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.