Have yall read this? It came across my twitter feed a few minutes ago and am reading it now. It already feels like it is going to be a life changing read for me. As someone who often finds herself in the white space, sometimes by choice and other time by necessity....this paper really resonates so far.

This right here is so accurate...wow .... just wow.

When present in the white space, blacks reflexively
note the proportion of whites to blacks, or
may look around for other blacks with whom to
commune if not bond, and then may adjust their
comfort level accordingly; when judging a setting
as too white, they can feel uneasy and consider it to
be informally “off limits.” For whites, however, the
same settings are generally regarded as unremarkable,
or as normal, taken-for-granted reflections of
civil society.

https://sociology.yale.edu/sites/default/files/pages_from_sre-11_rev5_printer_files.pdf

the key to happiness is not being rich;
it's doing something arduous and
creating something of value and then
being able to reflect on the fruits of your labor

especially in light of the starbucks incident and the 14 year old boy getting shot at for knocking on a door for directions...

For black people in particular, white spaces vary in
kind, but their most visible and distinctive feature
is their overwhelming presence of white people
and their absence of black people. When the anonymous
black person enters the white space, others
there immediately try to make sense of him or
her—to figure out “who that is,” or to gain a sense
of the nature of the person’s business and whether
they need to be concerned. In the absence of routine
social contact between blacks and whites, stereotypes
can rule perceptions, creating a situation
that estranges blacks. In these circumstances,
almost any unknown black person can experience
social distance, especially a young black male—
not because of his merit as a person but because of
the color of his skin and what black skin has come
to mean as others in the white space associate it
with the iconic ghetto (see Anderson 2011, 2012).

In other words, whites and others often stigmatize
anonymous black persons by associating them
with the putative danger, crime, and poverty of the
iconic ghetto, typically leaving blacks with much
to prove before being able to establish trusting relations
with them.

the key to happiness is not being rich;
it's doing something arduous and
creating something of value and then
being able to reflect on the fruits of your labor