The Geography of Hate

"The Geography of Hate locates the Midwest as a critical site of inquiry and addresses how space, race, and culture intersect in ways that have historically reinforced civic and geographical borders for racial and ethnic minorities. Considering small-town America in the narrative about the Great Migration, Jennifer Sdunzik uncovers a plethora of mechanisms, practices, and attitudes of exclusion prevalent in the small-town Midwest that actively prevented a more dispersed African American population across the region. To expand the conversation of southern black migrants' exclusive destination desires beyond the urban North, she centralizes the midwestern state of Indiana as one important state along the Great Migration corridor for two reasons. This geographic focus allows for an emphasis of black experiences and contributions in small-town America while enabling an in-depth exploration of white acts and actions that curbed, prevented, and erased a black presence in their midst. Interrogating state and communal histories since their inceptions and providing analyses of population data, print media, archival, spatial and ethnographic materials, Sdunzik develops the concept of the "geography of hate" as a theoretical framework and visual manifestation of exclusion and violence. By spatializing and making visible the surreptitious and mainly hidden mechanisms of whiteness, The Geography of Hate provides a fascinating account of how terror and exclusion were cleansed from historical memory"--