UI Housing Patterns and Racial Inequality in the US Discussion – Description
Based on the reading and videos from this week, answer the following questions in an inital post:
What is the relationship between housing patterns and racial inequality?
How do lack of housing assistance, stagnating incomes at the bottom of the wage distribution, and rising housing costs affect racial inequality?
How does housing inequality affect different life chances (i.e. schools, crime, health, etc.)?
CHAPTER NOTES:
Main Points
The rise of racialized neighborhoods was due to urbanization, housing shortages, the migration of whites to the suburbs, and urban unrest. Most Americans continue to live in racially segregated neighborhoods.
Poverty levels, unemployment rates, and demographic changes have transformed the suburbs since the 1990s.
Environmental racism disadvantages nonwhite rural communities, particularly those on American Indian reservations.
Racial Struggles over Residence in Twentieth-Century America
America is more racially segregated today than at the conclusion of the Civil War. Segregation levels in major cities during the nineteenth century were less than half of what they are today. Neighborhoods based on close-knit ethnic affiliations gave way to urban divisions based on race and class.
Mexicans who had moved north for agricultural and manufacturing jobs were blamed for Depression Era unemployment. By the end of the 1930s, 2 million had been repatriated to Mexico. More than half were U. S. citizens and over one-third of all U. S. Mexicans were repatriated.
Many Native American tribes were terminated between 1953 and 1973. More than 60 percent had been relocated to cities by 1990.
As a result of the great migration from the rural South to the urban North, over 4.5 million black people arrived in the North where they were cordoned off to restricted urban districts.
The ghetto is a set of neighborhoods that are exclusively inhabited by members of one group and a defining characteristic is advanced marginality and segregation of residents. In the United States, housing shortages and restrictions on loans for nonwhites led to the formation of ghettoes. These ghettoes reinforced racial inequality.
The 1968 Fair Housing Act was the last of the four great Civil Rights Acts but was weakly enforced.
Some whites began to move out to the suburbs beginning in the 1950s. This “white flight” was encouraged with federal programs and increased with deindustrialization and with the Civil Rights Movement.
Urban unrest increased as racial segregation and degradation continued. Racial uprisings directly resulted in policies aimed at improving contitions in the ghetto and also resulted in increased police repression in the black community.
Racial Segregation
Most Americans live in racially segregated neighborhoods. This can be caused by economic factors as well as housing discrimination.
The consequences of segregation can be economic, political, symbolic, emotional and educational.
The City
Many immigrants live in ethnic enclaves—this may be because they are a starting point on the way to economic and cultural assimilation, or because they offer a community, or due to ethnic and racial discrimination.
The Suburbs
These communities are home to 8 million Americans. They are neither all affluent nor all white. The number of suburban poor has been on the rise and they are isolated from employment and social services.
Rural America
Farming areas, small towns and Indian reservations are just as racially segregated as urban areas.
Environmental racism is any environmental policy, practice, or directive that disproportionately affects nonwhite communities. Black and Latino neighborhoods are far more likely to have environmental hazards than white ones.
As the United States grows more diverse, racial markers seem to be growing more porous and fluid. Race is not a biological entity; rather, it is a European invention, forged in the context of colonization and slavery.
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