Abstract The economic analysis of racial discrimination in public accommodations is remarkably limited. To study this issue, we construct a national data set of nondiscriminatory establishments from the Negro Motorist Green Books, a travel guide published from 1936 to 1966 to aid Black Americans in finding nondiscriminatory retail and service establishments. We document patterns in the geographic spread and evolution of Green Book establishments, as well as the correlates of Green Book presence. We find that economic and social measures, as well as state laws relating to racial discrimination and antidiscrimination, were correlated with the provision of nondiscriminatory services. We then use the Green Book data to test whether market conditions and white consumer discrimination led businesses to bar Black customers prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. We use plausibly exogenous variation from white World War II casualties and Black migration patterns to isolate the effect of a change in the racial composition of consumers on the growth of nondiscriminatory businesses. We find that the share of nondiscriminatory establishments grew faster in locations with larger increases in the share of the Black population, but the magnitudes were small. These results highlight the importance of federal legislation in ending racial discrimination in public accommodations.
more »
« less
More than a Modern Day Green Book: Exploring the Online Community of Black Twitter
The Negro Motorist Green Book was a tool used by the Black community to navigate systemic racism throughout the U.S. and around the world. Whether providing its users with safer roads to take or businesses that were welcoming to Black patrons, The Negro Motorist Green Book fostered pride and created a physical network of safe spaces within the Black community. Building a bridge between this artifact which served Black people for thirty years and the current moment, we explore Black Twitter as an online space where the Black community navigates identity, activism, racism, and more. Through interviews with people who engage with Black Twitter, we surface the benefits (such as community building, empowerment, and activism) and challenges (like dealing with racism, appropriation, and outsiders) on the platform, juxtaposing the Green Book as a historical artifact and Black Twitter as its contemporary counterpart. Equipped with these insights, we make suggestions including audience segmentation, privacy controls, and involving historically disenfranchised perspectives into the technological design process. These proposals have implications for the design of technologies that would serve Black communities by amplifying Black voices and bolstering work toward justice.
more »
« less
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10346612
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
- Volume:
- 5
- Issue:
- CSCW2
- ISSN:
- 2573-0142
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 29
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Background: Structural racism is a root cause of health inequality . R esponding to structural racism requires interventions to address systemic inequalit ies that structure poor health , particularly for people with intersecting Black , Latinx , and LGBTQ+ identities . However, l ittl e is known about successful strategies to combat structural racism . Using in - depth , qualitative, community - based participatory research methods, we describe two community interventions in Central Florida that responded to structural racism during the Summ er of 2020. Methods: Findings draw from ongoing qualitative , community - based research that began in 2016 . Data collected include in - depth interviews with leaders and members of community - based organization s that advance intersectional racial and gender justice (n= 54); state legislators (n=2); and clinical service providers (n=4). During the summer of 2020 , community organization leaders created two efforts to combat systemic racism : the “LGBTQ+ Relief Fund” and the “All Black Lives Fund.” The LGBTQ+ Reli ef Fund responded to economic inequality structuring high rates of COVID - 19 among Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ identifying people, and the All Black Lives Fund responded to political and economic disparities in funding Black - led LGBTQ+ organizations. Results: C ommunity interventions resulted in over 800 LGBTQ+ individuals receiving financial assistance during the COVID - 19 pandemic, including LGBTQ+ people who were excluded from statewide interventions such as undocumented immigrants . The All Black Lives Fund d istributed $100,000 to three Black - led LGBTQ+ social movement organizations. Discussion : The se efforts provide examples of community - based approaches to respond to systemic racism as a root cause of poor health. Findings also demonstrate the importance of intersectionality and in - depth qualitative research in public healthmore » « less
-
While research has been conducted with and in marginalized or vulnerable groups, explicit guidelines and best practices centering on specific communities are nascent. An excellent case study to engage within this aspect of research is Black Twitter. This research project considers the history of research with Black communities, combined with empirical work that explores how people who engage with Black Twitter think about research and researchers in order to suggest potential good practices and what researchers should know when studying Black Twitter or other digital traces from marginalized or vulnerable online communities. From our interviews, we gleaned that Black Twitter users feel differently about their content contributing to a research study depending on, for example, the type of content and the positionality of the researcher. Much of the advice participants shared for researchers involved an encouragement to cultivate cultural competency, get to know the community before researching it, and conduct research transparently. Aiming to improve the experience of research for both Black Twitter and researchers, this project is a stepping stone toward future work that further establishes and expands user perceptions of research ethics for online communities composed of vulnerable populations.more » « less
-
Hansson, Karin ; Cerratto, Teresa ; Bardzell, Shaowen (Ed.)Online activism showcases how available digital tools allow social movements to emerge, scale up, and extend globally by fundamentally enabling new forms of power. This special issue brings together eight research articles that engage with the collaborative efforts embedded in various types of activism by studying features such as the socio-technical systems involved; how the activism is organized; relations between traditional and social media; and the complex network of systems, information, people, values, theories, histories, ideologies, and aesthetics that constitutes such activisms. The articles show the spaces in which this activism materializes, and particularly their situation in several intersecting dimensions including motivation, culture, language, and infrastructure. Together, these articles reflect the methodological breadth required to materialize online activism and the need to develop a more nuanced conceptualization of the media ecologies involved. By mapping out how activism is enabled and constrained by human-computer interfaces, this special issue contributes to open up the black box of online activism.more » « less
-
more » « less
With increased focus on historically excluded populations, there have been recent calls for HCI research methods to more adequately acknowledge and address the historical context of racism, sexism, gendered racism, epistemic violence, classism, and so on. In this article, we utilize Black feminist epistemologies to serve as critical frameworks for understanding the historical context that reveals the interconnected systems of power that mutually influence one another to create unequal outcomes or social inequalities for different populations. Leveraging Black feminist thought (BFT) and intersectionality as critical social theories of design praxis, we introduce intersectional analysis of power—a method that enables HCI researchers, designers, and practitioners to identify and situate saturated sites of violence in a historical context and to transform the ways in which they engage with populations that have been historically oppressed. Engaging in self-reflection as researchers, we apply an intersectional analysis of power to co-design technologies with community street outreach workers who address violence in their predominantly Black communities. We: (1) identify the saturated site of violence; (2) identify the intersecting systems of power and who holds power (past and present); (3) describe the “conceptual glue” that binds these intersecting systems together and the assumption(s) that those who hold power are employing to guide their interactions; (4) examine the ways in which Black people are subjugated, surveilled, and/or expected to assimilate to “normative” ways of being and behaving; and (5) identify acts of resistance. This article contributes an alternative to traditional HCI and design methods that falsely perpetuate a lens of neutrality and colorblindness that centers on whiteness, innovation, and capitalism and ignores the history of State-sanctioned violence and structural oppression.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3479602
