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Black placemaking: Celebration, play, and poetry

Author(s): Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta; Hunter, Marcus; Patillo, Mary; Robinson, Zandria

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Abstract: Using Chicago as our case, this article puts forth a notion of black placemaking that privileges the creative, celebratory, playful, pleasurable, and poetic experiences of being black and being around other black people in the city. Black placemaking refers to the ways that urban black Americans create sites of endurance, belonging, and resistance through social interaction. Our framework offers a corrective to existing accounts that depict urban blacks as bounded, plagued by violence, victims and perpetrators, unproductive, and isolated from one another and the city writ large. While ignoring neither the external assaults on black spaces nor the internal dangers that can make everyday life difficult, we highlight how black people make places in spite of those realities. Our four cases – the black digital commons, black public housing reunions, black lesbian and gay nightlife, and black Little League baseball -elucidate the matter of black lives across genders, sexualities, ages, classes, and politics.
Publication Date: Dec-2016
Citation: Hunter, Marcus Anthony, Mary Pattillo, Zandria F. Robinson, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor. "Black Placemaking: Celebration, Play, and Poetry."
DOI: doi:10.1177/0263276416635259
ISSN: 0263-2764
Pages: 1 - 26
Language: English
Type of Material: Journal Article
Journal/Proceeding Title: Theory, Culture and Society
Version: Final published version. This is an open access article.



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