The Legacy Of American Sociology

American culture has been referred to as a “melting pot.” Different cultures have added their own distinct aspects to society, making America a diverse country. Despite the plethora of cultures, certain norms, mores, and folkways are evident in American society. These ideas are vital to the function and stability of America. They provide guidelines for what is acceptable and not. In virtually every society, there are people who engage in deviant behavior and do not abide by the values that the rest of society follows. Theorists have debated if people are socialized into acting this way and if it is a social or personal problem. The sociological study of culture focuses on norms, mores, and folkways.

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.

In order to support his opinion, the author uses historical references to the enormous impact of racial inequality on African American lives. Additionally, Desmond names a set of historical data and rates of the poor African Americans in cities to enhance the reader’s understanding of this complex situation. African Americans were also more likely to get the apartment with broken furniture, windows, and other facilities that confirmed the existence of racial inequality (Desmond, 2016, p.249). To reassert his position, Desmond provides offensive statistics that millions of people are evicted from American homes, and most of them are African American (Desmond, 2016, p.293). As a matter of fact, the author proves that housing discrimination based on race is the primary cause of

The ideas of slavery have resonated throughout American society, allowing many individuals of color to experience systemic forces of racism that hinder their abilities to obtain success. Anna Deavere Smith’s Twilight: Los Angeles 1992 accentuates that these Racist ideas have continued to plague marginalized groups and have led to the development of societal hatred. Institutionalized racism remains a major issue within American society, as thousands of individuals of color continue to endure poverty, police brutality, and lack of educational resources that have created a racial and class divide between white individuals and individuals of color. In Twilight: Los Angeles 1992, Anna Deavere Smith illuminates these racist barriers constructed by

A cycle is evident in the effects of Institutional Racism; lack of education leads to no job or low income wages, which then proceeds to poor housing and poor medical care, which ultimately results in death. Richard Rothson of The American Prospect spoke on the situation occurring in Baltimore City. Recently the government adopted a restriction against black Americans purchasing houses in the same suburbs as white Americans. Federal housing subsidy policies going as far as to direct low income, black families to segregated neighbourhoods away from mid-class suburbs. When interviewed, Baltimore’s mayor claimed, “Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce spread of communicable disease into white neighbourhoods, and to protect white values among white majority.” This set of circumstances is related to discrimination in political figures as well as no employment and lack of education. Failure in education, according to usnews.com, talks about how African-American children are at a disadvantage in school curriculums, leaving them improperly educated, which results in lack of employment. This revolves back to the housing crisis in Baltimore, furthermore providing the facts that when an African-American person isn’t hired from an employer, based on the idea of limited education factors, they are segregated to a low income wage community, which can often be proclaimed as

Before 1960s, Black people were legally discriminated against and even today they are still treated unfairly. This piece is provided to contextualize a specific sector that Blacks are discriminated against historically, in person, and over the phone now. This piece is meant to spark a conversation for African Americans to think about other instances where they put on a “white voice” and to think about how in other ways they are discriminated against in that sector. It also allows white people, who are up for conversation, to realize the biases they are placing on people by not only how they look, but even how they sound over the phone. This piece isn’t meant to end housing discrimination, but to be a conversation starter for both parties on

Rough Draft & Thesis Statement Minorities are faced with housing discrimination on levels much higher than that of white people which is considered white privilege. Residential segregation has been strategically planned and carried out by multiple parties throughout history and persists today ultimately inhibiting minorities from making any of the social or economic advances that come from living in affluent neighborhoods and communities. From our research, the scholarly sources have depicted multiple causes of racial disparity. Housing segregation perpetuates negative circumstances for people of color, as looked at through history, laws, segregation, real estate, and ... The end of the Civil War and the start of the Industrial Revolution and

For far too long, African Americans have been neglected the rights to decent and fair housing. In “In Darkness and Confusion,” William Jones expresses his discontentment with the almost cruel living conditions of the ghettos in Harlem as he stated, “It ain’t a fit place to live, though” (Petry 261). William was especially motivated to move to a better home to protect his wife, Pink’s, ailing health. William and Pink searched high and low for more decent places to live – however, they simply could not afford decent. Though marketed to those with lower than average incomes, the ‘better’ housing for blacks were still deficient and extremely pricy. In

According to table two (Reardon and Bischoff p. 25) black, families income segregation grew rapidly within the 1970-1980’s, at a rate that was three times faster than the corresponding growth of white income segregation (Bischoff and Reardon p.26). On average black income segregation was about ⅓ SD lower than white income segregation. Figure 4 (Reardon and Bischoff p. 27) further proves that both blacks who had jobs ranging from working with manufacturing companies, construction, financial aid, real estate and even managerial and professional jobs earned four times less than whites who were within the same position. Only two percent of black families who had the same jobs as whites were earning the same annual income. In addition, to the figure it is shown that whites who have just high school diplomas earn twice as much as blacks who also have high school diplomas. This discrimination many workplaces have set has limited blacks from getting jobs and providing for their families. This is one of the many reasons as of to why many result of criminal activities in order to support their families. Almost all whites are given that privilege that opportunity no matter what their situation is, they are helped by society and taken in, neutered, healthy and then placed back into society. While blacks on the other hand, are expected to figure things out and

The problems of race and urban poverty remain pressing challenges which the United States has yet to address. Changes in the global economy, technology, and race relations during the last 30 years have necessitated new and innovative analyses and policy responses. A common thread which weaves throughout many of the studies reviewed here is the dynamics of migration. In When Work Disappears, immigrants provide comparative data with which to highlight the problems of ghetto poverty affecting blacks. In No Shame in My Game, Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants are part of the changing demographics in Harlem. In Canarsie, the possible migration of blacks into a working/middle-class neighborhood prompts conservative backlash from a

Another premise in this review focuses on the significant divergences of opinions about the plight of the African American’s situation here in America. Some scholars are asking, how has this new pattern of inequality for the African American emerged? Many scholars point to the decline of middle level jobs (Harrison & Bluestone 1988), the redistribution of manufacturing jobs away from large cities like Chicago and Detroit, where many jobless blacks live (Sassen 1988), and the rise of earnings inequality among workers of all races (Danziger & Gottschalk 1993) as causes. One manifestation of these changes may be that gains in earnings have been offset by a growing racial disparity in unemployment between black and white men (Moss & Tilly 1991).

There have been many articles published about the transformation of cities in regards to industrial improvements, communities blooming with mass migrations, and standards of living. A number of different cultures have migrated to rural and urban populations and among those mass migrations there were African Americans. Although immigrants went through hardships such as harsh living conditions and low status, they didn’t have to go through as much trouble as African Americans did. African Americans who moved into the city were not on top of the priority list to most. They were not given the time of day to their needs. Race affected these urban dwellers because of discrimination, living conditions, and inequality.

Though not directly stated it is also apparent that the author is claiming that the new color-line is apparent within urbanized cities, division of labor, and housing markets (17). Moreover, another important claim made relates back to the migration of African Americans into urbanized areas. Harold highlights that such shift is “characterized by economic and housing inequalities that are complicated by high levels of racial segregation” (29). He depicts three theories which interpret such inequalities, those being: progressive integration, continuing significant race, and the changing of significant race. Consequently, he makes another argument, stating that the changing of significant race theory works best in interpreting “African American economic and social integration” (30).

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

Hannah-Jones examines the impact residential segregation: “Cities have largely been abandoned by white Americans, you have massive public housing projects, where nearly everyone in there is black and poor, and even if you’re middle class and black, you can’t move out” (Hannah-Jones, This American Life). Thus the government promoted segregation by redlining black communities, and white Americans moved into suburbs. And although the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was intended to end residential discrimination, Updike and Hannah Jones describe the lack of progress: “We no longer have segregation by law, but we still have segregation by fact, and this moderate view says that there's nothing we can or should do about it” (Hannah-Jones, This American Life). With residential segregation as an absolute fact, black Americans are left to suffer in unescapable ghettos – and often turn to drugs and violence – while white Americans enjoy extreme privilege. Michelle Alexander explores the significance of this discrepancy in her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of