The Grass Is Not Always Green on the Other Side!

Throughout history African Americans have always been mistreated in the United States of America. This mistreatment happens in various ways and still happens today. One major way that African Americans are treated unfairly today is the way that they live. In other words, African American neighborhoods are usually in worse conditions than the neighborhoods that white people live in. Now, I understand that there are middle class and also rich black people, but as explained by the authors Douglas Massey, Nancy Denton, William Julius Wilson, as well as Robert Sampson the black middle class, and upper class, families do not seem to move that far from the "bad" neighborhoods. Massey and Denton also explain in chapter three of their book, American Apartheid, that African Americans moving to the suburbs can be "deceiving." In other words, the suburbs that many of these African American families move to still have many of the same problems as their old, poverty stricken neighborhoods. The authors explained that sometimes the black families that move to the suburbs are actually doing worse than they were before. There were high rates of black suburbanization, or blacks moving to the suburbs, but the poverty rates did not decrease. It seems like it is hard for black people to escape poverty even if they retreat to the suburbs. Wilson explains in his book, The Truly Disadvantaged, that the black suburbs are usually faced with the problems of the inner city. Massey and Denton explain in their book that residential segregation is a major factor in the United States which keeps minorities from moving into certain neighborhoods. So, the minorities that can afford to move to a suburb really only have a select suburbs to choose from that will allow them to move in. At the end of the day it seems that African American once again received the short end of the stick. I can speak from personal experience that the black suburbs

are nothing compared to the white suburbs. I grew up, and lived most of my life in a black suburb of Chicago called Maywood. I was born in Maywood, but I have also lived all around the city of Chicago so I have seen almost every neighborhood. I wrote an earlier blog and I asked the question how one can determine when they are in the suburbs. I asked that question to point out the fact that just because a place is called a suburb does not mean that it is like the suburbs on television. When people come to Maywood they are most likely going to see the same things they see in the inner city. They will see people hanging out on corners, gang bangers, drug dealers, drug users, and whatever else that you would not expect to be in a suburb. If you ride down fifth you have a better chance finding a place that is boarded up than finding one that is not. Maywood is not the only black suburb of Chicago that is poor and rundown though. Bellwood is just like Maywood and also right next door. There are also two Hispanic neighborhoods that are near Maywood called Melrose Park and Stone Park. These are just a few minority suburbs that I know of that are in bad shape, but I am pretty sure there are more. The thing that bothers me the most about Maywood being so dirty is the fact that it is right after Oak Park. Oak Park is a predominately white suburb that is located right after the city and right before Maywood. When you leave the west side of Chicago and enter Oak Park it is like a different world, but the crazy thing about it is that if you look directly across the street into the city you will see a huge difference in how the up keep is. It seems as if the government cares more about Oak Park because I feel if they can keep that clean then they can also clean up right across the street. Massey and Denton also explained that the suburbs that do accept black residents are usually the worst suburbs economically and have a high population density. This all ties back to residential segregation and residential isolation. Whether the African Americans are in the city or the suburbs they are still grouped together and are in the worst neighborhoods. Another thing that American Apartheid explained is that other minorities do not have such a problem moving into nice neighborhoods. For example, the Mexicans that accept the identity Mexican-white are accepted by the white community and treated much better than the blacks, or other Hispanics. It is possible for any minority group to overcome the unfair ways of the white government except for African Americans.

This link is to an article on racial segregation and black suburbs...

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo3619193.html