The Making Of Ferguson Essay

Political forces, which are controlled by the government, can majorly influence and change the way people live their life. From the Federal Housing Administration, which enabled citizens to become homeowners by underwriting mortgages, to the Interstate Highway Act, that change the route of expressways, political forces can dramatically change the way a city runs and functions. Wilson (2011) states, “In short, public housing became a federally funded institution that isolated families by race and class, resulting in high concentrations of poor black families in inner-city ghettos” (pg. 14). Wilson describes political forces as

In the article The Construction of the Ghetto by Massey and Denton, there are several policies and practices that still has its effect on racial structure today. Among the several practices and policies are the Government Issue (GI) Bill for veterans and housing loans. At a political view, the GI Bill for veterans helped them buy houses at a lower price due to their contribution in the war. Since White veterans have the GI Bill, they moved out to the suburbs during 1940-1970, which was during the time of suburbanization. Because Black veterans did not receive the GI Bill, they were unable to move out and buy houses. This effect is still present today, considering that in the statistics, Blacks are less likely than Whites to own houses.

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

The Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson is known for having established the precedent of “separate but equal.” The case originated in Louisiana and was specifically made to the separate passenger cars that were for the black and white races. The Supreme Court, in this case, upheld the right of Louisiana to separate the races and “this decision provided the legal foundation to justify many other actions by state and local governments to socially separate blacks and whites” (Zimmerman, 1997). It was not until the famous Brown v. Board of Education case in 1954 that the highest court in the land outlawed the principal of segregation and the concept of “separate but equal.”

The racial undertones of Detroit have been extremely problematic to Detroit’s real estate market for well over 50 years. These social disruptions continue to have an effect on the current residents of Detroit. During the middle of the nineteenth century, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) introduced real estate tactics such as redlining, which is the practice of flagging minority dense neighborhoods for the purposes of denying approval of mortgages or inflating the price of the homes. Redlining had a profound social and economic effect on all residents of Detroit. The white majority began abandoning and selling their homes in fear that the value of the home would plummet, leading to a great financial loss when minorities moved in the area. This idea is known as white flight, and is the primary reason that Detroit has one of the highest African American populations in the country. However, through revitalization and gentrification of the Midtown/Downtown area, Detroit is slowly becoming more diverse. Throughout history, racial politics of the mid-to-late twentieth century affected Detroit 's real estate market by excluding minorities from the real estate market. Although adding stadiums, high end retail, small shops, and restaurants is economically valuable to the city of Detroit, this is conflicting and potentially problematic for the original residents of the area because the prices of these new establishments are often much higher than the residents can afford.

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 1890, the Separate Car Act was enacted in the state of Louisiana requiring whites and non-white Americans to travel in separate railway cars. As a result, a passenger, Homer Adolph Plessy took a seat in a “whites only” car in one of the Louisiana trains and refused to move to the “blacks only” car and was subsequently arrested despite being only a eighth black.

Plessy v. Ferguson This was a petition filed in the supreme court of Louisiana in 1896, by Homer Plessy, the plaintiff. He filed this petition against the Honorable John H. Ferguson, judge of The petitioner was a citizen of the United States and a descent meaning he had both white and African American ethnic backgrounds. Keep in mind that at this time Blacks were not considered equal to whites.

Recently, an L.A. Times article (dated 2/13/00) reviewed a new book entitled "Without Sanctuary", a collection of photographs from lynchings throughout America. During the course of the article, the author, Benjamin Schwarz, outlined some very interesting and disturbing facts related to this gruesome act of violence: Between 1882 and 1930, more than 3,000 people were lynched in the U.S., with approximately 80% of them taking place in the South. Though most people think only African Americans were victims of lynchings, during those years, about 25% were white. Data indicates that mobs in the West lynched 447 whites and 38 blacks; in the Midwest there were 181 white victims and 79 black; and in the South, people lynched 291

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

Racism has been a part of our country since the early ages. Historically, racism and equality have been central issues that have divided our country. Many actions from the past such as the decision in the Plessy versus Ferguson case, and present day actions like The Mississippi school system case have been the ongoing battle in today 's society. The struggle to achieve equality was made even more difficult by the legislation that is now considered racist in the Plessy versus Ferguson case.

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

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

I the article Race the Power of an Illusion, Dalton Conley says, “the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s really marks both an opportunity and a new danger in terms of racial relations in America. On the one hand, the Civil Rights era officially ended inequality of opportunity. It officially ended de jure legal inequality, so it was no longer legal for employers, for landlords, or for any public institution or accommodations to discriminate based on race. At the same time, those civil rights triumphs did nothing to address the underlying economic and social inequalities that had already been in place because of hundreds of years of inequality.” (Conley pp 1). What goes on in the American ghetto is not as glamorous as Hollywood makes it out to be now, this film does a great job at depicting what life in the ghetto for black teens is really like. The ghettos in America are full of broken culture that is left behind from centuries of oppression by the white man. Most teens like those in the movie never make it out of their neighborhoods alive. Thousands of kids die every years from gang on gang violence, damaging all chances of them escaping the ghetto and making something of themselves. Death, gangs, and drugs is the more common way that young people are left with to deal with a life of poverty and survival that seems to have no escape.