Week 5

Although the overarching theme of the readings this week is the racial segregation and subsequent inequalities forced upon African American communities, it is not necessarily what struck me. While reading American Apartheid, the idea of assimilation seemed like an underlying theme in the comparisons between residential segregation of American Americans in relation to other minority groups.

Historically, “U.S. cities served as vehicles for integration, economic advancement, and, ultimately, assimilation into American life” (18). Thus, the huge influxes of immigrants, primarily from Europe, could all someday achieve economic and social stability within the United States. The goal of assimilation resonated with all once disenfranchised and underprivileged groups. This is evidenced not only within circles of nineteenth-century African American elites, who “could best overcome their disabilities by adopting the culture and values of the white middle class” (23), but also more recently with the sub-prime mortgage targeted towards African American communities. Yet the process of assimilation seems to be highly dependent on race. While the majority of immigrants have followed that same trajectory towards assimilation into “American life,” African Americans have been highly excluded. With highly racialized real estate institutions and policies, even those who have been able to gain a stronger socioeconomic standing are unable to attain any sort of upward social mobility. Therefore, regardless of a middle-income status that may be achieved, “black segregation does not vary by affluence” (85). Any attempts at desegregation by middle-class African Americans are immediately thwarted by a decline in white interest in that same housing market, and thus a greater demand within the African American community and the creation of re-segregation.

The ideas behind this harken back to the notion of passing, or Kim’s graph representing racial triangulation, where Asians (among others, such as Hispanics) will perpetually be seen as “outsiders” or “unassimilable,” the constant foreigner. Even so, Asians and Hispanics, although still underprivileged in comparison to Whites have been able to, economically and within the housing sector, assimilate within American life. Why is it that African Americans are excluded from such an ability for assimilation? How was it become that, according to Massey and Denton, entire African American communities have apparently become social pariahs? Where:

“People growing up in such an environment have little direct experience with the culture, norms, and behaviors of the rest of American society and few social contacts with members [of] other racial groups.” (77)

The amount of racial segregation and inability to integrate African American neighborhoods at this point has become so extreme that any possibility seems unreal. But what makes the African American experience in such a case vary so differently from other people of color?