`` Darkness And Confusion `` By Ann Petry

Housing was the most serious community problem in Harlem. The Negro's labor dollar was further taken by the steep rental characteristic of the segregated areas where most Negroes lived. Ellison makes this quite clear to the audience as Scofield and Dupre steal coal oil and buckets from the hardware store and set them on fire in the apartment building where they live. They make sure to get everyone to safety before they burn the building down, shouting, "You didn't think I'd do it but there it is. You wouldn't fix it up. Now see how you like it." (Ellison 548). African American's were also treated unfairly in their living quarters. There are more examples of this mistreatment in the book when The Invisible Man awakens to the sound of tenants beating on the pipes, due to no heat, at Mary's apartment building and also the eviction of the elderly couple, the Provo's.

Tommie Shelby is an American philosopher and a professor of African American studies at Harvard University. In his article “Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto” Shelby discusses poor, black neighborhoods that have persisted in America for decades due to few public policy efforts to make things better. In his article Shelby brings up two approaches to this dilemma that he opposes. The first is the personal responsibility approach which appeals to American values of hard work and ultimately places blame on the poor rather than the government or society. The Technocratic approach on the other hand does the opposite. It blames the government for failing to fix the social conditions of the poor and refuses to blame the poor themselves even if they have done actions that have not necessarily improved their well-being. Shelby’s approach is a mix between the two. He says that we cannot blame the poor if the injustice of our society has changed the content of their obligations and thus making their behavior reasonable due to the unfair conditions they were subjected to. In other words they are a product of their environment. Shelby wants to get his point across that the existence of ghettos today is evidence that our society impaired by structural injustices and that the ghetto is not only the problem of those living in it, but all of ours.

As stated before, communities within cities tend to be segregated by race and economics. Settlement patterns tend to show that people prefer settling with others that display similar outward traits, usually physical characteristics that can be recognized at first glance. Here, race again plays an important role in community poverty. Many communities create disadvantages for minorities based on the population and location. In the study, a white woman, her children, and her partner are evicted from the predominantly white trailer park. Upon eviction, the couple apply to multiple rental agencies and private apartment complexes with little luck because many property owners do not want the burden of children living in their complexes. As the couple become desperate, the woman considers finding a place in the black ghetto community because prices are much cheaper and there are fewer regulations. However, the partner clearly expresses that by lowering the family by living in the ghetto, they will forever be social outcast and seen as scum. The partner would rather be homeless than

The setting of a rundown house in a poor neighborhood gives the impression of their struggle to survive as African Americans. The shabbiness of the exterior suggests their low social status. “A relatively recent addition to the house and running its full width, the porch lacks congruence. It is a sturdy porch with a flat roof. One or two chairs of dubious value sit at one end where the kitchen window opens on to the porch. An old fashioned ice box stands silent guard at the opposite end” (Wilson, setting description). While the newly added porch may represent an attempt to

As he pointed out in the very early part of his article, for instance Clyde Ross, resident of North Lawndale Chicago, was denied when he first tried to get a legitimate mortgage; mortgages were effectively not available to black people (Coates, June 2014). Also, just like what we talked about in class last week, Ross and many other black families were forced to live in those redlined neighborhoods with “contract house.” Basically, Ross had not signed a normal mortgage. He’d bought “on contract”: a predatory agreement that combined all the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting—while offering the benefits of neither (Coates, June 2014). This is a perfect example of how these ghetto-neighborhoods were created; it was created by white supremacists and people in the government who chose to ignore “the elephant in the room.” All these black families left with no choice. They ran from the South, thinking that they could finally go the land of the free. They quickly found out that, it was no different in the North, or even the West. They were forced to stuck with the

In order to eliminate the racist perception that Black poverty derives from laziness, the government should allocate public resources to restoring the predominantly African American communities by providing cheaper housing and resources for children. By restoring the communities, Blacks will have more opportunities and be seen more positively, both of which counteract the racist presumption that all African Americans are poor and lazy. Additionally, by making Black communities just as desirable as their white counterparts, the direct correspondence between race and affluence will no longer be as prevalent. As part of a new housing act in 1949, Chicago received funding for new housing projects – 98 percent of which were built in Black neighborhoods.

Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended legal Jim Crow, the perpetuation of prejudice, institutional racism, and discrimination towards African Americans continued. The tolling effects of this social paradox on the African American community are manifested within the works of Ann Petry, an African American writer whose short stories reflect her own perspective on the results of discrimination. The short stories, The New Mirror and In Darkness and Confusion conjunctively display the negative psychological consequences linked to racism, such as loss of personal identity, social reflectiveness, insecurity, anxiety/paranoia, weakened family bonds, and violent outbreaks.

Gilbert Osofsky’s Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto paints a grim picture of inevitability for the once-exclusive neighborhood of Harlem, New York. Ososfky’s timeframe is set in 1890-1930 and his study is split up into three parts. His analysis is convincing in explaining the social and economic reasons why Harlem became the slum that it is widely infamous for today, but he fails to highlight many of the positive aspects of the enduring neighborhood, and the lack of political analysis in the book is troubling.

“Gatekeepers and Homeseekers: Institutional Patterns in Racial Steering';, is an informative article that touches upon many of the key points gone over in class. This article deals with the difference in the way blacks and whites were and are treated, past and present, by real estate agents when shopping for a new home. In the study, one can see that blacks were not treated as fairly as white people in the real estate market were. Many times the potential black homebuyers were discouraged from purchasing homes in the same areas that the agent would readily show a white homebuyer. The real estate agent played a very peculiar role in doing this. They were, in essence, the racist gatekeepers of a seemingly non-racist neighborhood.

Imagine living day to day stressed, struggling, and not knowing where you next meal will come even from. Picture having to be owned by someone and not having the power to say no or do as you please. Throughout centuries African Americans have had a life full of stress and struggle. From being beaten to slaving for whites, life has never been easy for them. In this research paper I will discuss and furnish detailed information about the Black Codes in 1800's and the reconstruction.

One of the reasons they were “trapped” in neighborhoods was redlining. Bradford Hunt’s article reads, “Redlining is the practice of arbitrarily denying or limiting financial services to specific neighborhoods, generally because its residents are people of color or are poor.” The HOLC, Home Owner’s Loan Corporation, “color-coded” maps of the cities show the African American neighborhoods and white neighborhoods. This outline gave the redlined areas the impression of being an investment and insurance risky.

It was a way to constraint African Americans to areas that were far away from those with status, class, and power. Segregation led to discrimination in economic opportunities, housing, and education. The black culture has suffered from the barriers that were placed through segregation. However, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 tried to limit some of the discrimination associated with segregation. It was discovered that even a “rising economic status had little or no effect on the level of segregation that blacks experience” (Massey and Denton 87). The authors imply that “black segregation would remain a universal high” (Massey and Denton 88). The problem with the continuing causes in Segregation is that even though the Fair Housing act was placed, many realtors still discriminate against blacks “through a series of ruses, lies, and deceptions, makes it hard for them to learn about, inspect, rent, or purchase homes in white neighborhoods” (Massey and Denton 97). Segregation and discrimination have a cumulative effect over time. Massey and Denton argued that the “act of discrimination may be small and subtle, together they have a powerful cumulative effect in lowering the probability of black entry into white neighborhood” (98). William Julius Wilson had

The Black’s Quest for a Home Ownership in A Raisin in the Sun and in America

Martin Luther King Jr.’s failed housing campaign and the Bronzeville Project exhibit this disjointedness through black middle class Chicagoans ignoring the socioeconomic class divisions within Bronzeville by using institutionalized racial barriers as a conduit to produce a narrative of collective discriminatory practices faced by all blacks preventing social and financial equity for the race. However, these

White people chose to strategically make ways for Black people to be separated, segregated, and systematically brutalized because they feared the strength of the unity within the black community. However, that racism drove Black communities to unite and reach social milestones such as the black power and civil rights movement which were developed in part by members of both the church and surrounding close-knit communities. In this paper, the tenement collapse of 1936 will be discussed and reviewed alongside comments from class lecture and class readings to discover how it other incidents like it affected national policy and how that impact affected political shifts in the nation.