The Street

NAA OYO A. KWATE is an associate professor of Africana studies and human ecology at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. An interdisciplinary social scientist with wide ranging interests in racial inequality and African American urban life, her books include Burgers in Blackface: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now. She resides in Philadelphia.   DARNELL MOORE is the Director of Inclusion Strategy for Content & Marketing at Netflix. He is the co-managing editor at The Feminist Wire and the writer-in-residence at the Center on African American Religion, Sexual Politics and Social Justice at Columbia University. Named one of The Root 100’s most influential African Americans, Moore has been published in various media outlets including MSNBC, Huffington Post, EBONY, and others. He is the author of No Ashes in the Fire. He resides in Los Angeles. CAMILO JOSÉ VERGARA is one of the nation’s foremost urban documentarians, Vergara is a recipient of the 2012 National Humanities Medal and was named a MacArthur fellow in 2002. Since 1977, he has photographed some of the country’s most impoverished neighborhoods, repeatedly returning to locations in New York, Newark, Camden, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles. He is also the author of numerous books, the most recent title being Detroit is No Dry Bones. He resides in New York City.

Using MacArthur fellow Camilo José Vergara’s intimate street photographs of Camden, New Jersey as reference points, the essays in this collection address everything from law enforcement to health care in order to analyze these images within the context of troubled histories and misguided policies that have exacerbated racial and economic inequalities.

Foreword  Introduction Part I State Systems and Predatory Profit No. 1 Racial Patterning of Travel in America No. 2 Dignity in an Era of Financialization  No. 3 The Inequitable Erosion of Hospital Care  Part II Symbols and Sentiments No. 4 Building Codes: Built Elements of the Housing Landscape  No. 5 Symbols of Social Suffering  No. 6 Dissonance  No. 7 Race, Gentrification, and the Making of Domestic Refugees  Part III Social Stories and Stigmatized Space No. 8 Housing Segregation and the Forgotten Latino American Story No. 9 Stolen Narratives and Racialized Structural Inequality No. 10 Disinvestment v. The People’s Persistence No. 11 Racial Patterning of Fast Food  Part IV Safety and Security No. 12 Persistence of Black/White Inequities in Infant Mortality  No. 13 Urban Childcare Dilemmas  No. 14 Disinvestment in Urban Schools  No. 15 Racism in Law Enforcement AcknowledgmentsNotes on Contributors