Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 30.1
Johannesburg, 1985; segregated city.
failure prevails, and where social and physical
deterioration abound.
(Massey and Denton 1993:2)
For American black populations, these ghetto-
forming processes are well understood and spring
almost entirely from prejudice and discrimination.
For Massey and Denton (1993), the black ghetto
was constructed through a series of well-defined
practices and policies designed by whites to
contain the growing black urban populations.
There are other ethnic minorities groups where
the processes are less straightforward, as Dennis
(1997) showed in his analysis of the emergence of
Jewish areas in Toronto. Established Jewish families
played a role and:
Ghetto-ization was not just a consequence of
poverty or a need for a cultural identity but also
a strategy on the part of self-styled community
leaders to limit the impact of large-scale
immigration on mainstreamToronto society.
(
ibid.
: 378)
Source:
After Christopher 1994.
the depth of black segregation or the degree to
which it was maintained by ongoing institutional
arrangements and individual actions, and Aponte
(1991) argued that substantial black inner city
populations were still 'hopelessly mired in poverty'.
Wilson (1987) was a catalyst for studies of change
among the American black population. His central
argument was that residualisation, marginalisation
and exclusion
within
black residential areas had led
to an underclass of the 'truly disadvantaged'. As
stable families, those with jobs and social aspirations,
and community leaders moved out, they left
welfare-dependent areas with many lone-parent
families, high unemployment, and a high incidence
of crime and drugs. Perhaps the most significant loss
was that of a sense of place, of belonging and of
community, which had held many of these people
together.
SEGREGATED SCHOOLS
Racial segregation in the United States and
elsewhere is not confined to residential areas.
Education is another example of the impact of
discrimination, and it is only in the second half
of the twentieth century that the American
justice system has made substantive moves to end
the dual system of segregated schools. From the
1950s to the 1970s, the issue of school
desegregation dominated the politics of
education. Studies such as that by Lowry (1973)
in Mississippi documented the slow process of
change from completely separate schools with
wide disparities to some measure of integrated
state education. Devices such as 'separate but
equal' and 'freedom of choice' were used by local
school boards to hinder the federally driven
process of desegregation. Key decisions in the
courts, such as Brown versus Topeka School
Board in 1954 and 1955, Alexander versus
Holmes County in 1969, and Swann versus
Mecklenburg in 1971, removed the legal bases of
Because of racial segregation, a significant share
of black America is condemned to experience
a social environment where poverty and
joblessness are the norm, where a majority of
children are born out of wedlock, where most
families are on welfare, where educational
