When They Dont Look Like US

Cities tell stories. Stories of ambition, resilience, and survival. Yet, for many Black communities, these stories have been written in the margins, shaped by forces that deny their agency while exploiting their labor and culture. Urban sociology has long examined the dynamics of race and space, but too often, the lived experiences of Black people are reduced to statistics, stripped of complexity, and framed through deficit narratives.

This book begins where those narratives end. It is not simply about theory, though theory matters. It is not only about policy, though policy shapes lives. It is about practice, the everyday realities of navigating neighborhoods marked by segregation, gentrification, and systemic neglect. It is about the tension between visibility and invisibility, about what happens when the people who define urban life are told they do not belong in the very spaces they built.

When They Don’t Look Like Us is a call to reimagine urban sociology through the lens of Black experience, not as an afterthought, but as a central framework for understanding cities. It interrogates power, challenges assumptions, and offers pathways toward equity-driven urban futures. For scholars, policymakers, and anyone committed to justice, this work insists on a simple truth: cities cannot thrive when they turn their backs on the people who make them whole.