Black in Public: How witnessing among strangers subverts surveillance on public transit.

Low-income Black and non-Black Latinx urban city residents often rely on public transit as their sole means of transportation. Typically, passengers remain unacquainted with their fellow passengers regardless of identity. They accomplish this by maintaining norms of polite behavior among strangers, also known as paying each other civil inattention. I interrupt this narrative through using ethnographic fieldwork on Los Angeles bus, light rail, and subway trips to trace the process where two or more strangers decide to shift from polite non-interaction to what I term as witnessing. Witnessing is an identity-informed decision to see and be seen in public spaces where the participants are the minority. More than a passing glance, witnessing includes mutual consent, a temporary social contract, and situational performance. Using the case study of Black passengers--a racial group that face increased people-surveillance in public--this paper further defines Black witnessing. Black people in public spaces perform witnessing through sustained eye contact, intentional head nods, and continued engagement. These findings advance the salience of race in everyday life through an examination of how unacquainted strangers use witnessing to subvert surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]