#LivingWhileBlack: Blackness as Nuisance and the Racialization of Space

Originally aired on January 19, 2023

The hashtag #LivingWhileBlack first appeared as a social media hashtag to mobilize attention to incidents where white people called the police on Black people for engaging in non-criminal, everyday activities. The explosive combination of high-quality cell phone video and ubiquitous social media platforms revealed to the public several incidents where the police were called to report Black people in spaces that the callers believed they ought not be. In each of these cases, the Black men, women, and children were occupying spaces in which they had rights to be and undertaking activities they had a right to undertake. The ability of social media to make these incidents go viral has not revealed a new phenomenon. Rather, it has simply highlighted the modern incarnation of a much older one phenomenon: Attempts to use the basis of nuisance and trespass from property law as a way to exclude Black Americans from what the callers believe to be “white” spaces. Professor Jefferson-Jones examines both the historical and modern incarnations of this “Blackness as Nuisance” doctrine, and how this attempt to distort property law norms arises from a sense of racial entitlement and discomfort with racial integration. Professor Jefferson-Jones will discuss her research which highlighted language that either explicitly called for exclusion of the victim based on his or her race or that employed racially coded language (“dog whistles”) to call for police force to be used to remove Black people from shared spaces. Finally, she will discuss why policymakers need to consider the intersections of property law and criminal law, and the historical origins of these types of incidents, in order to craft effective responses. Watch the recording.