The 1994 book Living with Racism: The Black Middle-Class Experience, by Joe R. Feagin and Melvin P. Sikes, includes excerpts from several interviews with African Americans about their day-to-day encounters with whites. One black male interviewee, a college student residing in a predominantly white neighborhood, describes walking home from work as a consistently painful experience: “Every day . . . you’re reminded [of] how you’re perceived in society. . . . Just the other day, I was walking down the street, and this white female with a child [passed] a young white male about twenty yards ahead. When she saw me, she quickly dragged the child and herself across the busy street. . . . The police constantly make circles around me as I walk home.”

Such experiences, assert Feagin and Sikes, are common for black Americans who venture into public domains that are usually frequented by...