Segregation Still Relevant Today

As American Apartheid has shown, segregation is a key factor in the divide of housing in America. Written over ten years ago, Douglas Massey’s studies of the sharp contrast of suburbia and ghetto living can still not only be seen today, but is still just as prominent and alive as ten years ago.

The study of neighborhood preferences of black and white respondents in a Detroit-area survey in 1976, exemplifies the segregationist views of that time. While black respondents are eager to move into a neighborhood with 50% black/50% white with a strong 63% saying that is their first choice. White respondents, 72% in fact, state they would be uncomfortable with a neighborhood of that make-up and 64% would try to leave.

Shocking as it may seem in the 1970s, segregationist views are still alive today, in 2008. Charles Babington of The Associated Press recently wrote an article on the gap between blacks and white on racial discrimination in the current election poll. The article, entitled Poll shows gap between blacks and whites over racial discrimination" can be found here.

The sharpest contrast appears between how each group sees discrimination today:

The poll, however, shows that blacks and whites see racial discrimination in starkly different terms. When asked "how much discrimination against blacks" exists, 10 percent of whites said "a lot" and 45 percent said "some."

Among blacks, 57 percent said "a lot" and all but a fraction of the rest said "some."

Asked how much of America's existing racial tension is created by blacks, more than one-third of white respondents said "most" or "all," and 9 percent said "not much." Only 3 percent of blacks said "most" or "all," while half said "not much at all."
Nearly three-fourths of blacks said white people have too much influence in American politics. Only 12 percent of whites agreed. Almost three times as many blacks as whites said blacks have too little influence.

Far more blacks than whites say government officials "usually pay less attention to a request or complaint from a black person than a white person."

One in five whites have felt admiration for blacks "very" or "extremely" often. Seventy percent of blacks have felt the same about whites.

It appears that since the 1976 neighborhood surveys, not much as changed. The only is the sentence attributing changing attitudes to college-educated whites living outside the South – that maybe education is really the only answer. Learning the facts and forming your own educated opinions may be the only real way to escape a culture of racism.

Parallel Reality of the Ghetto

In reading "American Apartheid" by Douglas Massey, one can't help but have their eyes opened and nod in agreement while reading. Massey's defining passage (so far) is found on page 57 where is says that public housing, in the words of historian Arnold Hirsch, represents a "second ghetto," one "solidly institutionalized and frozen in concrete." At first when reading this, you can't help but be defensive enough to naively think that there is no way people permit ghettos to happen, for people to allow a second world as the ghetto to exist. However, in thinking about the passage of time and the research that Massey has collected, it seems that people not only let ghettos form, but have let them thrive as part of the everyday norm.

Ghettos today are seen as a regular pattern of life - just enough accepted neighborhood. In fact, it appears that ghettos are breeding grounds for a parallel world of survival, hopelessness, and desolation. While ghettos are a stark contrast to the way many live, people can easily count off the ghetto sections of their city with ease. They know where they are and know who lives there, but yet avoid those sections at all costs. They are seen as untouchable, almost quarantined sections of the city whose boundaries cannot be permeated. People do not pass through the "wall" in order to leave or to get in and help.

It is ironic to look at how the ghetto has not only played a permanent role in how people live, but also in pop culture. Music, movies, books, and television shows are famous for telling the success stories of making it out of the ghetto, or the supposed glamorous life of living on the street. Rap stars are notorious for this, and somehow put a cool, hard edge on the perks of living in the ghetto that might be enviable to some that are totally unaware of the unfortunate living situations these people face daily living in the real ghetto. Unless the public wakes up and realizes the almost 3rd world country living environments in which some people live in America, the fear is that the ghetto will continue its cyclical nature.

The Perfect Storm for Poverty

Michael Teitz and Karen Chapple write in their study eight different hypotheses of inner-city poverty, which can be summed as follows:
1. Structural economic shifts; 2. Inadequate human capital; 3. Racial & gender discrimination; 4. Interaction of culture & behavior; 5. Spatial mismatch; 6. Migration; 7. Endogenous growth deficit; and 8. Public policy.

While these hypotheses each form a substantial argument for inner-city poverty and could stand alone in their own right, I think that all eight form the foundation of a "perfect storm" of sorts. Like someone posed in class, the age old question of which came first the chicken or the egg, can be applied to this transition. All eight hypotheses stirred together form a sequence of events that had formed a cyclical brew that is still not only alive, but gaining ground today. While this article was written in 1998, ten years later nothing much has changed.

Inner-city poverty is still a problem affecting many today, with no apparent solution. The argument of who should find and implement the solution seems to be the real problem, with the blame shifting from the public to the government to the church to the nonprofit community. Is it a local, state, or federal policy problem? Is it a land planning, employment, cultural, or discrimination policy issue? With the hypothesis of public policy, one can look back at the often misguided government "solutions" of inner-city poverty. However, like we discussed in class, were it really solutions being formed or just a shifting of the "problem"? Did anyone in the government really look at the root of the problem or was it seen as an annoyance that must be swept under the rug?

Many of these questions can be asked today, but for the first time, the current generation seems to be asking the right questions. Not how can these problems be averted but how can they be solved? Is it not a numbers game, but a real issue affecting real people. Unless the root of the problem is solved, the same problems will reappear, sometimes with just a different face. If the economic pie is broadened, not short-changed, for everyone, than everyone as a whole can benefit from an increased growth in our economy. The answer only seems to be waiting on the right person or group to step up and admit that inner-city poverty is not right, that people living in such suffering and desolate opportunity is not the "America" that we all know.

Transportation, cultural norms, business interests, technology, and government - these are the significant turning points from city life to suburbia, according to Kenneth Jackson. However if we reflect on history, we can see that all major events seem to rotate around one of these factors.

Discovery of America = transportation, business interests, government.
Taming the American wilderness to Colonies = transportation, cultural norms, government.
Gold Rush = transportation, cultural norms, business interests.
The Great Depression = cultural norms, business interests, technology, government.
Flying a man to the moon = transportation, technology, government.
Computer and Internet Boom = Cultural norms, business interests, technology, government.
Any major war = transportation (oil), business interests, technology, government.

Although these events in history vary, they can all relate to the ignition of at least one of Jackson's five factors. And it begs the question to wonder what is not in the reach of human interest or passion, until one of these five factors begets a path to its fruition.