residential caste as it relates to housing, policing, schools, and transportation. She 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. She calls for investment in a new infrastructure of opportunity in poor Black neighborhoods, including richly resourced schools and neighborhood centers, public transit, Peacemaker Fellowships, universal basic incomes, housing choice vouchers for residents, and mandatory inclusive housing elsewhere.

Deeply researched and sharply written, White Space, Black Hood is a call to action for repairing what white supremacy still breaks.

©2021 Sheryll Cashin (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“While extensively documented and amply footnoted, Cashin’s survey remains compelling and accessible to a general readership. A resonant, important argument that White supremacy and racial division poison life in our cities.” —Kirkus Reviews

“In White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality, Sheryll Cashin demonstrates how durable and pervasive anti-Black rhetoric has been in American thought from the days of Thomas Jefferson to the era of Donald Trump . . . . Cashin explains how racial presumptions once used to justify enslavement eventually led to mandatory segregation in housing.” —Washington Post

“White Space, Black Hood makes a powerful case that ‘geography as caste is destroying America.’ It will be impossible to heal the soul of the country without addressing the defining problem this extraordinary book illuminates.” —Richard D. Kahlenberg, New Republic

Understanding institutional racism and possibilities to transform our future

Among many books I have read lately your book gives great insight and details into the legacy of racism in America. It’s hard to believe anyone armed with the facts of this history doesn’t see a need for change and understand how we all would benefit. That being said I particularly appreciated the many examples you provided that showed promising outcomes for systematic change and the hopefulness it gave me. I think our shared brutal history of hate and dominance and economic repression also highlights a resilience and focus of good decent people on the future and positive change for our children and our children’s children. Thank you for all your research of details that blend together to show our combined, complicated history, also showing the indisputable systemic, institutional racism that has created a domino effect in the economy’s of urban development and economic prosperity for blacks in America. Again revealing correct information serves to enhance and empower us all and blend “others“ into us!

Powerful exposition about geography and race

Prof. Cashin does a masterful job of elucidating the many ways in which spatial segregation furthers racism and inequality in the United States in a variety of contexts from schooling to housing and criminal justice reform. It is a reminder that, while race matters, place also matters and you cannot pursue true equality without uncoupling the two.

Must Read (Listen)

I cannot recommend this book enough. Over 67 years ago, Brown v. Bd. of Educ. of Topeka declared that "[s]eparate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Yet, we as lawyers need to realize that our federal, state, and local laws have created separate and inherently unequal communities where it is extremely difficult (at the very least) for a huge segment of our population to live out the proverbial American Dream.