A 2021 C. Wright Mills Award Finalist
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 2 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.
Includes historical photos, maps, and charts that illuminate the history of residential segregation as an institution and a tactic of racial oppression.
“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
"Cashin’s levelheaded reform suggestions draw from real-world success stories, such as an outreach program in Richmond, Calif., where gun violence plummeted after “violence-prone” young men were given access to therapy, job training, and a monthly stipend. This is a well-researched and persuasive guide to a major source of inequity in the U.S. "
—Publishers Weekly
“Cashin’s study of the racial foundations of residential castes is an accessible and compelling read that balances historical documents with personal narratives.”
—Library Journal
“This well-researched and accessibly written volume examines the government-created system of residential caste in the US. Cashin also provides ideas for the abolition of these practices to create a more equitable future for all.”
—Ms. Magazine, “September 2021 Reads for the Rest of Us, 9/1”
“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
"In the brilliant and important new book, White Space, Black Hood: Opportunity Hoarding and Segregation in the Age of Inequality, Georgetown law professor, Sheryll Cashin, identifies and condemns three methods of white supremacy at work throughout the United States: boundary maintenance, opportunity hoarding in the form of commercial exclusion and educational apartheid, and stereotype-driven surveillance."
—Counterpunch
"Like slavery and Jim Crow, the Black hood has in many ways been shaped by white supremacy. Politicians from both sides of the aisle, people of all races and nationalities propagated and appropriated this idea of “the ghetto” and the myths around it as a way to “justify racist policies that concentrated poverty in the hood and created high-opportunity white spaces.” Based on nearly 20 years of fieldwork and research in cities such as Baltimore, New York, St. Louis and Chicago, Cashin looks at the housing disparities and redlining as it relates to schools, policing and access to transportation. White Space, Black Hood calls for the abolition of state-sanctioned systemic oppression and calls for a new infrastructure of opportunities in poor Black neighborhoods."
—The Root
“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
“[A] valuable primer on some of the main engines of racial inequality in the modern United States.”
—Heath W. Carter, Christian Century
“Sheryll Cashin is one of the most important civil rights scholars of our time, and White Space, Black Hood is her magnum opus, the searing culmination of decades of research about the devastating consequences of segregation. Cashin builds on Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste to take down liberal and conservative orthodoxies on race. (White) America is not ready for this book.”
—Paul Butler, author of Chokehold: Policing Black Men
“In this brilliant and nuanced new volume, Sheryll Cashin exposes the ways in which American policy decisions, from the early twentieth century to the present, have constructed a ‘residential caste system’ resulting in the entrapment of Black people in high-poverty neighborhoods while ‘overinvesting in affluent white space.’ Riveting and beautifully written, White Space, Black Hood convinces the reader of the centrality of geography in economic and social inequality.”
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
“We need Sheryll Cashin’s scholarship to make sense of the racial inequalities that mar every urban community, and we need her vision to guide us to a more equal society. Illuminating, compassionate, and engrossing . . . an instant classic.”
—Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
“With analytical precision, Sheryll Cashin masterfully tells the story of how Black neighborhoods have been gutted by the system of housing anti-Blackness. . . . White Space, Black Hood is clear, compelling, and demands our attention.”
—Bettina L. Love, author of We Want to Do More Than Survive
“In pulling back the curtain on how residential segregation creates caste for some and economic profit for others, Cashin offers a clear-eyed view of the precarity of our present and provides a path toward a more equitable future.”
—Noliwe Rooks, author of Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education
Prologue: Stories They Told Themselves and a Nation
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1
Baltimore: A Study in American Caste
CHAPTER 2
White Supremacy Begat “the Ghetto”
CHAPTER 3
Segregation Now: The Past Is Not Past
CHAPTER 4
Ghetto Myths and the Lies They Told a Nation
CHAPTER 5
Opportunity Hoarding: Overinvest and Exclude, Disinvest and Contain
CHAPTER 6
More Opportunity Hoarding: Separate and Unequal Schools
CHAPTER 7
Neighborhood Effects: What the Hood and America Demand of Descendants
CHAPTER 8
Surveillance: Black Lives Matter
CHAPTER 9
Abolition and Repair
Acknowledgments
Notes
Image Credits
Index
About the Author
- “Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Radical Vision of Replacing Residential Caste with Communities of Love and Justice,” Beacon Broadside, adaptation of MLK Sunrise Celebration keynote
- “What MLK’s Final Campaign Tells Us About His Legacy,” POLITICO, op-ed
- ““Opportunity Hoarding, Schools, and Racial Reckoning” by Sheryll Cashin (May — Sept 2021 P&R Issue),” Poverty & Race, excerpt
- “How the Buffalo Massacre Proves There’s No ‘Great Replacement,’” POLITICO, op-ed
- “Who can be my neighbor? How a ‘lens of care’ can transform US cities,” Christian Science Monitor, Q&A
- “Book details residential caste and ways to abolish it,” Citizen Weekly, write-up
- “The Jackson Hearings Were an Opportunity for the GOP. They Didn’t Take It,” POLITICO, op-ed
- “Public Comment: The Berkeley Activist’s Diary, Week Ending March 20, 2022,” Berkeley Daily Planet, mention
- “White Space, Black Hood with Sheryll Cashin,” MSNBC “Why Is This Happening?”, podcast interview
- “Nuts & Bolts—Inside a Democratic campaign: Helping voters in poverty vote,” Daily Kos, mentioned in piece
- “In Depth: Sheryll Cashin,” C-SPAN/BookTV, interview
- “This Weekend on Book TV: Rep. Ro Khanna,” Shelf Awareness, included in “This Weekend on BookTV”
- “Black History Month Programming: What’s On TV And Streaming In February,” Deadline, C-SPAN BookTV appearance listed in round-up of Black History Month programming
- “Race and Place: Sheryll Cashin’s new book places geography at the heart of America’s racial segregation and inequality,” Harvard Law Bulletin, interview
- “Black female judges, law students and more on what the Supreme Court nomination means to them,” Washington Post, author included in roundup piece on the Supreme Court nomination
- “At the Bottom of the Empire: Homelessness, Housing Injustice, and Jesse Jackson’s Call to ‘Eradicate Poverty,’” Counterpunch, mention
- “Abolishing the American Caste System w/ Sheryll Cashin,” The Majority Report with Sam Seder, interview
- “Where MLK’s Vision Is Starting to Be Realized,” Politico, op-ed
- “How Residential Segregation Creates a Caste System in America,” Nonprofit Quarterly, write-up
- “The American Residential Caste System,” AMPlified with Aisha Mills on BNC, interview
- “Sheryll Cashin,” WURD “Reality Check,” interview
- “Professor Sheryll Cashin, Omali Yeshitela & Attorney A.Dwight Petitt,” The Carl Neson Show/WOL-FM DC, interview
- “Historical Impediments to Black Economic Growth,” Los Angeles Sentinel, book cited in op-ed
- “Georgetown Law Professor Sheryll Cashin,” Make It Plain with Mark Thompson, interview
- “Sheryll Cashin, Author, White Space, Black Hood,” WGBN-AM Good News (Pittsburgh, PA), interview
- “Dismantling America’s system of residential caste,” On the Record/WYPR (Baltimore NPR), interview
- “White Space, Black Hood with Sheryll Cashin,” KUT “In Black America” (Austin NPR), interview
- “Sheryll Cashin on white spaces and Black hoods,” Dialogues with Richard Reeves, podcast interview
- “White Space, Black Hood w/ Sheryll Cashin,” Black and Highly Dangerous, podcast interview
- “How the history of urban segregation still shapes our cities,” Central Time/Wisconsin Public Radio, interview
- “White Space, Black Hood,” C-SPAN/BookTV, Harvard Bookstore September 17, 2021 author event recorded
- “Photo of the Day,” PW Daily, “Photo of the Day” image from Cashin’s September 16, 2021 Politics & Prose virtual event featured in newsletter
- “When a White-majority neighborhood wants to divorce its Black city,” CNN.com, featured interview
- “On America’s Residential Caste System—and How to Abolish It,” YES! Magazine, interview
- “PageTurners: Literature Racing Against Time, Ghosts, Past Decisions, and Police in the 1960s,” The Root, book included in PageTurners roundup slideshow
- “Links: Bishops’ Eucharist document; a pro-family president; racial divides in housing,” National Catholic Reporter, mention
- “It’s Time to Dismantle America’s Residential Caste System,” Politico, adapted excerpt
- “New Nonfiction: Second Half of 2021,” Book Riot, included in new 2021 nonfiction roundup
- “8 Anticipated 2021 Nonfiction Books,” Book Riot, listed in anticipated 2021 books roundup
- “How the Government Created ‘The Ghetto,’” The Root, video covering themes from book ran 3/4, with corresponding piece mentioning forthcoming book
- “There’s a Term for What Happened at the Capitol This Week: ‘Whitelash,’” Politico, op-ed