Shared & Contested Space

Ohlone territory, the contemporary San Francisco Bay Area, is a geography defined by centuries of imperial displacement and resilient migration. Following the mid-nineteenth-century transition from Mexican to US rule, the region became a site of intense racialized labor and migration. US imperial projects in the Pacific, specifically the wars in Korea and Vietnam, brought refugee populations into a landscape already being transformed by the Second Great Migration of Black Americans. This resulted in an urban topography where Black and Asian communities navigated the same neighborhoods and schools, though these spaces were often contested by institutional lending practices that favored Asian immigrant entrepreneurs over long-time Black residents.

The Shared and Contested Spaces Collection catalogs the physical and digital touchpoints of this interaction. It focuses on material sites such as Eastridge Mall, BART stations, community murals, and cultural centers where daily life and struggle unfold. As the contemporary tech sector drives new waves of gentrification and displacement, the nature of Black and Asian contact has also expanded into digital and aesthetic realms. These imagined landscapes are explored through the lens of Bay Area filmmakers, including the radical critiques of racial capitalism in Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, the evocative storytelling of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, and the nuanced explorations of youth in Sean Wang’s Dìdi. By examining both the physical streets and the cinematic vernacular of the Hyphy movement and Hip Hop, this collection reveals how communities negotiate shared cultural languages amidst the shifting tides of class privilege and regional dispossession.