Repression, Isolation, Segregation and the Urban Ghetto Essay -- Black

Repression, Isolation, Segregation and the Urban GhettoAfrican Americans have systematically been denied equal opportunities and this is particularly true within American inner cities. The social, cultural, and economic closing off of these urban ghettos has profound impacts and affects on its dwellers. This isolation and segregation has led to the evolution of profoundly divergent and dichotomous life chances for black and white Americans. The black urban poor are confronted with a lifestyle that promotes oppositional culture to the norms of society and challenged by an everyday exposure to violence, drugs, and crime. This paper attempts to explore the historical conditions that laid the foundation for the new-fashioned black urban ghetto. Racism and segregation have a long history in America. For most of Americas history, black Americans have been denied inherent rights that include the right own property and the right to vote. Until the 1920s, racial discrimination was la rgely considered a product of the backward practices of an economically and socially antiquated South. Because of their strong rhetoric, important political connections, and financial support, northern whites had often been important activists in early fights for racial equality. Northern whites saw their urban environment as socially and economically integrated. Black doctors, lawyers and financiers mingled freely with upper class whites this unconscious socialization was not only common among white collar professions but also amongst the optic and lower classes.Unfortunately, this social harmony would end abruptly with the second Great Migration of southern blacks to northern cities during the 1940s and 1950s. This migration resulted f... ...African Americans. More importantly, this history illustrates the continued importance of escape and its central linkage to the problems of poverty. BibliographyAnderson, E. StreetWise. scratch University of Chicago Press, 1990.C lark, K. Dark ghetto dilemmas of social power. New York Harper and Row, 1965.Hirsch, A. Making the second ghetto race and housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. Chicago University of Chicago Press, 1998.Kotlowitz, A. There are no children here. New York Anchor Books, 1991.Massey, D. and Nancy Denton. American apartheid. Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1998.Murray, C. Losing ground. New York BasicBooks, 1994.Oliver, M. and Thomas M. Shapiro. Black wealth, white wealth. New York Rouledge, 1997. Piven, F. and Richard A. Cloward. Poor peoples movements. New York Vintage Books, 1977.