The recent report that America's most segregated cities are just as -- if not more -- segregated than they were a couple of decades ago is hardly a revelation. The report focused on the top 10 most segregated cities. But this could easily be expanded to find vast and unbroken pockets of racial segregation in many of the nation's smaller and mid-size cities as well. A casual drive through any of the major urban neighborhoods in America, a walk through the neighborhood schools, hospitals, and clinics reveals the stark pattern of the two Americas. In fact, even three or four urban Americas: an America that is poor, black and Latino; an America that is black and middle class; an America that is white, working class and middle class; and one that's white and wealthy.
But whichever urban America one travels through, the line dividing the neighborhoods is as deep as the Grand Canyon. There are the usual suspects to blame for the rigid segregation. Poverty, crime, lender redlining, a decaying industrial and manufacturing inner city, white and middle-class black and Hispanic flight, crumbling inner-city schools, the refusal of major business and financial institutions to locate in minority neighborhoods, and cash-strapped city governments that have thrown in the towel on providing street repairs and basic services.
This tells a big part of the story of the chronic segregation, but it's only part of the story. The painful truth three years after the election of America's first black president is that there are far too many policy makers, political leaders, and many whites that still think that segregation is too much a longstanding, even immutable, way of life in America to ever change. The entire history of Northern urban segregation is damning proof of that.
In the decades before the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the great migration of blacks from the South before and after both World Wars, and the flight of whites from urban neighborhoods to the suburbs locked in place the economic, social, and political mindset that racial segregation was a fact of life in the North and would stay that way. Redlining, zoning laws, and the federal government's deliberate policy of bolstering residential segregation insured that. Even as the Jim Crow barriers tumbled in the South and blacks and whites mingled in schools, public facilities, and more and more neighborhoods, residential segregation in the North remained America's idée fixe.
Every census report in the post-Civil Rights era and the countless Urban League's State of Black America reports showed that the inner cities continued to get blacker and browner and poorer, while the suburbs got whiter and more well to do. That trend isn't likely to change.
With President Obama and Congressional leaders trying to figure out where to cut every penny they can from education, health care and employment programs, there is absolutely no chance of any new spending or initiatives to be put on the legislative table to deal with the continuing decay of urban neighborhoods. Some experts have pointed to the increasing gentrification by young whites and non-blacks of some urban neighborhoods as a hopeful sign that residential segregation could in time pass away. That's not likely. In fact, studies have shown that gentrification has not altered the neighborhood racial segregation patterns as much as is popularly presented. Many of the old homes that have been renovated as chic, pricey, apartments and townhouses, have been gobbled up, not by whites and non-blacks, but by upwardly-mobile black professionals. They are upscale, but they are still black, and so are the freshly gentrified neighborhoods they live in.
Urban racial segregation, then, may not be the permanent lot of American society, but if past decades and current policies are any sign, America's most segregated cities will stay that way for more census counts to come.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a national Capitol Hill broadcast radio talk show on KTYM Radio Los Angeles and WFAX Radio Washington, D.C. streamed on The Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on blogtalkradio.com and wfax.com and Internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/earlhutchinson
Even in college, I had a relationship with black girll..and someone starting singing "jungle fever" which I looked at them..and thought..are these people in the 21st century? ignorance is not bliss
If he is "hanging on to power by his fingertips" as you say, it's because he has revealed basically none of those tendencies.
He's barely a moderate.
He will be our President for another 4 years.
Until the "fright wing" figure out a magic trick to win over all the people, we will vote Obama back in because the Palin, Bachman, Gingrich, Barbour, etc. etc loonies are out of their respective minds. "Tea-party" Republicanism, conservatism, etc is a laughing stock that will survive only in it's ignorance.
The majority of this country is progressive. Yes. It is. Sadly they just are not progressive enough to all vote.
They are passive observers of politics who are too busy trying to survive, get a paycheck, raise their kids, and pay their bills with chump wages, unemployment checks, or worse.
The zealousness of tea partiers get's them to vote. They are duped. Most all of them vote with glaring ignorance.
I commend them though.
But they are overreaching and hopefully will wake up all the true progressives they dump on.
This Neighborhood is coming round to Balance and diversity because of the very affordable, awesome 20's & 30's homes that are being renovated; it's proximity to the city and public transit, park space, and location on the beltline (The nation's largest urban renewal project). Some blacks want to keep the area a "hood" and fear property tax increases....but most blacks and whites want to live in a revitalized neighborhood where their homes are eventually worth more. As another said, it really is about behaviors --- I trust some of my black neighbors (keys to my house) but a very few others (black, hispanic or white) I don't bother with cuz they're angry, cracked out/drunk, and/or thieves.
They want back into the city..there's some handsome property in urban Atlanta that's being furiously snapped up by returning suburbanites.
There is what I think is more of a by product of suburban divorce -- its not whole families moving intown to gentrify, I agree there are people sick of the commute, but they are taking up new high rises, not old neighborhoods.
Currently East Point is trying hard to turn itself around -- and that includes selling for dirt cheap, but the housing stock isn't going to attract anyone that isn't ready to do a whole lot of work. .
However, all one has to do is read a few comments at The Commercial Appeal to see how very strident and loud the racists can be. Most of them have moved out of the city & get their daily jollies commenting how bad Memphis is; but many folks in the city & metro area are looking forward and quietly making progress.
So if you ever happen to read The Commercial Appeal online, keep in mind that many Memphians aren't thinking the same way as the commenters (you'll see very quickly who they are) on that website.
The burden to respect community standards is on anyone who would want to move into that community. The burden is not on the community to accept and condone destructive behaviors. This is the true divide that keeps socio-cultural-economic groups separate. You can't escape something by moving somewhere else, if you drag what you're trying to escape along with you.