21st Annual Goldstone Forum

The White Backlash

A talk from Professor Elijah Anderson, Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University, and one of the leading urban ethnographers in the United States

Since the end of the Civil Rights Movement, large numbers of Black people have made their way into spaces previously occupied only by Whites, though their reception has been mixed.  To be sure, many Whites encouraged and supported racial equality and progress, but many others, consumed by deeply held prejudices, powerfully resisted these changes, which they feared abrogated their own rights and assumed privileges.  Black people now reside in formerly White neighborhoods, attend the best schools, pursue the professions of their choosing, and occupy various positions of power, privilege, and prestige. Over the years, the resistance to this racial progress has grown, and now constitutes a powerful White backlash.

Reception to follow the talk.

***Event entry is on a first come-first serve basis***

About the Speaker

Elijah Anderson is the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University, and one of the leading urban ethnographers in the United States. His publications include Code of the Street: Decency, Violence, and the Moral Life of the Inner City (1999), winner of the Komarovsky Award from the Eastern Sociological Society; Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community (1990), winner of the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best published book in the area of Urban Sociology; and the classic sociological work, A Place on the Corner(1978; 2nd ed., 2003); The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life was published by WW Norton in 2011.  Anderson’s most recent ethnographic work, Black in White Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2022.  Additionally, Professor Anderson is the recipient of the 2017 Merit Award from the Eastern Sociological Society and three prestigious awards from the American Sociological Association, including the 2013 Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award, the 2018 W.E.B. DuBois Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award, and the 2021 Robert and Helen Lynd Award for Lifetime Achievement.  And, he is the 2021 winner of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology.