The Mushrooming of Black Ghettos in the United States - Assignment Example

Significant Social, Political and/or Economic Factors That Led to the Construction of Poor, Racially Segregated Contexts (Black Ghettos) The mushrooming of Black ghettos in the United States of America started to be evident in the late 1800’s and especially in the North. This was after an influx of Blacks to the North during the First World War, the Second World War and in the 1920’s. Blacks and Whites had coexisted in cities like Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago, areas that are known today for their large concentrations of large Black ghettos. In the 1870’s about 80% of American Blacks lived in the southern rural American area where there was large scale exploitation of laborers by wealthy American land owners (Sampson 1464). This started to change in the late 1800’s when the Blacks in the south started to migrate to better cities in the south and to the north for a better life especially during the American industrialization. This change brought about a great change in the life of Black Americans in the Unite d States of America socially, politically and economically. The Black ghettos did not just emerge, but were occasioned by among other reasons, a systematic arrangement of the Whites to prevent the Blacks from acquiring proper urban housing in certain areas and to segregate them. Socially, Blacks were considered to be inferior to Whites and were created to serve the Whites, a mentality which was strengthened by the Jim Crow laws. Though small areas that were occupied mainly by Blacks had existed before, Black ghettos started to emerge in the north with the migration of Blacks to the United States of America during the First World War, the Second World War and the 1920’s. The ghettos, which consisted of poor, low cost and crammed housing units, were occasioned by these segregate policies and laws where Blacks occupied low paying jobs and low levels of education, since they were only expected to be absorbed into low level schools and learning institutions (Rendon 6). Poverty levels were high due to low educational levels and thus, ghettos came in handy as the only place the Blacks could afford. The White supremacist ideology and race prejudice were in practice on a large scale at that time and, the Black influx was considered as a threat to the White’s existence. Blacks were systematically removed from areas considered to be White neighborhoods due to this ideology. There was also the scenario where people who engaged in communal violence were singled out and confined to certain places and for the Blacks; this was in the ghettos (Douglas and Nancy 17). This practice mostly targeted Blacks who were considered to be violent in nature. In the period around 1920, there was also what was referred to as targeted violence which was mostly directed to the Black middle class by their White counterparts, which also gave rise to the expansion of the Black ghettos and relegation of Blacks to what were considered as Black neighborhoods. The Whites would collect money to buy out middle class urban dwellers from their neighborhoods with threats of dire consequences for non compliance, which gave rise to the concentration of Blacks to certain neighborhoods. Those Blacks who could afford to live in White neighborhoods were attacked and their houses looted or burnt just because of the color of their skin. The neighborhoods especially in the south were characterized by large avenues which housed Whites and small streets and poor dwellings which housed Blacks, with the Blacks working as house helps and farmhands in the White neighborhood dwellings. The mentality of Master /slave had been replaced by master/servant relationship but the Black was still seen as subservient to the White. Incase of arrests for the offences, the culprits would be the Blacks instead of the White attackers. The Whites considered Blacks no matter their social, economic or educational standing to belong to the Black neighborhoods, with the support of the state through the Jim Crow laws and other segregate policies (Sampson 1338). Economic factors that led to the rising of ghettos include industrialization whereby the need of housing increased due to the migration to industrial areas by laborers. Migration by Blacks from the southern farmlands to the north occasioned the building of dwellings near the factories and industries. Most of these laborers were Blacks who had mostly done menial jobs as farm hands in the south. The White workforce in the north could not cope with the workload in the north and thus relied greatly on the immigrants from the south and other areas. Most of the Black immigrants from the south naturally sought out relatives who had arrived earlier and thus there was the coming together of the Black populace. The effect of the Jim Crow laws in the south had relegated the Blacks to little educational achievement and thus most of them could only get menial employment, and could not afford proper housing and thus the rise of the ghettos which were cheap in contrast was inevitable (Osofsky 8). Redlining, a process where banks or financial institutions deny credit or mortgages to certain individuals or neighborhoods consciously has also been documented to have been one of the factors that led to the mushrooming of ghettos in Black neighborhoods. The denial by banks to allow the Blacks in Black neighborhoods to access credit to better their lives relegated and continues to relegate many Blacks to ghettos. Although the practice has however declined, many believe it is still being practiced but in a more secretive manner, to bar Blacks from buying or leasing homes in White neighborhoods. Politically, there were practices that were government institutionalized which worked to the great disadvantage of the Blacks and gave rise to the mushrooming of ghettos. Though some of the actions to remove Blacks from White neighborhoods were done by individuals and groups, at other times, there was government intervention to propagate bias against Blacks in the issue of housing which contributed much to the establishment of ghettos (Osofsky 12). The passing and the enforcing of the Jim Crow laws for example is a case in point where bias was meted to the Blacks. Works Cited Douglas, Massey S and Denton A Nancy. American Apartheid. 1993.London: Harvard University Press. Osofsky. Black And White Segregation. 1996.London: harvard University Press. Rendon, Maria. Its Construction And Consequence. 2006.New York: AAAS. Sampson, R J. Does Palce Matter? If So How? 2012.New York: AAAS. Read More