Race discrimination in residential housing

Housing Segregation

Many believe that segregation is a thing of the past, though historically destructive the general population believes the problem has been solved and that segregation has been left behind with the last of the Jim Crow laws for blacks. Additionally many believe that it rarely existed for any other race. This is a serious falsehood, as are the many other myths surrounding racial relations today. When South Africa was in crisis the United States, both as individuals and as a representative entity challenged the de facto segregation of the majority, without giving much thought to how apartheid is and has been expressed within our own culture, or how it has affected the racial minorities in our country. Segregation not only existed after Jim Crow, it has existed to some degree for every racial minority and it still exists today to some degree. Housing segregation through advertent and inadvertent means has seriously affected the upward mobility of Blacks, Asians and Latinos in the United States, reasons are as diverse as the population of the country, yet myth-busting is the beginning of change.

During Jim Crow, roughly 1880-1968, with the passing of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, there was a difficult but able fight to be waged against the legal sanctions, which discriminated against racial minorities. ("Jim Crow Laws ") the laws were visible and open to public scrutiny. When a legal or individual entity wished to deal with the constitutionality of individual segregation laws this could be done, in much the same way as they were fought in South Africa, and this was a crucially important step to take for civil rights. Yet with the destruction of such laws, and the constitutional amendments which abolished them the continuation of racial segregation then became a de jure shadow to be addressed with the one at a time tactics of legal precedence being at the heart of the fight.

Yet, it goes without saying that the individual fight almost surely stems from one group or incident and is not always feasible for anyone, usually it is cost-prohibitive. Those entities, such as the NAACP that fight discrimination through legal means are often backlogged by years of already strenuous legal issues and working without financing it is often a difficult commitment for the agency and the individuals involved to make.

It also goes without saying that individuals wishing to witness change must seriously weigh the costs against the benefits, including in times past and present, fear of retaliation and violence with regard to their fight, from both within and without.

Additionally it is not uncommon for the white majority to assume either through ignorance or lack of interest that the problem of segregation is largely solved, apparently because the "white only" and "colored only" signs have come down and with them laws have been enacted to protect the minority from discrimination. What most people fail to realize is the significant impact of racial segregation by custom and/or ignorance and the degree to which it still effects racial minorities today.

In theory, this self-reinforcing cycle of prejudice, discrimination, and segregation was broken down during the 1960s by a growing rejection of racist sentiments by whites and a series of court decisions and federal laws that banned discrimination in public life...Despite these changes, however, the nations largest black communities remained as segregated as ever in 1989. Indeed, many urban areas displayed a pattern of intense racial isolation that could only be called hypersegregation. (Taeuber & Taeuber 83)

Even having said this there is an additional issue that keeps people down and that is economic, lacking the opportunity to achieve a greater economic status than the generation that came before them many Asians, Latinos and Blacks in America are segregated by necessity, be it in the lower end neighborhoods of the suburbs or the actual multi-floor dwellings of the "new ghetto," projects. (Coulibaly, Green and James)

Another myth that must be challenged is the idea that segregation only occurred it the south and therefore the north has one leg up on their neighbors as to how far they still must go to succeed with a mythical goal of multicultural housing. Every state in the union had Jim Crow laws and every state in the union no matter how liberal or forward thinking still has issues effecting racially segregated housing. This is especially true when it comes to larger cities, like New York and Los Angeles. In New York some of the foremost "projects" were created which demonstrated significant racial disparity, and created a system of subsidized segregation that endures today. In Los Angeles racial segregation occurs frequently for Latinos, Asians and Blacks in pockets of racially dominant sections of the city. These things are unlikely to change without the conscious effort of many to break down barriers and create real change based on investment and opportunity for all involved.

In the market driven, status conscious society of the United States, affluent families live in different neighborhoods than poor families, and to the extent that blacks are poor and whites are affluent, the two groups will tend to be physically separated from one another...William Clark estimates that 30%-70% of racial segregation is attributed to economic factors, which together with urban structure and neighborhood preferences, "bear much of the explanatory weight for present residential patterns." (Taeuber & Taeuber 84)

Investments must be made in educational interests, employment opportunity, and many other issues for any real change to occur. This will rely on individual often self-involved businesses to redirect resources to invest in the workforce in a way that is meaningful and additionally the governmental restructuring of school funding is absolutely crucial to the success of any goal with regard to education.

It has been suggested that the companies who are outsourcing jobs to other countries should explore the possibility of resettling locations inside labor rich low opportunity areas in the United States. Yet, this will not happen when the system favors the redistribution of economic entities to places where regulations do not restrict the amounts they can pay workers or the level of benefits they must provide. Additionally, the educational issue can be addressed through a conscious effort for states to globalize on this issue, as education is in theory governed by the state government funding allocation must be considered and changes must be made within the state structure, not by federal mandate which in the past has become an intrinsic sore spot in the lives of educators.

A in the 1970s...little was known about African-Americans' subjective experience of mobility until a small number of studies began to appear in the 1990s (Shaw & Coleman, 2000). Most of these studies explored Black Americans' experiences in high schools and colleges, demonstrating that although the doors of colleges, universities, and elite secondary schools have increasingly opened to Black students, the prevailing culture of these institutions has been less welcoming, often serving to maintain Black students' sense of their "otherness" by virtue of both race and class.

Cole and Omari)

So it would seem that even when the doors are swung open to racial minorities within schools the issues of race and class are pervasive within the structure of the culture of such schools. The resistance to change feeds the desire of racial minorities to rebuild their own structural education system, rather than being continually bombarded with racially driven social stigmas and challenges within the majority education system. Yet, to a certain degree, if this occurs even on the lower education level the problem is still evident. Ignorance of the "other" is still pervasive and the personal social challenges that change such perceptions are simply exacerbated.

Challenges to racial segregation in housing are varied and many and the discriminatory practices of the majority are only a very small part of the problem. The subtler ways in which interventions, mainly by law and legislation backfire are evident all over the place. The attempt by some to assist many individuals by creating available housing within their historical neighborhoods ended in the creation of a prison like atmosphere hard to escape. The challenges to desegregate schools through bussing black children to regions outside their neighborhoods to attend school at a more diverse location backfired as people began to feel like it undermined the integrity of their culture. (Formisano) in one particularly heated situation in Boston the Boston Herald played an integral role in attempting to help everyone in the fight Formisano says, "nobody won."