The construct of place has largely been under-utilized, and, therefore, under-theorized, in social science discussions regarding systematic racial oppression, but we need to consider physical space or symbolic (i.e. social/political) place in our ideas about both racial identity formation and racial relations. During the Jim Crow era, blacks were expected to ‘stay in their place’, and that place was always subservient to the position of whites. Despite advances by racial/ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged groups, vestiges of this American Jim Crow belief system still operate in society. The author contends that recent widespread voter suppression efforts commencing en masse since 2010 are not a rejection of black bodies per se but a response to perceived black (and brown) bodies out of place. The article provides a framework to help illuminate the presence of continued systematic pushback against the advances of minorities amidst a growing discourse of colorblindness.
AlvarezMRBaileyDKatzJN (2011) An empirical bayes approach to estimating ordinal treatment effects. Political Analysis19(1): 20–31 (doi: 10.1093/pan/mpq033 26–30, 2010).
2.
BainPG. (2013) Collective futures: How projections about the future of society are related to actions and attitudes supporting social change. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin39(4): 523–539.
Bonilla-SilvaE (2013) Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Inequality in America, 4th edn e-book. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
ChomskyN (1999[1979]) Language and freedom. Resonance4: 85–104.
8.
ClarkeK (2008) The Congressional record underlying the 2006 reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. Harvard Civil Rights–Civil Liberties Law Review (CR–CL)43(2): 385–434.
9.
CombsBH (2013) From Selma to Montgomery: The Long March to Freedom. New York: Routledge.
10.
CraigMARichesonJA (2014) More diverse yet less tolerant? How the increasingly diverse racial landscape affects white Americans’ racial attitudes. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin40(6): 750 (doi:10.1177/0146167214524993).
LiebermanES (2001) Causal inference in historical institutional analysis: A specification of periodization strategies. Comparative Political Studies34(9): 1011–1035.
23.
LipsetSM (1958) A sociologist looks at history. Pacific Sociological Review, Spring: 13–18.
24.
LopezMH (2011) The Latino electorate in 2010: More voters, more non-voters. Washington, DC: Pew Hispanic Center. Available at: http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/141.pdf (accessed 28 December 2013).
25.
McGuireD (2010) At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance – A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. New York: Vintage Books.
26.
MycoffJDWagnerMWWilsonDC (2009) The empirical effects of voter id laws: Present or absent?Political Science42: 121–126.
27.
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (2011) Defending Democracy: Confronting Modern Barriers to Voting Rights in America. Baltimore, MD: NAACP. Available at: http://naacp.3cdn.net/67065c25-be9ae43367_mlbrsy48b.pdf (accessed 23 November 2013).
28.
NortonMISommersMR (2011) Whites see racism as a zero sum game they are losing. Perspectives on Psychological Science6: 215–218.
29.
OmiMWinantH (1994) Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd edn.New York: Routledge.
30.
OuttenHR. (2012) Feeling threatened about the future: Whites’ emotional reactions to anticipated ethnic demographic changes. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin38(1): 14–25 (doi:10.1177/01461-67211418531).
31.
PiccaLFeaginJ (2007) Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage. New York: Routledge.
32.
PuwarN (2004) Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. London: Berg.
33.
RedlawskDPTolbertCJFrankW (2010) Voters, emotions, and race in 2008: Obama as the first black president. Political Research Quarterly63(4): 875–889.
SewellWH (1992) A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation. American Journal of Sociology98(1): 1–29. Available at JSTOR Journals, EBSCOhost (accessed 7 September 2014).
36.
SlaterDSimmonsE (2010) Informative regress: Critical antecedents in comparative politics. Comparative Political Studies43(7): 886–917.
TatelD (2012) Shelby County v. Holder. (No. 11–5256, United State Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, 18May 2012). Available at: http://1.usa.ov/SmN0jx (accessed 16 August 2014).
39.
TuanY (2001) Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, reprint edn. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
40.
WeiserWRNordenL (2012) Voting law changes in 2012. Brennan Center for Justice. New York: New York University School of Law Press.
41.
WingfieldAHFeaginJR (2012) The racial dialectic: President Barack Obama and the White racial frame. Qualitative Sociology35(2): 143–162.
42.
WingfieldAHFeaginJR (2013) Yes We Can? White Racial Framing in the Obama Presidency, 2nd edn.New York: Routledge.
43.
WrightEIICalhounTC (2006) Jim Crow sociology: Toward an understanding of the origin and principles of Black sociology via the Atlanta sociological laboratory. Sociological Focus39(1): 1–18.
