Racial Segregation : Race And Place At The Local Level Essay

Despite increased diversity across the country, America’s neighborhoods remain highly segregated along racial and ethnic lines. Residential segregation, particularly between African-Americans and whites, persists in metropolitan areas where minorities make up a large share of the population. This paper will examine residential segregation imposed upon African-Americans and the enormous costs it bears. Furthermore, the role of government will be discussed as having an important role in carrying out efforts towards residential desegregation. By developing an understanding of residential segregation and its destructive effects, parallels may be drawn between efforts aimed at combating

What I learned this week which I found most interesting is the evolving situation of housing segregation in this country. If I would have been asked why our country is still so segregated I would say that this situation is due to the fact that we had Jim Crow laws in effect only 60 years ago and many communities have just not changed that much since then. What I wouldn’t have guessed is the widespread extent to which the races intentionally segregate themselves. Less than 50% of both blacks and whites say they want to live in a community of people who look like them. However when people actually choose their home 74% of whites end up in white communities and 66% of blacks end up living in black communities. (Chang, Alvin) Whether it is basic

While social justice may not be at its peak today, times used to be worse. Formerly, while trying to improve cities with zoning- certain races, religions, and peoples were excluded from the nice parts of town and even jobs. Zoning began around 1900 when the local government restricted the height of buildings in Washington District of Columbia. From there, the government realized it could intervene on private property and the people would allow it (Silver, 1997). As zoning evolved, so did the type of zoning- from height restrictions to land use and eventually to redlining. Silver explains the extent situation as, “the nation's planning movement, not just its Southern branch, regarded land use controls as an effective social control mechanism for Blacks and other ‘undesirables’” (p. 2). Unfortunately for the US and for its citizens, racial zoning is not the only undesirable social norm.

Chicago is a beautiful city with many different people and things to learn or experience; however, it is a city of segregation, and it has been that way for a long time. Even though it may not be quite visible today, it still happening thorough our city. However, what is so special about ethnicity that people have to hate on each other? Is it because we all are born with different backgrounds or is it because we are raised to hate others? In the history of Chicago’s segregation, we learn about how the whites are seen as the superior beings than others in America. Moreover, we all have seen and learn how race is displayed through our media. Additionally, we all have grown up attaining knowledge from our elders, and we learn about values in life. The society of Chicago are segregated by our history, media, and standards.

Just fifty years ago, America was a society of segregation and racism. The dictionary defines racism as “the belief that a particular race is superior to another.” Although it is clear times have changed, racism is still seen in modern american society. It’s also clear that relationships between African Americans and whites are generally better than they were in the forties and fifties. Today, it is rare to witness a black man walk down the street and step off the sidewalk to let a white man walk by, or to see a black man sitting on a different section of the bus or train because a white man told him he has too. But superiority of races is still happening. A lot of this has the do with the ignorance of others. Passed down generation to

She believes that many people have too narrow a definition of racism, thinking only of racists acts with malicious intent. She explores the ideas of white privilege and explains that acts can be racist even if they lack malicious intent. She goes on to detail residential patterns in the LA area from the 1950s, emphasizing that today’s disparities are rooted in history. The Washington reading also looks at the development of disparities over time, beginning with the Middle Passage that occurred in the 1600s. Working with a very broad definition of ‘environment,’ Washington details the poor health conditions that slaves faced in the New World, both while enslaved and after being freed. Like the Pulido reading, this article emphasizes the historical precedents of environmental

Distinguished in chapters three and four of The Color of Law, racial zoning is a way for organizations to manipulate and control what neighborhoods African-Americans and other ethnic minority groups reside in. Due to this, many of African-Americans viewed racial zoning as a serious threat to their well-being in the United States. With the help of Jim Crow laws, exclusionary zoning, and the "On-Your-Own-Home" campaign, banks and real-estate agents had provoked economic discrimination towards various ethnic minority groups. Furthermore, through the concepts of dysfunctionalism, social inequality, latent functionalism, and Eurocentrism as seen in The Real World, racial zoning has negatively affected African-Americans from breaking out of what the world considers them to be.

Historically, “ideas of Black inferiority and White superiority have been embedded in multiple aspects of American culture, and many images and ideas in contemporary popular culture continue to devalue, marginalize, and subordinate non-White racial populations”. Racism has influenced decades of land use, housing patterns, and infrastructure development. With the creation of housing subdivisions, the white and wealthy moved to modern communities, while the non-white and poor were left to live in areas that were rundown. Today, we see that in some cases, zoning laws have fueled environmental, as well as residential, racism. In certain communities around the nation, “expulsive” zoning has pushed out residents, and allowed industries to move into communities, and pollute the land, air, and water. These zoning laws define land for residential, commercial, or industrial uses, and impose narrower land-use restrictions. In this case certain individuals are forced to leave their community, and give any property they have up to these “dirty” industries. Without more stringent enforcement mechanisms and penalties in place, this nation will continue to see this type of discrimination and environmental racism.

According to Massey and Denton (1988), residential segregation “is the degree to which two or more groups live separately from one another, in different parts of the urban environment”(282). Now this is a pretty general definition, but it gives basic but good insight as to what residential desegregation is talking about. In this paper, I will mostly be focusing on residential segregation as it relates to the black and white populations in relation to one another, although I will be referencing some other races briefly to create a better understanding of concepts or ideas.

Color-blindness, meaning no more preferences, had a wide range of views from these authors. Connerly, author of “What Happened to Post-Racial America?”, is for this idea of color-blindness. Connerly mentions, near the end of his article, “he [president Obama] should urge Americans to embrace the color blind vision of John F Kennedy who said that ‘race has no place in American life or law”. He states “The longer we allow preferences to endure in the guise of diversity, the more damage will be done to the nation” on page 180, showing his disbelief in that the continuous judgement based on race will have a positive outcome. By stating “Blacks are on our courts, including the highest court in the land, blacks are mayors of major cities and heads of American corporations”, we can see that Connerly feels that since there are already blacks in higher positions similar to those whites are in, we no longer need to pay attention to color.

Racial segregation has had a long history in Chicago. While separation by nationality had always been apparent in the city, with neighborhoods typically being dominated by a certain ethnicity, no group of Chicagoans experienced the degree of segregation that African Americans faced in everything from the housing districts to public services. Forced to live only in designated areas by de facto segregation, redlining, and other tactics, they had limited chances to escape the cycle of danger and discrimination of the city. Confined to only their deteriorating neighborhoods,they had little chance.

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

Imagine you are a person of color in the early to mid 1900’s. You the mother of three young children. Despite your best intentions, your children are forced to grow up in poverty. When you direct them out of the house to go to school, they see the all the white boys and girls walking toward one school and all of the black boys and girls walking to another. Imagine being asked by your children why they don’t go to school with the other boys and girls and not being able to tell them that its because of the aspect of racism during the era. After you drop them off to school, you go to work so that you can provide for your family. You work long hours with unfair wages and

Suburbs started popping up outside the metropolis that were centered around manufacturing plants, railroads, streetcars, and finally, the automobile (Chen et. al.). This is evident by the fact that over 60 percent of American homes own a vehicle by 1929 (Chen et. al.). One of the terms that often is synonymous with the concepts of sprawl and suburbanization is the popularity of “lawn culture” in neighborhoods (Chen et. al.). This idea of having a green space in the form of a lawn, was a representation of autonomy because it allowed people to attach themselves to the marriage between city and country (Chen et. al.). The automobile allowed for people to easily commute from work to home, introducing cul-de-sacs and winding roads to the suburbs (Chen et. al.). However, this process of suburbanization largely favored white middle class, due to the unfair discriminatory practices loan agencies used to disadvantage minorities in their ability to buy homes (Chen et. al.). Today, we still see the vast plethora of effects that discriminatory decisions of Americas’ past have on today’s Americans; we have a long way to go towards rectifying the great injustices that have been done to minority races, we must continuously work towards educating the masses about history so that we can change the

Protest against injustice is deeply rooted in the African American experience. The origins of the civil rights movement date much further back than the 1954 Supreme Court ruling on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka which said, "separate but equal" schools violated the Constitution. From the earliest slave revolts in this country over 400 years ago, African Americans strove to gain full participation in every aspect of political, economic and social life in the United States.