Super Short Summary

In Slumming: Sexual and Racial Encounters in America, 1885-1940 (2009), Chad Heap chronicles the practice of slumming, where affluent white city-dwellers venture into poorer, racially diverse urban areas primarily for entertainment, from the 1880s immigrant neighborhoods to Harlem during Prohibition and Chicago's gay and lesbian bars in the 1930s, highlighting how these experiences of voyeuristic exploration and exposure shaped cultural attitudes toward race and sexuality. The book includes depictions of racial and sexual discrimination.