The Persistence of the Ghetto reading

This week's reading by Massey and Denton covered the third chapter of their book, American Apartheid. The chapter begins by explaining that though there seemed to be much promise in the beginning of the 1970s that desegregation may occur, it did not (Massey and Denton 61). The south saw net gains in black population, black socioeconomic status increased, and racial discrimination was falling, yet somehow the decade ended with "record unemployment, inflation, falling wages, increased income inequality...", as well as the formation of the urban underclass in the ghetto (Massey and Denton 61). Massey and Denton go in to detail in this chapter about segregation within urban areas - they elaborate on the phenomenon of the urban center populated mostly by blacks, with suburbs populated mostly by whites. They track the progress of segregation and racial isolation throughout the decade, noting that while segregation may fall by approximately 4 percentage points or so, by and large most northern and southern urban areas remained heavily segregated, with percentage values for black residents that would need to move to achieve an even racial population mixture in the upper 70s and low 80s (Massey and Denton 63, 64). Furthermore, they note that isolation also tends to be high, with rare exceptions being attributed usually to a smaller total black population in a given area than to an actual move promoting desegregation and inter-racial contact (Massey and Denton 66). They also raise an interesting point: white suburbanization and black suburbanization are not the same. While whites move to the suburbs to escape the problems of the inner city, blacks who come to be considered "suburbanites" either were incorporated into what becomes suburban territory involuntarily - the metropolitan area expands, absorbing nearby counties - or their move to a suburban area does little to alter segregation (Massey and Denton 69). In this case, the suburb essentially expands the already existent ghetto (Massey and Denton 70). My reflection on their findings is this: perhaps, on a very fundamental level, it is our difference in culture, not race, that is to blame. Massey and Denton also note in this chapter that Hispanic and Asian residents experience segregation and isolation in cities, but that it is not nearly as severe (Massey and Denton 67). It seems that the principle of in-groups and out-groups covered way back in the "Intro to Soc." and "Intro to Psych." classes is applicable here: we all tend to hang around that people that are most similar to us, and the lower level of segregation among whites and Hispanics and whites and Asians shows that we may have more in common with them than with blacks. Perhaps our cultures are simply too different, and the extreme segregation and isolation shown in this chapter, and, in fact, throughout Massey and Denton's book thus far, is evidence of this in-group and out-group-type conflict.