The Development Of Levittown, New York Essay

A large influx of colored people created many problems. First, there was a major problem in the availability in housing, of which was responded to with racism. This is the root for the hatred between the black and white communities. There wasn’t enough housing in the “black belt” community, so Negroes began to spill into white neighborhoods. The very existence of a colored person in a neighborhood would lower the property values. When a house was sold to a colored person, the rent for the house would be higher than the previous, white owner’s rent. Real Estate companies believed that “it is a matter of common knowledge that house after house…whether under white or black agents, comes to the Negro at an increased rental” (Sandburg 46). They sold housing despite the fact that “the Negro in Chicago, paid a lower wage than the white workman” (47), and that black people would have

During the mid-20th century there was much racial discrimination, specifically in home ownership. During this period there was mass immigration of Southern blacks to the north. In Lawndale Chicago, there was adverse reactions to this. As the

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

Many of the housing uses zoning power delegated by government officials to assure that certain races such as blacks don’t move into their neighborhood. Zoning power is regulating the use of land by state governments and local governments to exercise authority over privately owned real

This essay will explicate a section of Beryl Satter’s book Family Properties. This section argues that the white population of Chicago took part in restrictive covenants or legally binding contracts that prevented the sale of properties to colored people in an effort to confine Chicago’s colored population to specific sections in the city. The purpose of this paper is to explicate a section of Family Properties through analysis of structure, tone, and imagery. It will then identify how the evidence relate to one another, and possibilities of meaning. Lastly this essay will conclude with summarizing my results and examining how using explication as a textual tool affects my approach to a reading.

Lipsitz uses practices of the housing market to illustrate how the diverse practices provide the privilege to white people in the current institutional arrangements. The capital resides in suburban houses has proven many white families’ economic mobility, although few white Americans recognize that segregation has historically been the guarantee of suburban real estate values. Housing policy and real estate practices, banking and finance, education, tax codes and subsidies, the behavior of the courts, and the norms of urban policing are all heavily inflected by a racialist logic or tend toward racialized consequences. Lipsitz delineates the weaknesses embedded in civil rights laws, the racial dimensions of economic restructuring and deindustrialization, and the effects of environmental racism, job discrimination and school segregation. Lipsitz describes the centrality of whiteness to American culture, and explains how the whites have used identity politics to forward their collective interests at the expense of racialized groups, including African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos.

Different areas of the private sector took control of the racial segregation. Areas such as real estate, banks, labor, and toxic waste locations have participated in some way to continue the segregation and inferiority of people of color. “African Americans and other communities of color are often victims of land-use decision making that mirrors the power arrangements of the dominant society” (Bullard [1994]2004:269). The land-use decisions are used by the real estate industry. The real estate industry along with the bank industry have worked together in order to make it almost impossible for people of color to acquire their own homes. When individuals of color do obtain their own homes the real estate industry corrals them all into one zone. Then the banks charge homeowners in these zones high interest rates on the mortgages needed to maintain their home ownership. “Zoning is probably the most widely applied mechanism to regulate urban land use in the United States” (Bullard [1994]2004:269). When people of color are corralled into a neighborhood the quality of the neighborhood is diminished. The

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

During the early 1900’s, Louisville attempted to segregate by creating regulations that kept Caucasian people from moving into a neighborhood where most of the minority races were already living and visa versa. They did not want for the races to mix so they created these laws which were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court trial “Buchanan v. Warley”(Broken Sidewalk). This also occurred in other cities but none were as prominent as the commotion created by Louisville. Because of the ruling of the Supreme Court, zonings were created where race was not able to be a reason for granting or denying the right to a house. There were still some places that were denying the sale of houses to blacks because they were in a “restricted housing covenant”. These were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1948, however, they still affected the lives and home sales of these houses that were considered “restricted”. Despite all these efforts, the neighborhoods were still heavily segregated socially and economically. People would only live with others of their same socioeconomic class which president Nixon saw as a big problem. He decided to take action in 1968 when he appointed George Romney the head of Housing and Urban development. George Romney was the governor for Michigan, and he strongly endorsed open housing and the integration of neighborhoods. Romney helped change the demographic of housing across the entire United

The third listing for the definition of sprawl in the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary is as follows: “to spread or develop irregularly”. Unfortunately, this is the pattern, or lack thereof, with which America’s development is following. Every single day the world population rises, and these new babies have to live somewhere. Due to the fact that the birth rate is larger than that of the death rate in America (http://www.bartleby.com/151/a24.html), new homes and communities must be developed to accommodate all of the incoming people. This fundamental concept is coupled by another very powerful driving force prompting people to live in the suburbs of America, and that is greed. The economy makes

The readings for this week fall under the umbrella of “Issues in Housing Policy”, more specifically race, discrimination and segregation. Looking at this topic with the naked eye may lead one to conclude that these issues are age-old, but by looking at the occurrences within the housing policy we can very much conclude that these drawbacks still remain and are salient to the present. To begin, the Schwartz piece highlights that housing policies are mandated to condemn the discriminatory practices that plague real estate and mortgage markets, where African-Americans and other minorities are at a “decided disadvantage”. However, the federal laws passed, such as the Fair Housing Act of 1968, prohibiting racial discrimination by real estate

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.

Segregation proved to be powerful in the city as to this day the South Side still shows remnants of the “Black Belt.” Figure [2] below shows racial demographics of a recent census of Chicago and the resemblance to the map of covenants in figure [1] can clearly be seen. Chicago’s role as a home for it’s residents proved positive for some but problematic for most. A system that always favored the wealthy and white was true for the city and while some areas were strong enough to fight this trend, as a whole Chicago was

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

Chinatown, Olvera Street, and Compton all contributed to culturally diversity and the expansion of Los Angeles. Although Los Angeles has become rich in cultures, its evolution did not go without racial tensions and segregation. With the arrival of blacks from the south, white-Los Angeles did always recognize the minority community. Angelenos did not always embrace diversity with pride, but perhaps the sad part is not the fact that racial segregation took place, but the fact that it was not created by just the individual, but also by the organization. Federal programs like the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Homeowner’s Loan Corporation (HOLC) divided up Los Angeles into a complex socio-economic racial-class system. The influences of the local level influenced the federal level and revolutionized the finance industry. (Avila, lecture 2/5/02) These federal organizations blatantly labeled minorities as derogatory, uneducated, second-class citizens that brought down property value in “white” neighborhoods. Latinos and Black were often labeled as a “minority problem” and even as a “disease” on official HOLC documents. The HOLC implemented strict government guidelines and kept maps of white neighborhoods confidential. It also devised a formal and uniform style of appraising homes by breaking neighborhoods into race classifications by letter. As Waldie states, “The Montana Land Company made it clear that lots were