ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author lives coincidentally in a place called "Liberty", just north of Cincinnati, to some in the middle of nowhere. He live in what his dear friend Elijah Anderson ubiquitously refers to as the "cosmopolitan canopy" where a more civilized, relaxed, and laissez-faire attitude regarding race, difference, and identity prevails. The path toward an imperfect union began thousands of miles away, hundreds of years back into our history. Within the US context, frontiers were contested spaces where European imperialists vied for control. The volatility of the "frontier" was also heightened as European powers, determined to expand their control offered both guns and steel weaponry to the indigenous populations. Borders are those spaces that separate canopies from frontiers. Several different types of racial reservations have originated within the United States. Black racial reservations originated in the United States with the rise of Black Belts after the civil war, the remnants of which became the "dark ghettos".
