The image I had been sold of America before I came here was one of a melting pot, many peoples of different races and creeds living in one land, not in unceasing harmony; I was given an image and not a fairytale. After living here for a few months I quickly realized that America is not a melting pot but that it is more like a multilayered banana split, all the flavors in one glass but all separate.
Following Barack Obama's election as America’s first black President; many heralded a post-racial America. However, nothing is further from the truth. The race issue still pumps very strong underneath the skin of this country. The most obvious place this can be seen is in where and how people choose to live.
In the early 20th century America had the so called Jim Crow laws, these laws effectively demarcated where people would live based on the color of their skin. With the Civil Rights Movement and America's rapid industrialization people of color began to move closer to white neighborhoods setting off another kind of segration: white flight where whites deliberately moved away from urban areas that were now beginning to be inhabited by blacks.
Redlining is another form of neighborhood segration. Throughout the country banks would refuse to give loans to people who lived in certain predominantly minority areas, impacting their ability to buy homes in better areas or invest in businesses. What was striking about this practice was that even middle class and upper class black Americans were denied loans. Although redlining is illegal some institutions still practice it under other guises or have instead moved to reverse redlining, where people who lived in predominantly minority areas would be made subject to higher interest rates and adverse lending conditions.
In more recent years, upscale communities like condominiums would have committees and associations that would weed out people who did not have the correct social pedigree, character or background to live there as one’s application had to be cleared before they could move in. While the suburbs had homeowner’s associations which had the power to pass all sorts of laws detailing how residents should maintain their houses, act towards their neighbors. Failure to act within these laws would result in fines and other citations. At a cursory glance, there is nothing wrong in having structure within a neighborhood, however, it becomes problematic when neighborhoods single out people of color.
The US government has also played a role in separating different classes and races via zoning. There are certain counties and towns in America that prohibit multiple family dwellings, these are also known as apartment complexes. By doing so, they restrict residency to home owners; this is done under the defence that homeowners are more community conscious and less itinerant than people who rent apartments. They also argue that itinerant residents often bring in undesirables and criminal elements who do not have a stake in the community. To buttress this many local governments have voted down public transport or approved the building of road networks that do not support public transport; this of course has come back to bite them in the foot as many of the residents who voted in this law are now too old to drive themselves around but have no option but to risk being on the road as public transport does not and cannot operate in their area. These are a few of many ways how people who were thought to be or were criminals, low income and socially undesirable were kept out of certain communities and areas.
Why all the exclusivity and attempts at separatism? At the end of the day, when all is said and done, Americans tend to be very classist. People prefer to live around other people who are of the same race, similar background, similar income and similar culture. To this end they will do anything to protect that way of life. The ugly side of that of course is segregation, where a powerful group will use their power to corral weaker groups in less desirable areas and place them in a position where they can be controlled and observed. The other side of that page is separatism, where a powerful group will use all means at its disposal to separate itself from the undesirable masses.
The latest manifestation of segregation have been white enclaves as been examined in Rich Benjamin’s book: Searching for Whitopia. He travelled the country visiting Whitopias, which he defined as an area that is 90% white, experienced at least 6% population growth since 2000 and "has a pleasant look and feel". The people who live in these Whitopias are impassioned about where they live and their way of life as seen in the video interviews below:
Interestingly, America is now more residentially segregated than it was during the days of Jim Crow. Cities like Chicago are so segregated that the term hyper segregation was coined for the racial residential segmentation. A study by the Chicago Tribune reports:
blacks in Chicago are the most isolated racial group in the nation’s 20
largest cities, according to a Tribune analysis of 2008 population
estimates. To truly integrate Chicago, 84 percent of the black or white
population would need to change neighborhoods, the data show.
That got me to thinking, given the fact that human beings discriminate or want to be apart from people who are different from them, is total integration a mirage that people should stop trying to grasp and in fact acknowledge the desire for human separateness and somehow just find a way to enable each different group to live on their own but with their desirable quality of life?
nah mayne.... written by Hypebeast , January 21, 2010
nah mayne, look at skateboarding culture mayne.... its this generation of teenagers and young adults are paving the way for black and white culture to coexist in the same niche.
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