Ideas - Why joy is most valuable when it's in public

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

When Jay Pitter was eight years old and out shopping with her mother, she began swaying to the music at the mall. Her mother scolded her for it — signalling that it was undignified for a Black person to act that way in public. That incident was the genesis for Black Public Joy: No Permit Or Permission Required. In her book, she addresses the self-policing Black people can internalise, and reveals how culture, urban planning, and memory shape the way people can access joy in parks, streets, transit, and neighbourhoods.Guest in this episode:Jay Pitter is an award-winning placemaker focused on creating joyful public spaces that foster belonging, prosperity, and cultural memory. She advances this work through cultural planning, policy frameworks, and storytelling. Pitter is also an adjunct urban planning professor and has engaged students at Cornell, Princeton, and MIT, advancing new theories of public joy that connect practice, policy, and pedagogy.

Let's see if Toronto advisors know their group insurance providers. Who has extensive expertise in both traditional group benefits and special risk solutions? Beneva. Beneva. Looks like people are starting to know Beneva pretty well. You're stronger with the right partner, Beneva. This is a CBC podcast. My name is Jay Pitter.

And mine is Nala Ayad. Welcome to Ideas. Jay Pitter is an internationally renowned, public space practitioner. And what that means is that I lead projects focused on the design and policy of public spaces. Jay's personal background informs her professional focus on public spaces.

She grew up in public housing, in Scarborough to the east of Toronto. It's also the genesis for her book, Black Public Joy. The catalyst for this work, is a decades-old memory of me swaying to music in a 1970-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. Do you remember what it sounded like when your mom rebuked you? It sounded like. like a lecture because she started telling me about a historical figure called Mr. Bojangles and how he danced in public with exaggerated hand gestures and movements. She used the term shuckin and jivein. And my mother was extremely careful about speaking the Queen's English. So when I heard her drop that G, I knew she was extremely serious. Wow.

She meant business. She sure did. I remember her asking me if somebody was paying me to dance. Wow. Yes. That's quite a pointed question. Yes. She said that it made absolutely no sense for someone who was black, a girl, and poor.

growing up in public housing to be dancing in public unless someone was paying you large amounts of money. And how do you react as an eight-year-old? I remember it being my first encounter with shame. And it was secondhand shame. It wasn't mine. But I could feel it with a force. And you stopped dancing. I sure did. What stereotype do you think your mother was trying to stop you from falling into?

There is a stereotype that black people are not intellectual or reserved or appropriate in public space. That may be one of the more memorable lessons that you would have received from your mother along these lines. in the book in Black Public Joy, you actually share with us your mother's list of prohibitions governing acceptable behavior for black people, especially girls and women in public. And they all start with the word never. Never sit on the floor at the mall or on a subway platform. Never idly hang out in public. Never tell private family business. never respond to male attention, never enter other people's personal space,

never appear timid or unsure, never behave ghetto or uncouth. Was that list communicated to you as a list, or did you kind of learn as you went along? I learned as I went along. When we were in public, she would point out black women and girls doing particular things, using them as examples. So if we saw a full-figured black woman, she would say, never wear bright-colored jeans, especially if you are full-figured. Or she would see someone with bright red lipstick, and she would say never wear bright red lipstick if you want to be taken seriously. So she would use other women and girls.

particularly those in our neighborhood who were low income like us as examples, as real-time cautionary tales. At what point do you think you started to resist this, to actively resist these instructions? This is going to be a super strange thing for a black woman to say, but it is when I discovered Bruce Springsteen. Okay. So I'm a huge Bruce Springsteen fan, and I loved the way. way he always wore ripped jeans. And so I also wanted to wear ripped jeans. We all did back

then. Right? The 80s. So I got new jeans and I ripped all of them. And I would hang out at the Warden subway station with a bunch of friends punk rockers, folks who were really into hardcore rock, hip hop. And we sat on the subway platform floor, which also more. mortified my mother. So we had several standoffs about it, and she then told me that if I continue to do that, she wouldn't greet me in public anymore. And I was the favorite child, and I hugged and kissed my mother in public well beyond the age that children want to associate with their mothers. My mother was beautiful, and I was very proud of her. But I mean, every 15 years, you year old girl wants to push against their mother.

True. Right? So I think it was a combination of being 15 years old, but also beginning to see beautiful expressions of black public joy emerging in my neighborhood. I remember seeing the older girls braiding hair on front soups and at the basketball court. I was attracted to those bright colors of the 80s, the neon greens and the, the reds, and the, you know, the yellows and how they looked against beautiful brown skin. I loved corn road hair. So I started to see expressions from my own, not only cultural, but class community that I related to and gravitated toward. I'm curious just as we're speaking here, whether looking back, you thought maybe at any point that your mother may be at some level actually had a point, that somehow, you

her public performance rules actually worked at some level. Not then, but in my 20s, looking back, I realized that my mother doing things like having one very thin blazer and always wearing it to school interviews to speak to the teachers while some other mothers may come with curlers in their hair, which is their prerogative, but there is a way that you get, treated when you navigate those types of institutions that way. And so there was something about the way my mother dressed and spoke and the expectations that she articulated to every single educator that I had that mitigated and protected me from racial stereotyping within the school system. My mother started off every year by letting my teachers know that I was a great athlete, but I was an even better thinker. Over the years, I grew obsessed with understanding why my mother was so compelled to perform in public. It contributed to me becoming a placemaker,

someone who leads the design, policy, and programming of public spaces. I'm fascinated by how people claim in seed space in public and how design, history, stories, policies, and social attitudes impact those choices. My ultimate goal is reminding everyone that there is enough space, joy, and justice for all of us. But there was a time when my public space exploration was strictly personal. In speaking with a diverse range of black friends, I've learned that they too were raised with similar public space performance rules and warnings about the fate of black people who publicly misstep. Many of us recall watching the news with parents, Sunday Sermon Saints and Saturday Night Party Going Sinners alike, who, when the broadcaster announced a crime,

loudly prayed that the perpetrator wasn't black. So if you closed your eyes and you were to imagine what black public joy looks like, what do you see? Well, it's interesting because you said, what do you see? But my first thought was, what do I hear? It is loud. Black people are loud. It's laughter and celebration. We sometimes greet each other through laughter.

We don't wait for the punchline of a joke to laugh. It is vibrant. It is yellow and coral and green. It is every single size. and shape of a woman. It is body positivity before that term even existed. It is bling. So much gold. Bling. Yes, big hoop earrings and necklaces. But even more than expressive, it is an intellectual phenomenon. So I think about things like enslaved people using twigs and branches to create way, routes to something called hush harbors in the woods where they had spiritual celebrations.

I think about how women braided escape routes in other women's hair. So there's an intellectualism to it. There's a spatial organizing that exists as well. So we in urbanism used the term mixed-use developments. Well, black people who were segregated were doing mixed juice long before the term existed because you would have a single family home and there would be a kitchen sink hair salon, someone frying chicken, someone steaming clothing, someone washing clothing in the French yard. And all of that would happen in one person's home. We were doing mixed use well before zoning and urban planning coined the term. So it is all of those things for me.

It's such a far cry this way that you describe the idea of a black public joy from what you experienced back when you were a girl. And I want to just go back to that example that you give and just ask you what you think, where you think that reflex, to stop a little girl from dancing in public, in a mall. What are the historical origins of that? So this might sound counterintuitive in a book called Black Public Joy, but we're going to take it back to the auction block just for one moment.

For black people ensnared by the transatlantic slave trade, the auction block was their first encounter with public space in these new countries. On the day of the sale, enslaved people of African descent were made to meticulously groomed themselves and put on their best clothes as though preparing for a festive occasion. Sometimes extra grease would be applied to their mouths to make it appear as though they had just eaten a hearty meat dish, an unusual practice given that everyone knew enslaved individuals rarely ate meat. As fires and spectators gathered in the public square, the insubes Slaved individuals were warned to swallow fears of being separated from their partners and children,

to look lively, and to politely answer questions. Sometimes they were made to sing and dance. Everyone's teeth and hands were examined, and special attention was paid to excessive whip marks on the back and limbs, as those were indicative of a fiery, disobedient constitution. Women were fondled openly and sometimes taken to an adjacent room for further inspection. And so we find ourselves here at the auction block, not as a lament or preoccupation with the past, but as a way to understand the scrutiny and high stakes of black people's population. public space performance.

So it creates the spirit of surveillance. And when we talk about surveillance and black people, most commonly we talk about police surveillance or citizen surveillance. But black people actually self-surveal in order to be safe, in order to access opportunities and resources. And that's what your mother was doing. Yes, she was. You also mention a phenomenon that's related to all this called sundown towns.

Can you connect that? What is it, first of all, and can you connect it to what we're talking about? Sundown towns are towns that had either formal or informal laws that black people could not be out in public after the sun went down. It also applied to indigenous peoples and Jewish people in some. some instances as well. And so sometimes the police would come to train stations and gas stations and meet black people letting them know, you better be inside before the sun goes down. These laws emerged in the late 1800s and continued to expand until the late 1940s. It's been said that around the time of reconstruction, someone in

Gardnerville, Nevada, blew a whistle at 6 o'clock every evening as a warning to indigenous people to leave town. In Colorado, signs read no Mexicans after night, and Connecticut was a little less direct with whites only within city limits after dark. For additional clarity, signs were posted at the city limits that read, N-word, don't let the sun go down on you. My own heart sank when I delved beneath the sanitized veneer of Canadian history to discover sundown towns like Leamington and Kingsville in my home province of Ontario. And so that embeds itself in behavior today, even today. Yes.

it's people impose curfews on themselves, impose smaller maps for their lives within their cities. They think that there are some places where they absolutely cannot go or where they don't belong. All of that stems to those histories and those policies. So is there, could you also talk about the line that you draw from a more recent phenomenon, British anti-vagrancy laws? Is that also a play here? Yes, because anti-vagancy laws cover a wide scope of behaviors deemed criminal, everything from singing and dancing and pausing in public.

And those laws have been weaponized against black communities disproportionately. You write about all these elements, the net effect of all of these elements, is that black people can often feel displaced in public. How would you describe that sensation of displeasing? It's really tricky for me to describe the sensation of displacement because I actually feel like I belong wherever I am. So intellectually in terms of speaking with friends and through my practice, what it feels like is a sense of having to hyperperform or be hypervigilant. I think I can kind of relate to hyperperformance now that I think I think. about that, like, from an achievement standpoint. So hyper-achieve, hyper-perform. It feels like being

on the outside, looking in, or continually tracking an external gaze that is watching you and counting all of the microaggressions, all of the little slights that you experience as you travel on the subway or walking down the street. But many of these things are not things that I actually pay attention to. If someone is staring at me when I'm in a space that perhaps people might think that someone like me wouldn't naturally be occupying, I immediately think that it's because I'm brilliant, charming, or gorgeous. One of those three things. It's quite delusional. And confident.

Yes, absolutely. And it's kind of delusional. But what it does is it prevents. my experience of joy from being disrupted. At some point, you realize that your mother's behavior is a response to what you just mentioned, to what writers and thinkers like Tony Morrison have described as the white gaze. What is it exactly to be under the white gaze?

The white gaze is connected to the gaze in general, and that term was developed by a feminist filmmaker, And it really spoke about how men saw women through the lens of the male gaze. The male gaze. Yes. And so it's been interpreted as the white gaze projected onto black and other racialized bodies because of a lot of laws and policies and things that people experience in everyday life. And in the book, because I'm not interested in letting anyone off the hook. I talk about how the gaze operates within black communities, across class, across heteronormativity.

You say no one's innocent. Nobody is innocent. And so I think that it's important to understand the gaze through that lens. And so when you say that there are no innocence, I really want to know what you mean by that. When we're in public space with each other, we are constantly assessing each other. and we are constantly judging where we think people belong. Sometimes it comes from a good and natural place. It's how we keep ourselves safe.

It is also linked to something called territoriality, which speaks to marking our place as we're navigating. Every single large mammal does that. Yes. Right? So there are just natural ways that we do it, but it can be extraordinarily harmful. and it is the killer of civic life, unity, curiosity.

I was really intrigued by you describing the idea of thinking about our bodies as a place and how that can actually counteract the effect of the gaze. Can you explain how? I used the phrase belonging begins in the body as a way for people to claim ownership over their place in public life. Everybody yearns to be long. Everybody yearns to belong, but sometimes belonging can cost too much.

It can be overrated. Most leaders, most people who are self-possessed, who do great things are people who don't give a shit about belonging. It's true. Right? So when I think about belonging beginning in the body, of course I looked at human geography and psychology and the body as place, as you mentioned. And then it took me to those messages that I tell myself.

And I realized that because I have those pre-recorded messages in my head, I don't give up my power to outsiders to determine whether or not I belong somewhere or to determine how much space I'm going to take up or how I'll take it up. Can you just tell us some of those messages? What kind of messages? So I say things like I belong wherever I am. I say things like it is my right to co-create this space, to reimagine this space. I have a right to experience deep pleasure and joy. I tell myself that I'm delightful. I'm a delight. You are a delight.

I think so. It's good to have you here in the studio. Thank you. It's always good spending time with you. And it's always good spending time with you, dear listener, and to co-create this space, ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. Let's see if Toronto advisors know their life insurance providers,

who offers whole life insurance with a whole lot of cash value. Beneva. Beneva. Beniva. Looks like people are starting to know Beneva pretty well. You're stronger with the right partner. Beniva. At this point, you're not really interested in starting from scratch, because you've built something. A career, a reputation, a life that's already in motion.

But maybe staying right where you are isn't feeling right anymore. At the University of Alberta, our flexible online graduate programs are built for working professionals. So you can step up without stepping away from your work, your income from everything you've built. Explore online graduate programs at uab.ca.com. Jay Pitter's book is called Black Public Joy, and at its heart, it's her declaration that joy isn't just a fleeting pleasure experienced by an individual.

It's a collective ideal that everyday society must embrace to be fair and flourishing. That's why Jay will scrutinize and criticize any politician, policy, or practice that impedes the expression of black public joy. That includes self-scrutiny and self-critique, because, as you just heard a moment ago, she isn't interested in letting anyone off the hook. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about another kind of behavior, public behavior,

and that is protest. You offer a critique of protest. or the culture of protest. As I've grown older, I've recognized the ways that public expressions of protest have left me exhausted and disconnected from my purpose. And I began to develop a critique of protest. Not the type of conservative critique focused on superficial civility or respectability politics amid injustice.

I often reflect on Tony Morris. sends brilliant revelation about the very serious function of racism being a distraction, which compels you to explain your reason for being. Many black scholars and activists have argued that the public expression of black anger is an act of courage, a wellness practice, a form of creative expression, and even a spiritual virtue. I completely concur. Yet, I cannot shake my critique and concern. The constant cycle of public protests cast black bodies like placards with faded messages and torn corners, piled as leaves fallen from trees, left naked and vulnerable awaiting winter.

This is something that keeps me awake at night. People think that protest is emblematic of having a very healthy and functioning democracy. And my take is that while that is important and protest is also a tenant of democracy, if people are constantly out on the streets protesting, that suggests that there is a failure of democracy. Because public spaces from African marketplaces to Greek agoras to the contemporary coffee shop is actually the site of democracy. And if people are spending more time protesting versus accessing public joy, meaning physical health, mental health, connection, prosperity opportunities in public space, that means our democracy is fragile. You call it a distraction. It sure is.

How so? It keeps you from the pursuit of community and collective flourishing. If you are constantly resisting something, then it takes away from aspiring, reimagining, creating, and experiencing. What is the main danger, do you think, in protests becoming the dominant mode of black public expression. It reinforces a stereotype that black people are angry. It keeps us from closing the loop with policy change. It is a burden on black bodies and black lives and black families. Black people have actually been protesting since the first slave uprising until, today, 500 years. Protest being the dominant communicative mode between black people and the state

suggests that we haven't moved far enough from the days of enslavement. You do acknowledge that protest isn't without its benefits, that in fact your ability to be able to critique protest is, in your words, in your words, maybe you can tell me, in your words, made possible by protest. Absolutely. I have so much reverence and respect for people who are willing to put their brilliance and their bodies on the front lines, who are willing to jeopardize their jobs. I could not have the privilege of thought and freedom of expression,

but for black protesters. And those same black protesters, by the way, sparked the women's movement, the immigration movement. So black protest has actually created rights for many groups. So how do you grapple with that tension? I love complexity and tension. So I think that protest is necessary. And in a civil and free society, we absolutely have to have space for dissent. and debate, and sometimes it's not going to be respectable.

Sometimes it's got to be messy and loud, and that's okay. My problem is a constant cycle of protest that is actually tearing apart the fiber of civic life. I was really struck by your description of how protesters kind of reimagined public space. You know, this idea of while people are protesting, you know, also having areas of joy, like people dancing and art and preparing food. I saw similar scenes during the Arab Spring protests. What do you think happens in the moments between those kind of utopic, that's how they were described to me in Egypt, utopic kind of spaces,

and then the violence that sometimes breaks out at large protests like that? Fundamentally, people who navigate the margins are some of the, the most joyful people on the planet. The level of creativity, mutual care, imagination is through the roof because it has to be. And so that naturally finds itself within protest as well. And it's the fuel that people use to keep going. And then, as you point out, often what we remember from those protests is the latter, the violence, rather than. than those utopic spaces. Because nobody goes behind the protest to really see the protest door as a human being.

What can we learn from those brief moments where those utopic public spaces are created in the midst of protest? That collective flourishing is as urgent as justice. So in the book, I say that black public joy is as urgent as justice. More broadly, public joy is as urgent as justice. So Maslow has a law and a pyramid, and it says that water and shelter and food are fundamental to human existence. I'm prepared to challenge that. I think that collective flourishing freedom, expression, prosperity are as important as all of those things.

So where would you put that on the ladder of needs? It's a need. It's number one. It's number one. Ground zero. If we are striving for a better world, that world should not just be focused on clean water and housing and education. That should be a given. We've become super lazy. That should be a given. We've become super lazy. That should be a given. That for me is table stakes. Joy, collective flourishing. Having shared space where we co-steward each other's joy and the spaces where we are inhabiting is basic.

It's not even an aspiration for me. Black people's public expression of joy is a language expressed through our bodies. Apparently, the body gestures, aesthetics and paralinguistics, constitutes approximately 80% of all communication. If embodied communication is positive, research shows a reduction of stress, increased self-worth, and better relationship building. Our body language is extraordinarily sophisticated, and much like linguistics, it is composed

of structures, syntax, and semantics to express our joy and solidarity. What if those of us descended from enslaved people never really lost our languages? What if we translated words into new, embodied dialects and established discourse too advanced for simple alphabets? Laughing in public. Love it. Who doesn't? Right? Yeah.

It's like breathing. Yes. You talk about laughter levels. Yes. So if you were to laugh according to this never-to-do in public list, what might that sound like? Like if I were to laugh right now? Well, the constrained version. Ah, like what would constrain laugh?

or sound like, it would sound like this. That would be my like white institutional laugh. Oh, boy. And then there is the laugh that is reserved for special people who know me. You've heard the laugh. I have. You've heard the laugh. I want you to share it.

It is a raucous, borderline vulgar, very soul. full laugh. It comes from the depths of who I am. Now I really want to make you laugh. I don't know. There you go. That's the shade of it. Yeah, a little bit of it, right? And sometimes it includes a little hand clap, right? You know? Yeah. I have to say, this is less about laughter and more about presence. But the very first time you and I met, I was supposed to interview you on stage. And my enduring memory of that evening was your insistence on a specific song to walk you on stage. And I wonder where that fit into. Maybe you could tell us what that song was and where that fits into your idea of Black Public Joy.

So it's Notorious B.I.G. I don't remember the exact track. Can I look up? Yes, of course. Okay, let me just, okay, is going on here. Is that it? That's it. Hypnotize.

Hypnotize. Yeah, there we go. Big smile on your face. Yeah, I love this check. Hold on for a second. So who was that? So Notorious VIG, the song is hypnotize. And as a public housing kid, I'm always going to rep the block.

And it doesn't matter how. sort of intellectual, the spaces. I'm going to bring that history into the space. It's a form of pageantry for me. I love to dress up. I love makeup. It's really for me, like the audience is secondary to the whole thing. Right. It's really about me hyping my own self up, right? And it's just fun. It was something to behold. It made me want to have my own song for walking on stage. It was something to behold. I get the sense that you test yourself, I think, and tell me if I'm wrong, on your own definitions of what's acceptable as an expression of public joy. During an acceptance speech, when you won an award, you kind of wonder out loud of how to respond.

And then you gave what I think you describes kind of like a sermon, maybe. Is that the right word? Like a hood sermon? Like a Hutzerman. And some people embraced it. And others, you describe them as averting their gaze. When I arrived at the venue, I quickly acknowledged my group of friends, expectantly huddled at the entrance. An event greeter led me away for red carpet interviews.

When it was time for me to accept the award, the risk of going off script increased exponentially with each step I took toward the podium. As I looked out into the audience, filled with dignitaries and the professional elite, I felt compelled to recognize the people whose shoulders we all stood upon, who were almost always excluded from formal spaces of celebration. I said,

this award is for the domestic workers and the aunties without, the luxury of leisure and privileged to dress up stush, the Jamaican term for bougie, in these rooms. My table of friends rose to their feet, egging me on the sheer freedom I felt had me transitioning from my professional speaking style to 1980s hip-hop shout-outs. Shout-out to the baby mamas, the public housing kids. This electrified dozens of guests. the room, who moments before had been nestled at their assigned tables, helmed in by protocol and high-quality shapewear beneath their expensive sequined gowns. I beamed as they moved

toward the stage in a chorus of amends and what felt like choreographed nods. As I left the stage, I wondered what many black people and women who are truly themselves in public, wonder, was I a bit too much? My doubt was immediately disrupted by a lineup of guest who shared with me how seen and included my speech had made them feel. Back at my table, I jokingly admonished my friends for egging me on, and I was met with an unapologetic play-by-play of their favorite parts of my irreverent acceptance speech. Despite the overwhelmingly positive feedback, the little girl taught perfect performance could not help but consider how a handful of guests and organizers had averted eye contact.

It was as though I'd betrayed the silent yet powerfully salient rules of the space. and worse, I'd done so on purpose. Could you just, what was the tension in that moment for you? I have lived a life across class. So in my adult life, I'm in spaces with people who are very upper middle class or upper middle class aspiring. And there's a way that they expect me to be in that space. And I'm constantly negotiating.

that I certainly know how to perform in that space, but there's something in me that doesn't want to freaking do it. And I feel like as a 50-something-year-old woman, I get to finally show up how I want to show up. And so I think that's the tension. I think society generally has attention with women who decide to show up as they are. So you're not calling for zero prohibitions in how do we behave in public. So where do we draw the line? For me, it's less about drawing the line, and it's more about us defining what public space co-stewardship looks like together. So rather than a rule, it's about when I'm in this public space with you and other people, what is my responsibility, accountability, compassion that I owe you? And I think that when we think of it,

about it that way, it feels less restrictive and like less labor. And it becomes a project and a practice that we're working on together. And I think that co-stewardship is the answer. So what does that look like? What's an example? An example of that is it is acknowledging each other's humanity. It can be a a smile. You know, growing up, when you took the subway, there was always a sign that you should make space for elders or pregnant women. We should be making space, seating space, sharing space for each other every single day. When I leave my home, it should be my number one imperative to co-steward the joy of every single person I encounter in the day. It sounds like it would come with a lot of work.

I think it's a practice. Having a society that works when that is healthy and thriving and compassionate and unified does require a little bit of labor and humility and consciousness. And we need to return to the practice of that. But you must have a pet peeve behavior. Oh, I have a million. I'm such a jerk. There's so many things I don't like. Let's get into it. So sometimes when people are like riding bikes and they have a ghetto blaster attached to the bike, I'm like, come on. In the park, no less sometimes. Right? You know, like there's that. Sometimes when I'm at my local coffee spot and like a group of, you know, 15 young people, the sense. upon the spot. You know it. And I can't even hear myself think. Yeah.

You know, so of course, like something's annoying. Bad fashion annoys me. Like so many things. There's a lot of bad fashion. A lot of bad fashion. Right? So so many things annoy me, but I come back to, again, the practice. How do you co-stuart a space when you're that annoyed?

You understand that you are just a small part of the same. space. Far too often we hear people talking about owning your city or making your voice heard or taking up space. Those people are like Thaworth people on the planet. I cannot handle those people. It's kind of like, hey, Linda, you're taking up too much space, right? Like, let's dial that back a little bit. So I think so much of our popular sort of discourse encourages people to take up way more space than is healthy. And we have to realize that being together in public and shared space is sacred, is a privilege, and is community as a verb. And as someone who is like just made extroverted. Sometimes I have to grapple with that and struggle with that. But I would rather

struggle with that than the kind of polarization and discord that we are experiencing right now. On a daily basis. Often mistakenly conflated with happiness, Joy has a number of complex distinctions and dimensions, according to most researchers. 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. 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, as pointed out by experts, exist alongside challenging emotions.

In a book of essays titled Insiding Joy, York Times bestselling author Ross Gay affirms this contradiction. He asks, what if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? I was delighted, actually, to see that you had, you quoted Ross Gay in your book. Yes. I had the pleasure of speaking with him, which was a real joy about his book, yeah, inciting joy. And his idea kind of about the coexistence of pain, and joy. This was an idea that I found really compelling. And you quote them asking, what if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? So I wanted to ask you, what does that mean for public joy or black public joy? For me, it's a really hopeful concept. So when I apply that to public spaces, what we know is

that every single site is fraught. The displacement of, of indigenous peoples, extraction of forced labor of black people, exploited women's labor, migrant labor, inaccessibility of disabled people. Land is so layered with fraught histories. And so what that concept means to me is that despite the fact that history and place is profoundly imperfect, blood-soaked, complex, we can still negotiate collective flourishing, that there is hope for all of us. We spoke earlier of your mother's list of public space performance rules, all of which, as we described earlier, begin with the word never. If you were to write a counterpart list, not of prohibitions, but what people could allow themselves to express black public joy, what would be on

not list. I would begin with imagine. Imagine yourself walking down the street without wondering what people were thinking about you. Imagine yourself getting dressed to go out in public, not editing your wardrobe in a way that conforms to corporate grays and blues. Imagine yourself. Imagine yourself, around a decision-making table, bringing the wisdom of your ancestors and humor. Imagine yourself in community with people who look like you while daring to be your individual unique self without worrying about whether or not that was black enough or appropriately black. that would be the beginning of my list. How would that change our world?

I think that when people show up as their whole selves, we are able to have better ideas, more authentic connections, and we're able to shape places and spaces that are more flexible and beautiful and reflective of all of us. So imagine you and I are walking in a mall in Scarborough and you hear that tune that you heard back when you were eight or something similar to it.

I'm just curious how you would react now. I'm most definitely singing a couple of lines and bobbing my head a little bit. Yeah, swagger. I'd be right there with you. Absolutely. Jay Pitter, thank you so much for coming in and for sharing with us. It's always a joy to be here.

Truly. Jay Pitter's book is called Black Public Joy. This episode was produced by Greg Kelly. Special thanks to Penguin Random House for permission to use excerpts from the audiobook. Technical production, Emily Kiervasio, our web producer, Lisa Ayuso. Senior producer is Nicola Luchic. The executive producer of ideas is Greg Kelly,

and I'm Nala Ayyad. I have a bonus question for you. Okay. We liked your explanation of the spontaneous hustle. Once, on the last day of teaching a placemaking class, at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture and Community Development. I found myself in the hallway with a handful of students committed to teaching me the hustle. Apparently, the hustle is serious business in Detroit, and there are several variations.

I'm not sure which one I was messing up that day, but I'll never forget how exuberant I felt when that university hallway transformed into a dance floor. I viscerally understand why many legacy Detroiters are so concerned about losing spaces that foster black public joy. So I wanted to ask you just about that spontaneous hustle experience where you felt exuberant learning the dance in a hallway, no less. I couldn't imagine myself. I think I would have been too embarrassed in that situation to actually take part. So why did you feel exuberant?

So first of all, I should have been embarrassed because I do not have African American rhythm to be clear. So I was messing up every single move. But I felt exuberant because of the laughter and the community around it and the fact that these folks wanted to let me into a particular, very specific expression of their public joy. And so it was more about the community building than the actual performance, because the performance was not it. Not stageworthy. How often do you experience that kind of exuberance?

Often, because I really try to open myself up to it. And I think I invite it. I think people know that I'm down for shenanigans. And so there's something about me that sends that signal out. And I love it. And so people are often inviting me into expressions and spaces and laughter and stories. where I feel that. For more CBC podcasts,

go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.