I wanted add a little bit of context to the race discussions that have become so prevalent here. There are a number of great academic scholars in this area, but one that always stuck with me was a 1993 work by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton that argued that racial segregation was the critical factor in the African American (AA) American experience. They also were concerned that scholars were moving toward the view that class, gender and other issues were more important to understand the American experience and AA American experience. They believed that racial segregation was so important to the AA experience that the called their book American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass.
Massey and Denton use the term ‘ghetto’ extensively throughout this book. They use the term ghetto to refer to a neighborhood that is solely populated by one race or ethnic group. It is not used in reference to class or income level. Not only do they believe that no other group other than black Americans has ever experienced ‘ghettoization,’ but they charge that "for urban blacks, the ghetto has been the paradigmatic residential condition for at least eighty years." Furthermore, the ghettoization of this group is the direct result of a series of individual and collective decisions by white Americans within the excepted power structure that "strengthen(ed) the walls of the ghetto."
Think about this: In 1870, 80% of AAs lived in the rural south. By 1970, 80% of AAs lived in urban areas and almost half of them had left the south. That’s a significant movement of AAs. For those who are interested in the more academic aspects of the book, I urge you to read it. However, they do a great job of looking at data on on the movement of AAs, and found that the ghettoization of AAs had increased by about 32% from 1860 to 1910. By 1940, the ghettoization of AAs had increased by an astonishing 179% from 1860. Again, I urge you to read the book for a better understanding of their research if you are so inclined. What I just did was a severe oversimplification of their research.
Of course, industrialization played a key role in the movement of AAs out of the rural south. This movement of AAs to the north sparked race riots in a number of northern cities including New York in 1900 and Chicago in 1919. Mobs of whites roamed the cities attacking AAs but most of those arrested during these riots were AA. After these riots, AAs often didn’t return to live in their homes because of the fear of more violence.
How were AAs kept from moving into white communities? One solution was the formation of "neighborhood improvement associations." The Hyde Park Improvement Club and Protective Club and the Woodlawn Society were formed with the stated roles to insure the security of the neighborhood and property values. However, the real objective was to get rid of AAs in the Chicago south side and to prevent others from moving in. These associations created restrictive covenants that prevented property owners from selling or leasing their property to AAs. The typical agreement time frame for these covenants was 20 years.
I could discuss how the real estate industry helped to create this ghettoization of AAs in more depth also. But I will quote Massey from another work that pretty well sums this up. The real estate industry kept "blacks from moving into white residential areas haphazardly and (saw) to it that they filled a block solidly before being allowed to move into the next one." This also turned out to be a very profitable policy as a lot of people made a lot of money off it as housing prices were pushed up through the artificial enforcement of high demand for these few houses offered to AAs.
This book also discusses the failure of public policy to alleviate the condition of black isolation from the white community. Public policy, in their view, reflects the ambivalent white culture’s attitude that while people should live where they want, they would prefer that a limited number of blacks lived in their neighborhood.
Why bring this up now? We have to be honest about our culture if we want to improve race relations in this country. The segregation between whites and AAs was created. It didn’t happen naturally. Those neighborhood covenants I referred to earlier weren’t ruled unconstitutional until 1948. White flight into the suburbs in the 1950s further worsened the problem. Congress didn’t create legislation addressing this housing issue until 1949 and 1954. Public housing created in the 50s and 60s didn’t solve the problem. Later urban renewal to counter the spread of "urban blight" was used to remove AAs from their neighborhoods. And, urban renewal usually resulted in a loss of housing in the city neighborhood that was targeted.
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Update
I forgot to talk about why this work stuck with me. First, I remember very clearly when a house in the next neighborhood was firebombed. A black family had just moved in. I rode my bike to the house to look at it. The house had a large picture window that was destroyed along with some of the window sill. A different, white family moved in after the house was repaired. This happened in the early 1970s.
Secondly, I received an internship with a Chicago University and worked on a research project in the Woodlawn area of Chicago near Hyde Park. The project's focus was on what job skills residents needed to become upwardly mobile in the workforce. We had been invited in by a AA community group. This book made me wonder whether another intent of the program was to improve their skill set so they could move out of the neighborhood.