American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass
Sign in to keep track of books you’ve read and want to read.
This powerful and disturbing book clearly links persistent poverty among blacks in the United States to the unparalleled degree of deliberate segregation they experience in American cities.
American Apartheid shows how the black ghetto was created by whites during the first half of the twentieth century in order to isolate growing urban black populations. It goes on to show that, despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968, segregation is perpetuated today through an interlocking set of individual actions, institutional practices, and governmental policies. In some urban areas the degree of black segregation is so intense and occurs in so many dimensions simultaneously that it amounts to "hypersegregation."
Read more
The authors demonstrate that this systematic segregation of African Americans leads inexorably to the creation of underclass communities during periods of economic downturn. Under conditions of extreme segregation, any increase in the overall rate of black poverty yields a marked increase in the geographic concentration of indigence and the deterioration of social and economic conditions in black communities.
As ghetto residents adapt to this increasingly harsh environment under a climate of racial isolation, they evolve attitudes, behaviors, and practices that further marginalize their neighborhoods and undermine their chances of success in mainstream American society. This book is a sober challenge to those who argue that race is of declining significance in the United States today.
Liked American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
-
Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States Shares race, nonfiction, sociology -
The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy Shares sociology, nonfiction, race -
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America Shares race, nonfiction, history -
Stuck in Place: Urban Neighborhoods and the End of Progress toward Racial Equality Shares race, nonfiction, sociology
“People who read American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass tend to reach for these next.”
-
Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960
-
How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society
-
The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
-
Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America
