There Must Be Room for Black Joy in Public Spaces

I have a decades-old memory of me swaying to music in a 1970s-style shopping mall and being sharply reprimanded by my mother, who felt that a Black person dancing in public was undignified and reinforced racist stereotypes.

I was maybe eight years old. Too young to fully understand the implications of her admonishment, I hung my head from the weight of my mother’s shame projected onto my lanky little body. All I knew was that she believed that, for Black people, especially poor Black people like us, our survival and dignity hinged on presenting well in public.

In the summer of 2020, an uprising was ignited by the public execution of George Floyd. Then in my forties, a professional placemaker and adjunct urban planning professor, I had a greater understanding of my mother’s, and other Black elders’, preoccupation with how their children conducted themselves in public. I was acutely aware of public policies that restricted our public expressions and freedoms and had witnessed countless incidents demonstrating our disproportionate risks. Within my lifetime, the penalty for a Black person perceived to be misstepping in public had never been more clear than it was in the final, excruciating nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds of George Floyd’s life.

The notion that Black people and other groups experiencing disproportionate harm should be able to navigate public spaces without being murdered should be a given. Still, I believe that we should expand our expectations and strive for even more—public joy.

It is not enough to say that joy is already woven into our classic and contemporary texts. There is a difference between creating real or figurative traumascapes with glimmers of joy and laying down joy as a narrative foundation. When joy becomes the premise, the place upon which we build our realities in literature and life, new possibilities within and beyond our communities arise. There is a wealth of documentation focused on our public degradation; why not bend the narrative arc toward Black public joy?

To understand the concept of Black public joy, or public joy of any kind, it’s imperative to first begin by defining, or at least exploring, the dimensions of joy itself. The Journal of Positive Psychology points out: “Joy has been one of the least studied human emotions despite the fact that it is on everyone’s list of basic or primary emotions.”

Often mistakenly conflated with happiness, joy has a number of complex distinctions and dimensions. Matt Sosnowsky, a Philadelphia-based psychotherapist, explains that happiness tends to be situational and momentary, while joy is a more enduring emotion. Others studying the theory and science of joy believe that it is more than an emotion. It is often described as a state of mind of consistent contentment with life born out of resilience, gratitude, and a sense of belonging.

Some experts focus on community as the nucleus of joy, citing the importance of places like parks, cultural events, and walkable communities that facilitate human-scale connection. Other experts focus on the brain and study the ways dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins are activated during particular experiences. The framing and findings of joy research often overlap. For example, brain chemicals that produce what would be considered positive emotions are often activated when people are riding their bikes in protected lanes or sharing a meal in a communal space. These and similar activities also build a sense of belonging and gratitude.

Happiness, however elusive, has been our preferred pursuit, perhaps because we are implicitly socialized to seek emotions considered positive outside of ourselves. Establishing and maintaining a joyful way of being amid the turbulence of life is a far less attractive proposition given the immense amount of labour required, both as individuals and in the constant making and remaking of community.

“What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another?”

Beloved Black feminist scholar Audre Lorde spoke of sharing joy as a way to build bridges across our differences. She also referenced learning “how to take joy in all the people I am,” which affirms our personal pluralism or, more simply said, various aspects of our ever-changing selves. Elizabeth Mudenyo, a brilliant, young, next-generation poet from the part of Toronto where I grew up, writes about “taking joy with both hands” and “making a practice of calling joy into our lives,” which, for me, suggests an active co-creation of joy. I am convinced that the poetry of grasping and making joy into a life practice across the places and stages of our lives is at the core of creating consistent contentment.

Consistent contentment would exist alongside challenging emotions. In a book of essays titled Inciting Joy, author Ross Gay, who is a founding board member of a nonprofit food justice and joy project that advocates for free fruit for all, affirms this contradiction. He asks, “What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another?”

The notion that joy and pain can occur concurrently particularly resonates for me when thinking about public places. All public spaces hold what educator and researcher Herleen Arora describes as a “poetic tension.” From one perspective, public spaces hold histories of colonial atrocity, land-based oppression, physical inaccessibility, and gender-based violence. From another perspective, public spaces hold immense possibility, beauty, and connection. These two opposing forces are always operating amid the cultivation and expression of joy. When I think about public joy, Black or otherwise, I imagine all of these strands, all of our hurts and aspirations, entangled together.

Take the story of Carl Cassell. Having grown up in Jamaica, Cassell was used to a warmth, beyond the temperature, which permeated public spaces. At home, Cassell navigated markets and riverbanks with an ease and confidence that left him entirely unprepared for the chilly reception he would receive in his country of choice.

Upon completing studies in economics and math at the University of the West Indies, Cassell immigrated to Canada. Arriving amid a recession in the early 1990s, he traded in hopes of landing a job as an economist or even an entry-level banking position for an apron in the back of a restaurant. “One moment, I thought I was headed towards a career in finance, and the next, I found myself three feet deep in a dirty pot,” he says. His professional circumstance was worsened by the way he was treated when he ventured out into the city.

His presence on streets and in shopping malls was often perceived as an intrusion or threat. When searching the eyes of pedestrians to approach and ask for directions, he became invisible. The latter issue—not being seen—was the most difficult part of Cassell’s early experience, largely because of his birthplace. “Where I come from, when we encounter people in public, we respectfully acknowledge their presence, and we expect the same in return.” The small rural community of Cockpit Country is also where he developed an appreciation for public joy. His father, Hugh, owned a shop that sold everything from animal feed to Avon cosmetics. Every year, he would thank the community for its patronage by throwing a street dance in the square.

Cassell had a natural penchant for the green spaces here in Toronto. He started spending a significant amount of time at Trinity Bellwoods Park, where he encountered a convergence of the city’s social clusters and found refuge among young men whose hands made space for them. He felt a kinship with these new friends—from plumbers to visual artists—of all races involved in the city’s hip hop scene. Hanging in the park reminded Cassell that he was a man who knew how to create things, and so he got to work doing just that.

“I realized that if I wanted to achieve my dream, I’d have to build it with my own two hands, not pursue it in places that didn’t welcome me.”

Over the next five years, he pursued and successfully attained a degree in commerce. During study breaks and the long commute between home and school, he made art with found objects, drawing inspiration from the city’s cultural scene. Although he now held two degrees, Cassell was unwilling to be at the mercy of the economy or limiting ideas about where he belonged. “I realized that if I wanted to achieve my dream in this country, I’d have to literally build it with my own two hands, not pursue it in places that didn’t welcome me.” He took a bartending job at night, and during the day, his friends from the park taught him everything from plumbing to drywall to painting. He began to apply his newly acquired skills in the building where he lived. He helped update units in the building, and his landlord gave him a break on rent.

Growing up, Cassell had spent summers on his grandmother’s farm in a parish called St. Elizabeth. Linette Roy cooked massive pots of savoury and spicy dishes for her farm workers. Carl paid close attention to how to prep meat and fish and how to intuitively measure the precise amount of fresh herbs and coconut milk when preparing Jamaican dishes. He was also entrusted with a special job: “I was my grandmother’s firekeeper; my job was to gather wood and stir up the embers to keep three fires beneath three massive pots going throughout the day.”

All of this experience culminated in a search to find a space in Toronto to house his dreams. The first couple of months were discouraging. Landlords were not particularly eager to rent to a young Black man aspiring to open a hybrid restaurant and cultural hub. After a string of refusals, he entered a space that the locals colloquially called “the crack bar” and made the owner an offer. With a foot already out the door of the derelict business, the owner quickly accepted. A neighbour helped him install the exhaust hood in what would become his first up-to-code professional kitchen. Standing in his newly constructed kitchen, Cassell was grateful to his grandmother for teaching him how to cook and keep the fires aglow.

In mid-April 2001, Irie Food Joint opened its doors. Its motto was “Food. Music. Art. Culture.” This distinct recipe for public joy guided its design. “I am an artist first and foremost and so I’m very sensitive to spatial arrangements and the creative practice of welcoming,” Cassell says.

A collection of mid-century modern chairs and heavy wooden tables anchored the space. This mixture of luxe and sturdy furniture was intentional. Cassell wanted de man ’dem to be able to bang dominos on the tables and audiophiles to jump out of their seats when taken over by the spirit of live music. He wanted aunties to bring their hot sauce from home as long as they were open to taste-testing his. “The space needed to be well designed but also accessible and sturdy enough to withstand our bombastic cultural expression,” he says.

Cassell also paid close attention to the pace of the space. It was important that it operated on Caribbean time. Unlike the typical restaurant practice of turning tables over as quickly as possible, Cassell wanted people to feel like they could linger regardless of the size of their order or ability to extend a generous gratuity. “I wanted people to come for the food but stay for the slow and easy Jamaican vibe.”

Cassell’s unconventional business model, prioritizing joyful placemaking over profits, paid off. Within five years, Irie Food Joint became a central gathering space for everyone who loved Black culture, regardless of identity. He gained respect as a restaurateur within the city’s competitive gastronomy landscape—so much so that he earned enough social and financial capital to open a second location. Harlem, located near the city’s Gay Village, would become a true community hub.

One afternoon, a DJ named Blackcat walked into Harlem and requested space for a regular ballroom night—an underground party featuring performances such as strutting, lip-synching, and audience engagement. These parties were established by Black queer and transgender individuals in multiple cities in response to public space laws prohibiting dressing outside gender norms and to the discrimination that racialized 2SLGBTQ+ individuals faced within mainstream queer spaces. Although Cassell wasn’t entirely familiar with the history and creative expression of ballroom, he was committed to creating a space that celebrated Black people of all identities.

The programming of the space didn’t always arise from formal collaborations. Sometimes the moment asked, and the space answered. For instance, in 2009 when Michael Jackson died, a graffiti artist felt inspired to create an art piece on the industrial-style garage door leading out to Cassell’s back patio. Patrons poured into Harlem, raw with grief. They were provided with markers, which they used to write messages around the spray-painted portrait. By the end of the night, everyone had laid down their grief on the dance floor, and the garage door had become a memorial.

This became a ritual of sorts, repeated in 2013 when Nelson Mandela died, and again in 2016 when we lost Prince. The door, now a living record layered with three portraits and hundreds of heartfelt messages, is a testament to the responsiveness of the space.

Another moment of historical significance was tied to the American election in 2008. As anticipated, community members from all ends of the city converged on Harlem. When it was announced that Barack Obama had indeed been voted the first African American president of the United States, the DJ dug deep into the crates for celebratory tunes as heads turned toward the heavens. Amid the jubilation, Cassell heard something that delights him to this day. All of the Black men in the space started addressing each other as “Mr. President.” “They’d say, ‘Why congratulations, Mr. President’ or ‘Good to see you out tonight, Mr. President.’”

The giddiness expressed by grown men, who are usually guarded in public spaces, was like nothing he’d witnessed before. It was the expression of a pure boyish joy during a moment when it felt like we could remake the world.

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My daughter, Kirsten, is an award-winning electronic DJ and producer. More than making and playing music, she is—in a way that is at once distinct but not entirely dissimilar from myself—a placemaker.

We spent the first ten years of her life, and my twenties, living in an intergenerational Jamaican family home. Her great-grandmother, whom she regards as her first friend, often picked her up from elementary school while I was working. Instead of watching after-school cartoons or soap operas, the pair prepared our traditional dishes together. Just over a decade later, those Caribbean cooking sessions with her great-grandmother would pay off. At the beginning of her DJing career, in addition to playing at local bars, she coordinated street parties, sometimes integrating recess games.

In 2013, she launched a party called Jerk. Although she has always drawn extraordinarily diverse audiences, her Jerk party centres Black, often queer young adults. The name references a popular style of cooking, which fuses elements from indigenous Jamaican and African cuisines. Back then, she couldn’t afford a caterer, so she prepared mounds of delicious jerk chicken herself. Integrating food into her signature rave was somewhat of an homage to those after-school cooking sessions.

“When you make a public space, it’s not only yours but it belongs to everybody.”

The sense of intimacy she created, combined with her unparalleled ability to play what a cultural reporter and Polaris Prize juror referred to as “genre-obliterating” sets, made Jerk a well-loved rave within a few short years. When interviewed by DJ Mag about what had, by then, become a cultural phenomenon, she described Jerk as an ideal shared public space: “When you make a public space, it’s not only yours but it belongs to everybody. Jerk is something that belongs to me, and to the people who trust me to host it, and to Toronto.”

Like all professionals who design and steward public spaces, Kirsten is focused on the cultivation of joy. When curating Jerk or performing at venues around the world, Kirsten considers barriers that may obstruct everyone’s joy. She credits raves—high-octane electronic dance parties embedded in an underground subculture that values bold artistic expression and social ideals—for dismantling many of these barriers, which tend to be steeped in class, commerce, and respectability.

And then there are what should be considered mundane details like free food stations with comfortable seating and ensuring that people of all genders can pee where they are most comfortable peeing. Along with her space-planning approach, Kirsten considers social aspects that either increase or diminish joy. She personally meets with security to ensure that there will be no policing of bodies or abuses of power. As with most raves, at her events, there’s a general understanding that everyone belongs.

In more recent years, Kirsten has begun to consider what happens at her parties within a broader political and generational context. She’s been thinking about the fact that her peers, Generation Y, are the first to be worse off than their parents. They are faced with a housing crisis with no end in sight and soaring education fees. Without revealing identities, she often tells me about acquaintances with degrees who sometimes have to resort to stealing groceries to survive.

I think about these issues through the lens of equitable urban development, and my daughter thinks about them through the lens of the public party. “When an entire generation is struggling to monetize their every interest or working three jobs to survive, dancing together becomes radical,” she says. “I didn’t initially understand the magnitude of what I was doing, but now I have a deeper appreciation for the politics of the party and how there’s a poverty of free time for my peers, so now I’m more able to go there fully—to be a part of the conversation.”

The thing that I most enjoy about her parties is how participatory they are. At first, it made me nervous, but I love the way hundreds of partygoers inevitably breach the boundaries of the stage within the first hour of her raves. She plays face to face, breath intermingling with partygoers, creating a visceral communal experience.

Oftentimes, there is a little elevated runway where self-selected featured dancers woo the crowd for hours on end, engaging with her as though they’d had a dress rehearsal. Sometimes the security guards begin to push people back, and in a polite yet authoritative voice that sounds much like my own, she always says, “No, let them through.”

Adapted and excerpted from Black Public Joy: No Permit or Permission Required by Jay Pitter. Copyright © 2026 Jay Pitter. Published by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.