The Impact Of Race On Urban America And The Way It Has Affected With Shaped The Spatial Organization Of Cities

One issue that we discussed in class that is important and interesting is housing segregation. Housing segregation has been an ongoing issue in the past and still continues to this day since certain races are looked down upon at when buying a house in certain areas. America is always known as a racialized society and being any other race besides white has not carried out any advantages. We watched a documentary, In Race: The Power of an Illusion Part 3, in class that points out that less than two percent of housing in certain areas went to non-white in the past. This percent has obviously increased over time, but it is still not stabilized around fifty percent or higher, which it should be at. The documentary claims “what we perceive as race is what we first notice about each other”, which is false since physical differences don’t make up

Racial prejudice often creates a division between the racists and their victims, and thus results in isolation and alienation of the victimized racial group. During the Harlem Renaissance, discrimination and oppression against African Americans was still prevalent, despite the 1920s being a time of expression of African culture. This juxtaposing concept is analyzed through Claude McKay’s poem “The White City”, which explores the perception of an African American speaker, presumably McKay himself, who longs to be a part of the White City, while retaining a deep, inner hatred of the city. Although McKay initially demonstrates his endearment and attachment toward the city through visual imagery, he directly juxtaposes it by expressing his hatred with tenacious, despicable diction. This juxtaposition not only serves to represent the struggle of being an African American in a white supremacist city but also displays McKay’s paradox of appreciating the “White City” while feeling detached from it.

Racial Formation in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant made me readjust my understanding of race by definition and consider it as a new phenomenon. Through, Omi and Winant fulfilled their purpose of providing an account of how concepts of race are created and transformed, how they become the focus of political conflict, and how they shape and permeate both identities and institutions. I always considered race to be physical characteristic by the complexion of ones’ skin tone and the physical attributes, such as bone structure, hair texture, and facial form. I knew race to be a segregating factor, however I never considered the meaning of race as concept or signification of identity that refers to different types of human bodies, to the perceived corporal and phenotypic makers of difference and the meanings and social practices that are ascribed to these differences, in which in turn create the oppressing dominations of racialization, racial profiling, and racism. (p.111). Again connecting themes from the previous readings, my westernized influences are in a direct correlation to how to the idea of how I see race and the template it has set for the rather automatic patterns of inequalities, marginalization, and difference. I never realized how ubiquitous and evolving race is within the United States.

City Heights East is divided by many different ethnicities. There is 54.3% Hispanic, 20.9% Asian, 15% Black, 7.3% White, 2.2% mixed, and 0.3% other. With this data we can see that there is is range of different ethnicities and not one fully overrides other. This is a diverse community with some great cultures throughout. With this comes crime. With a total of about 30 assaults in the past year, there needs to be a sense of community rather than a sense of territory. Within this sections it will review the cost of living, the employment rates, the school’s, and the community organization. These are all important when looking at a specific crime and how to improve it within the community.

In Vance’s society (the white working class in the Rust Belt), there was not much hope for economic success. In the book, Vance mentions the Pew Economic Mobility Project, which studies the financial well-being of American families and how their characteristics (race, gender, class, etc…) relate to both short-term financial stability and longer-term economic mobility. According to the project, only 44% of white working-class Americans believe that their children will fare better economically than them. This means that there was not much hope for the society’s children to be financially stable.

There is also an underlying punishment in the segregation found in education. Schools that black children attend are segregated because they are located in poor neighborhoods. Living in high-poverty neighborhoods for multiple generations adds a barrier to accessing achievement. It is not possible to desegregate schools without desegregating both low-income and high-income neighborhoods. Residential segregation and ongoing poverty have left African Americans in some of the most terrible housing in several of the lowest-resourced communities (Rothstein). Black citizens also suffer from concentrated poverty. About 45 percent of poor black children live in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty. Only 12 percent of poor white children live in concentrated poverty (Algeron). Children in neighborhoods with concentrated poverty experience more social and behavioral problems, have lower test scores, and are more likely to drop out of school. Part of the difference in educational outcomes likely comes from the different environments black and white children live in during their school years. Black children are far more likely to live in households that are low-income, extremely poor, food-insecure, or receiving long-term welfare support (Ford). Black children are less likely than white children are to live in households where at least one parent has secure employment. In addition, black children have the greatest

This essay will attempt to show evidence that supports the question ‘Does residential segregation shape the social life of cities and people’s sense of who they are’ by using different types of evidence, such as qualitative, which comes from interviews, focus groups, or even pictures and other artistic endeavours like murals. Whilst quantitative is obtained from statistics, surveys and records. Evidence will be looked at by what has appeared over time, looking at the growth of Manchester during 1800’s, with migration of people from the country side, to the city to take up jobs of an industrial nature and how segregation kept the wealthy and workers apart and the inequalities of conditions they lived in. Then at more recent evidence showing a case study of Belfast and the history of a single street Portland Road in London and how segregation can create connections as well as disconnections in people’s lives and how this shapes peoples sense of who they are.

Is gentrification causing segregation in urban cities? The majority of modern day cities are in a state of steady gentrification. Many people believe that gentrification is making the city more modern, safe, and appealing to other people. However, these people in their naivety fail to comprehend the hidden consequences and impact of gentrification on various ethnic groups and low-income families. Gentrification is a master of disguise that hides itself with assumed correlations to everyday people. One such assumption is that gentrification will increase the socioeconomic diversity of a neighborhood.

The Color of Christ is a book that evokes memories of the exhausted images and lives of Jesus which preponderantly contributes to “the saga of race in America.” (5) The book modifies and wisely propagates the stereotypical images of Jesus throughout the history of the U.S, which offers the most striking responses. In the book, Blum and Harvey portray the world as a place that is filled with various images about Jesus. The book, in its entirety, has been used by the two authors to substantiate the atrocities that were prevalent at a time when there was supremacy among the whites. White supremacy echoed loudly and was basically reinforced by the argument that Jesus Christ was white so he would agree with this notion. From the vicissitudes, and the happenings in the first six chapters of the book, Blum and Harvey have carefully interwoven a tapestry of visions and dreams of Americans to illustrate the fact that Americans have remade Christ. Instead of the thought that we, humans were made in the likeness of Christ, the son of G-d, we reinvented this theory of Christ in our likeness to suit our bias whether it be positive or negative. Again, Christ is emblematic of their aspirations strivings for power and racial justice, and their deeply- entrenched terrors.

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.

In Chapter 2 of the text “Slavery, Emancipation, and Class formation in colonial and Early National New York” explores the centrality of slave labor and race to the development of class relations in colonial and early national New York City. In the 1600’s slave labor was noted as the central point to New York’s colonial economy and to the survival of European culture. The North colonial economy relied more heavily on slavery for free laborer than Manhattan. As a result of the slave era African American males and females became to central force and the foundation of New Yorkers ‘slave economy. Between 1600 and 1738 the slave population

There may be some blacks or minorities who remain poor because of their personal characteristics, but the majority of poor blacks are not different from others in motivations and aspirations. In fact, many poor people work incredibly hard at low paying jobs in order to barely get by. The most important causes of poverty lie in the power relations of society, and not the cultural characteristics of the poor individuals. The experiences of poverty have an impact on an individual's disposition and psychological state. Poverty could cause an individual to behave in particular ways, but the main difference between the poor and the rest of society is the opportunities and circumstances the individual’s encounter. It is not their personalities, attributes or values. Blacks continue to be discriminated against in employment and housing, which only contributes to poverty. The majority of African Americans are not poor because they choose not to work, but are poor because of the continuous discrimination from the dominant white race. Poor black Americans should face the same political, economic, and housing conditions as poor white Americans, but this is not the case. Because of continuing discrimination, poor black families do not live in integrated neighborhoods with comparable white families. In addition,

In this essay the question as to how race relationships in the southern area of the United States can be understood as social facts and further this essay will illuminate if being of black skin colour in the southern area of the United States can be regarded as pathological in respect to Durkheim’s sociological views.

Others have claimed the poor families remain poor over generations because of lack of family values. This lack promotes teen pregnancy, children being raised by welfare, and single moms. Others claims that poor youths especially nonwhites see work, education, and marriage as something they despise. Why do they despise these things? Because they see these as symbols of the middle class social structure.