In 2017, I published a
study on physical activity – focusing on where and how people exercise, and breaking this down by race and gender. I surveyed nearly 500 middle-class black and white professionals around the United States. The research also included in-depth interviews, focus groups and observations of public spaces in cities with varying racial and class compositions including Oakland and Rancho Cucamonga, California; Brentwood, Tennessee; Bowie, Maryland; and Forest Park, Ohio.
I found that race and place significantly inform where people engage in physical activity: White men, white women and black women living in predominately white areas were significantly more likely to engage in physical activity in their neighborhoods. Black men living in predominately white neighborhoods, however, were far less likely to engage in physical activity in the areas surrounding their own homes.
[h=2]Good neighbors?[/h] Black men I interviewed who had jogged in white neighborhoods where they lived reported incidents of the police being called on them, neighbors scurrying to the other side of the street as they approached, receiving disgruntled looks and seeing the shutting of screen doors as they passed. Similar experiences have been documented in public places
like stores,
restaurants and
coffee shops.
...
[h=2]Signaling or survival?[/h] Some black men attempt to make themselves less threatening. When it comes to jogging in white neighborhoods, some of the black men I spoke to wore alumnus T-shirts, carried I.D., waved and smiled at neighbors, and ran in well-lit, populated areas.
This is hardly surprising. Black men do this at work by thinking consciously about their attire, tone and pitch of voice, and behavioral mannerisms. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, many black men are going to great lengths to reduce criminalization by staying in the house,
wearing colorful masks and even forgoing masks altogether.
Sociologists call it a signaling process. Black men call it survival.