What is Residential Segregation?

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

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.

Neighborhood factors include aspects such as socioeconomic status and urbanization. Socioeconomic status is one of the main correlates of crime and delinquency, and neighborhoods with low socioeconomic status often lack sufficient money and resources (Sampson and Groves 1989, 780). In the book, LaJoe was unemployed and received governmental aid every month to buy groceries, pay the rent, and support her many children. She lacked the money to buy her

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

In “The Complexities and Processes of Racial Housing discrimination” by Vincent J. Roscigno, Diana L. Karafin, and Griff tester, the main concept of racial disparity and inequality among neighborhoods is discussed, and how those inequalities became to be. They first highlight the wide range of potentially exclusionary practices, through qualitative and quantitative data comprised of over 750 verified housing discrimination cases (Roscigno, p. 162). Citing the U.S. Census, it is found that Blacks, compared to Hispanics and Asians, continue to experience high levels of residential segregation. This is done through discriminatory practices, whether they be by exclusionary or non-exclusionary methods. Even after the passing of the Fair Housing Act in 1988, discrimination against Blacks and Hispanics decreased somewhat, though African Americans still appeared to take part in racial steering, and Hispanics continued to have limitations in regards to opportunities and access to rental units (Roscigno, p. 163).

Sampson and Groves (1989) argued that if we use residential instability for example, this should not be regarded as a direct cause of crime, but as something which ‘fosters institutional disruption, and weakened social controls’ (Sampson et al., 1997: 919) (Sutherland et al. 2013 p. 3). Likewise, it is through that a lack of contact and the loss of trust in neighbours may contribute to criminal behaviour (Sampson et al., 2005). ‘Family disruption’ (lone parents) was added to the list by Sampson (1987) to an illustrative model of crime; this was thought to affect the ability of parents to manage their own children as well as their capacity to provide guardianship of the local community (Sutherland et al. 2013 p.3)

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.

So far, both theories are able to explain the crime inequality observed insides neighbourhoods; however, when it comes to explaining the difference in crime rates between neighbourhoods with similarly low levels of poverty, social disorganization theory is not able to fully explain why such difference may occur, as it places a greater focus on the internal dynamics of the neighbourhoods than on the external contingencies (Peterson & Krivo, 2010, p. 92). Based on Table 4.5 of Divergent Social Worlds: Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial DivideI, minority low-poverty areas have roughly two and a half times more violence than their white counterparts (Peterson & Krivo, 2010, p. 88). Social disorganization theory insists that residential instability (percent of those who owns and percent of those who rent) , population heterogeneity (internal differences, including ethno-racial differences), poverty (percent of those who live in poverty), income, deteriorating neighbourhood, and population loss (percent of those who leave due to deterioration) are mechanisms that leads to the absence of informal social control and increases social disorganization, causing the loss of control over youths who then hang out at spontaneous playgrounds and form gangs with delinquent traditions that get passed down through cultural transmission. If such was the case, then one would expect neighbourhoods with similar and comparable local conditions to have similar average rates of crimes. However,

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

The term is chose was ethics. What ethics is the knowledge and the moral rights that a person has to everyone no matter what race they come from. “Segregation” is something that they try to avoid and expel to a certain level. Ethics is also different based on the country and place you live in like in Ethiopia it is ethical for u not to argue with the government (Or something bad may happen). But in North America and Canada that is something that would be seen as unethical. My conclusion is that ethics is a term that can comprehended as mostly a good thing based on what your morals

In 1942, Clifford Shaw and Henry D. McKay produced Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas, which aimed to explain crime in urban communities using social disorganization theory. Elliot and Merrill (1934) define social disorganization as “a breakdown in the equilibrium of forces, a decay in the social structure, so that old habits and forms of social control no longer function effectively” (p.20). Using this definition and the ecological approach, Shaw and McKay argue that low economic status, ethnic heterogeneity, and residential mobility led to the disruption of community social organization (Shaw and McKay 1942). This disruption is what essentially leads to delinquency and further crime. Numerous empirical studies and tests were conducted in order to determine the validity of the theory. Studies done in the United States and in other countries have also shown support for the theory. In addition, the theory has been extended and revised by multiple scholars and applied to nonmetropolitan areas. The numerous studies and tests of social disorganization theory will prove whether the theory is applicable to other metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas and whether the theory is still applicable to the modern era.

Forced segregation was brought to an all-time high during Apartheid, with the implementation of the Casspir trucks. The trucks were specifically designed to assist police officers during the apartheid era uprisings. Pike (2013:12). The trucks design enabled officers to go through hazardous areas and be protected by bulletproof glass. In Image C one can clearly see the similarities to the trucks used in District 9. Contiguity is well represented in Image D as there are several Casspir trucks following one behind the other, this subliminally reinforces the message of the police infiltrating the district in vast numbers, ready to conquer and detain if necessary.

Crime data came from local police agencies for the FBI's Part I crimes (i.e., homicide, rape, aggravated assaulted assaults, robbery, burglary, larceny, auto theft, and arson) for February through July 1998. Additional data came from computerized crime mapping. Results in both cities revealed that black female residents of public housing were at a much higher risk of aggravated assault than were black and white women who lived elsewhere in the same jurisdiction. However, the geographic pattern for aggravated assaults for black female public housing residents differed markedly in the two cities. The analysis used the perspective of situational crime prevention to attribute the differences in victimization patterns to the different architectural design and geographic dispersion of the respective cities’ public housing developments. (Holzman, Hyatt, & Dempster, 2001)