Yellowtown: Urban Signage, Class, and Race: Fid-Bau Portal

Yellowtown: Urban Signage, Class, and Race

Lewis, Karen

There are many kinds of edges, both distinct and ambiguous, in modern cities. The edges demarcating medieval cities were clear and material, but modern municipal boundaries are amorphous, with a multiplicity of physical edges resulting from physical infrastructure, local demographics, and urban zoning laws. Commercial signage visualizes these edges and forms a cultural landscape also influenced by long-held societal beliefs. This article explores the use of the color yellow in signs as they relate to pawn shops, check cashiers, gun supplies, and other businesses aimed at those in a state of urgency. While the color yellow presents itself well from great distances and at high speeds, providing good contrast and high legibility, and it has historically been associated with moneylenders, a pawn shop located near a white demographic will use red, green or blue colors in its signage: yellow is specifically used for stores at the edges of the African-American Goodloetown neighborhood of Lexington, Kentucky. While not deliberately racist, yellow-colored signs are rarely used in other Lexington neighborhoods, or for similar businesses in different demographics. When passing near the edge of Goodloetown, the clustering of yellow-colored signage produces the cultural landscape “Yellowtown,” indicating beliefs about what parts of cities are appropriate for certain kinds of commercial signage.