When you’re Black, ‘Can I help you?’ is rarely a true offer to help | Opinion
Dressing well, speaking in an educated way, producing ID when you don't have to — that's all part of the "dance" Black people have to do when they enter white spaces.
When unknown Black people enter a white space, gatekeepers repeatedly approach them with a question: “Can I help you?” Usually, this is a disingenuous query and not a true offer to help.
When an unfamiliar Black person enters the white space, often the people there immediately try to figure out the nature of the person’s business and whether they need to be concerned. When the Black person is unknown, stereotypes can rule perceptions, creating a situation that can estrange the Black person. In these circumstances, almost any Black person can experience distance, especially a young Black male — not as a measure of his merit as a person but because of his Black skin and its indication of “outsider” status in the white space. Thus, such a Black person is burdened with a deficit of credibility.
Strikingly, a Black person’s deficit may be minimized or tentatively overcome by a performance, or what some Black people refer to derisively as a “dance,” through which a Black person may be inclined to show white people and others that ghetto stereotypes do not apply to them personally. This performance can be as deliberate as dressing well and speaking in an educated way, or as simple as producing an ID or a driver’s license in situations in which this would never be demanded of whites.
Almost by definition, the Black person performs before a distant, judgmental, and unsympathetic audience of gatekeepers — distant because of the extant racial divide, and judgmental and unsympathetic because their minds are typically already made up about the Black person’s “place” and the threat they believe he or she poses to the white space, and perhaps to some of the people standing in judgment. Depending on how effectively the Black person performs or negotiates, he may “pass inspection.”
“Depending on how effectively the Black person performs or negotiates, he may ‘pass inspection.’”
In public white spaces, such as upscale shops or restaurants, many Black people take this sort of racial profiling in stride; they expect it, treat it as a fact of life, as a “Black tax” they must pay, and try to go on about their business, hoping to move through the world uneventfully. And most often, with the help of social gloss to ease their passage, they do so; however, on occasion, they experience blatant discrimination.
White salesmen, security guards, and bouncers repeatedly approach Black people with a disingenuous question: “Can I help you?” The tone of voice and the circumstances belie a true offer of help and define the situation as slightly ominous.
Most defenders of such spaces prefer to be more indirect in their challenges and queries to avoid offending the Black person or incurring lawsuits. When the unfamiliar Black person can demonstrate that he or she has business in the white space, by producing an ID card or simply passing an initial inspection, the defending “agents” or gatekeepers may relax their guard, at least for the time being. The Black person may then advance from a deficit of credibility to a provisional status, suggesting a conditional “pass.”
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But as the iconic ghetto hovers overhead, this social plateau simply leads to further evaluations that typically have little to do with the Black person’s essential merit as a person and everything to do with his or her Blackness and what it has come to mean in the white space. When venturing into or navigating the white space, Black people endure such challenges repeatedly. In white neighborhoods, Black people may anticipate such profiling or harassment by the neighborhood watch group. Defensive whites in these circumstances may be less consciously hateful than concerned and fearful of “dangerous and violent” Black people. In their minds, to scrutinize and stop Black people is to prevent crime and protect the neighborhood.
A more subtle but critical version of this kind of profiling occurs in the typical workplace. From the janitor to a middle-level manager, Black people, until they have established themselves, live under the tyranny of the command performance. Around the office building, the Black male worker comes to be known publicly as “the Black guy in my building,” and if there are a few such “Black guys” working there who “roam” the premises, white workers at times confuse one with another. Given such racial ambiguity, the string of white people standing in line to witness the Black person’s performance, or “dance,” may encourage those who were once approving or convinced to demand an encore. Thus, as long as the Black person is present in the white space, he or she is likely to be “on,” performing before a highly judgmental but distant audience.
Black people now inhabit all levels of the class and occupational structure. They attend the best schools, pursue the professions of their choosing, and occupy various positions of power, privilege, and prestige. But for these people, in the shadows lurks the specter of the iconic ghetto, that netherworld to which white people typically relegate unfamiliar Black people in public places. It is always in the background, shaping the dominant white society’s conception of the anonymous Black person as well as the circumstances of Black people in all walks of life. And it never ends.
Elijah Anderson is the Sterling Professor of Sociology and of African American Studies at Yale University. This article was adapted from “Black in White Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life” (University of Chicago Press, 2022)