Although the twentieth century’s use of violence as a means of maintaining the post-Civil War color line in northern cities crested in the 1920s, it remained a powerful force through the middle of the century and its use declined only gradually thereafter. The fear of violence is still, according to polls, a major deterrent keeping African Americans from moving into white neighborhoods. Although overt violence is now less common, its threat—especially the threat that one’s children will be harassed or harmed—remains a potent force for segregation.
During the 1920s, whites formed “neighborhood improvement associations,” primarily for the purpose of keeping blacks out of their neighborhoods. They lobbied for local zoning restrictions to close hotels and rooming houses that attracted African Americans, and for public investments to keep property values up and thus create economic barriers against black buyers. They organized boycotts against realtors who sold to African Americans or against other businesses that catered to them. Neighborhood improvement associations collected funds to buy back property from black owners and offered cash bonuses to black renters to induce them to leave certain areas. Their most powerful tool was the “restrictive covenant,” by which neighborhood whites entered into voluntary agreements that bound signers by force of law not to sell to blacks.
Facing such unified white opposition and antagonism, the black ghetto changed, too. In the first decades of the twentieth century, as levels of segregation increased, a new black middle class made up of businessmen and politicians arose. Their power was born of and depended upon the black ghetto, and they came to oppose the old elite that had favored gradual integration and accommodation with whites. Their new emphasis on racial solidarity and independence found eloquent expression in the writings of W. E. B. DuBois.
The new black politics that emerged differed significantly from the traditional politics of European immigrant groups. As the existence of many a big-city political machine and many an ethnic politician attests, Irish, Jewish, Italian, and German immigrants all relied to some degree on the voting and favor-granting powers to be found in immigrant neighborhoods. Recent studies have, however, shown that these early-twentieth-century immigrant enclaves were qualitatively and quantitatively different from the black ghettos that had formed in most northern cities by 1940.
Since traditional immigrant enclaves bustled with many nationalities, and since the majority of people with a common ethnic heritage had scattered around the city,6 ethnic groups historically gained political power, in part, by forging coalitions with each other to realize common goals. These coalitions led to other kinds of mutual cooperation and increased the pace of ethnic integration into the mainstream. This, in turn, meant that ethnic enclaves were but a transitional phase of immigrant assimilation, while under the unrelenting hostility of the larger society ghettos became a permanent feature of black life.
African Americans, therefore, had to find their political power largely in separation. Unlike other ethnic groups, African-Americans’ political power came primarily from their ability to vote as a block, under the leadership of powerful black politicians, which meant that those politicians then had a stake in an area’s continuing segregation. In effect, if African Americans wanted political power, they had to “take over” a particular area and dominate its politics. Even today, much of African American political power lies in black segregation. Rather than leading to coalitions, this side effect of segregation can often lead to mistrust and, ultimately, political marginalization.
By the early 1930s, the perimeters of the northern black ghetto in most cities had been fixed, and it was difficult, if not dangerous, for African Americans to move into white neighborhoods. Although there were still significant numbers of whites living in black urban neighborhoods, this, too, would change over the next two decades.
The actions of white neighborhood improvement associations, realty practices, and violence along the borders between blacks and whites kept those borders relatively fixed. As more African Americans moved into the ghettos, therefore, pressure for expansion mounted. The prices of property increased so that, paradoxically, property values on the black side of the black-white border were sometimes much higher than those on the white side.
In 1948, the Supreme Court declared residential segregation illegal, specifically outlawing the restrictive covenants that white “neighborhood improvement associations” had used so successfully to keep out blacks. This led to a gradual increase in the permeability of the borders of the ghetto. Permeable borders, however, hardly led to integration, for whites would ultimately begin to move out of neighborhoods if enough (or often any) black people moved in. Unscrupulous realtors, taking advantage of white fears, developed the practice of “block busting” within white communities along the borders of the ghetto. The realtor would spread rumors about a pending black “invasion” and peddle fear of declining property values and a black “take-over” of the community. These rumors, in turn, enabled the realtors to buy a few properties from panicked whites at fire-sale prices and then sell them to middle-class blacks brave enough to integrate. Once the rumors were thus given substance, property values fell as other whites hurried to sell and leave. The realtors were then able to buy up the remaining white properties cheaply and sell them to African Americans for exorbitant profits.
The high cost of housing in the ghetto meant that once middle-class blacks had “taken over” a formerly white area, less affluent blacks would move in, leading to further pressure for the more affluent to seek new areas to live in. Thus from the late 1940s into the 1960s, the geographic area of ghettos expanded, while remaining solidly black.
Frequently overlooked in today’s rancorous debate about government responsibility for helping the poor are the many ways in which the federal government has subsidized the middle class. The largely middle-class and almost exclusively white suburbanization during the 1950s and 1960s is certainly a case in point. Federally funded road construction made easy commuting from suburban residence to urban jobs possible. FHA and VA mortgage guarantees made home ownership possible. Tax policy allowing deductions on home mortgage interest payments further encouraged ownership. Such government programs and policies were essentially subsidies to the affluent that sponsored white flight. While such flight relieved housing pressure in the cities and therefore allowed for the physical expansion of ghetto areas, it had no effect on the color line, which was maintained despite massive population shifts to the suburbs. Studies have shown that at any moment between 1940 and 1980, whites and blacks lived in essentially separate worlds. It would not be until the Fair Housing Law of 1988 that the federal government gave itself both the mandate and the tools to intervene meaningfully to prevent or at least ameliorate residential segregation.
Whites, of course, can always avoid integration simply by moving out. Studies have shown, in fact, that whites begin to move out of their neighborhoods once the percentage of black residents rises above approximately 8 percent.7 African Americans, on the other hand, would rarely opt for segregation if given a real choice. While they would not choose to be the only black family or one of very few black families in an otherwise white neighborhood, most African Americans would choose to live in integrated communities. 8 The problem, of course, is that once the percentage of black residents reaches a point where most African Americans might feel comfortable moving in, the white population already feels uncomfortable and has begun moving out.
Among the least appreciated of segregation’s insidious consequences is the concentration of poverty that occurs when a population that is poorer for any reason is also segregated. Because of their history, persistent discrimination against them, and fewer opportunities available to them, African Americans are, as a group, poorer than other Americans. Segregation, therefore, forces African Americans to live in neighborhoods that are more likely than white neighborhoods to have a higher proportion of those who are poor.9
The consequences of this concentration can be significant. To take
but a single example, where more people in an area are poor, fewer have adequate resources to maintain their property, and buildings soon begin to show small signs of disrepair: a broken window fixed with cardboard instead of a pane of glass, a sagging porch, peeling paint. Other property owners are extremely sensitive to these small signs and will view them as signals of decline, leading to reduced incentives to keep up their own properties, which continues in a downward spiral.10
Poverty tends to be self-reinforcing, so people born into poorer neighborhoods have a higher probability of becoming poor themselves.
PUNISHING THE CHILDREN
The concentration of poverty due to segregation has an especially pernicious effect on the educational facilities available to those who live in the ghetto. Because elementary and secondary schools are funded primarily through local taxes, cities with large numbers of poor people have fewer resources per child and, therefore, less money to fund education. Because ghettos are politically marginalized even within the city, local politicians can more easily neglect education there.11
Segregating poor African Americans in the ghetto means, of course, that ghetto schools will be almost completely black and poor. Not surprisingly, then, inner-city children bring more hunger, homelessness, exposure to violence, and other problems to school with them than, say, suburban students, and these “noneducational” problems demand resources that have to be pulled away from already meager educational allocations. Ghetto schools should be getting far more money than suburban schools because the problems they have to deal with tend to be more confounding and deeper. Instead, not surprisingly, they usually get less.
One current approach to improving urban education is the “magnet school,” which usually emphasizes a particular area of study like science or the arts, and takes selected students from a district’s many schools, grouping together those who have similar interests and abilities. Usually, these schools have more funds, are better staffed, get more access to supplies and equipment, and maintain better physical plants. They are of very significant benefit…to the children who are selected. Ostensibly, children are chosen on the basis of ability, but parents first have to know about the possibility of applying, believe that such a school will be worthwhile, have the time and energy to enter the application process, possess the skills to fill out the written application, and pay the extra fees usually involved. Unfortunately, by skimming off the best students, the most committed or assertive parents, and often a higher-than-average proportion of a school district’s budget, magnet schools also make the work of ordinary schools that much more difficult.
A similar weakening of the school system as a whole is the primary danger of any of the proposed educational voucher systems. Although certain demonstration voucher projects have successfully targeted the most difficult inner-city students, any widespread voucher program will also likely to lead to the siphoning off of the better students. Vouchers also threaten to weaken public schools financially. Each voucher usually represents the average amount of money the public school system spends per student. Parents can use it to pay tuition or partial tuition at any school, public or private, that will accept the child. Although not true of all parochial schools, most private schools cost far more than the amount of a voucher for “average public school costs.” Poor families unable to afford the added expense will not benefit, nor will the children of parents who, for whatever reason, cannot hunt out alternative schooling, nor will children who cannot get accepted at a private or parochial school. Since voucher money would be withdrawn from public systems, which have large fixed costs in buildings, maintenance, equipment, and teacher contracts, the danger is that the public schools that remain will have even less adequate funding, while having to educate many of the most difficult students who require the highest level of resources.
In its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision ratifying the legality of segregation in public facilities, the Supreme Court created the doctrine of “separate but equal.” Schools could be segregated as long as the education provided to black students was equal to that provided white students. Justice John Marshall Harlan, in a bitter dissent from that decision, noted that given the social and economic inequality between blacks and whites in the United States at that time, “separate” would never be “equal,” a prediction amply realized in the next century. In 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court recognized the failure of “separate but equal” and demanded the integration of public schools. Almost fifty years later, as Jonathan Kozol has pointed out, we have not only failed to meet the conditions of the 1954 decision, we have also failed to meet the conditions of the 1896 decision. Schools are still largely separate and unequal.
A Black Alliance for Educational Options nationwide study released in 2001 revealed that in fifteen of the forty-five largest school districts studied (including New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and Memphis) fewer than half of African-American students graduated from high school with a regular diploma.12 Without a decent education, a child is handicapped for life.
SICK AND POOR
According to the United States Census, in 2000 over 38 million Americans (14 percent) did not have health insurance at any time during the entire year.13 We tend to assume that if people are poor enough, they are eligible for some kind of governmental health coverage. That assumption is wrong. Less than one-third of the people living in poverty are even eligible for Medicaid, the primary form of health insurance available to the poor, and the rate of uninsurance among the poor is over twice as high as among the general population. The low-paying jobs available to poor people rarely offer health insurance coverage as a benefit. It is, of course, out of the question for poor people to purchase health insurance on their own. Even modestly comprehensive family policies currently cost more than $650 a month, half the total income of a family of three living at the poverty level, so they remain largely uninsured. This means that in any sort of health emergency the poor must spend a significant percentage of their income on clinic or emergency room visits, especially when young children are involved.
Even those who do qualify for Medicaid must undergo an application process that can be arduous and discouraging. Until the 1996 passage of the legislation known as Welfare Reform, most poor families who received what we usually think of as welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children, or AFDC) received Medicaid automatically. Because more than half of these families have been moved off the rolls, they must apply separately for Medicaid, a process that can, in some states, prove virtually impossible for a person who must go to work each day to complete.
Once covered by Medicaid, the poor face a sometimes-insurmountable hurdle: finding a doctor who will accept Medicaid payment. Although patterns vary from state to state, fewer and fewer doctors or hospitals accept Medicaid—largely because reimbursement is usually low—so those who are poor must usually go to hospital emergency rooms or public clinics for their care. But hospitals are not good places to receive routine health care, although they generally handle emergencies well, even for the poor. In fact, federal law requires that any hospital admit and care for emergency patients regardless of ability to pay, but it is now an unusual hospital that offers indigent patients much in the way of continuing care, preventive medicine, or help with routine medical problems. Patients with such problems are increasingly triaged out of emergency rooms. Public clinics can be excellent sources of health care for the patients they accept, but they rarely have the staff or other resources to provide care, much less follow-up, to all who need it. Waits are often long, a different doctor may be seen each time, and there is often no special provision for paying for other needed services like x-rays, lab work, or hospitalization, which can be enormously expensive. And even public hospitals and clinics often try to recoup whatever charges they can from poor clients. So although hospitals may not follow up with aggressive collection routines, patients receive bills anyway.
Thus cost prevents appropriate health care, leading to both poorer
health and further poverty. The relationships between health and poverty, however, are complex, for each affects the other. The health of poor people is measurably worse than average: infant mortality, the single most commonly used indicator of population health, is 60 percent greater (and the death rate for newborns is twice as high) for families with incomes below the poverty level than for those above it.14 Many forms of cancer are more common among the poor.15 Individuals earning less than $9,000 annually have death rates three to seven times higher (depending on race and gender) than those earning $25,000 or more per year.16 Poor prenatal care or maternal malnutrition can each lead to learning disabilities and decreased cognitive abilities in children, which in turn can contribute to poor educational achievement, further complicating the experience of poverty.
We know intuitively that poverty can lead to poor health, but research over the last decade has documented that even economic inequality has a separate association with poor health. Studies comparing countries with similar standards of living, for instance, have found that in those with greater levels of economic inequality the health of the entire population (not just the poor) is worse.17 Similar studies comparing different states in the United States have come up with the same results.18 The size of the gap between rich and poor matters as well. According to the World Health Organization, the United States, despite its status as the richest country in the world, ranks thirty-second among all nations in the “equality of child survival,” a measurement of the distribution of health among different populations within a country. The United States ranks twenty-fourth in life expectancy, and thirty-second in infant mortality, 19 the two most common measures of the health of a population. Over the last twenty-five years, as inequality in our country has increased, we have dropped even further in the rankings. Not only poverty, but also inequality decimates the health of our people.
Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen Page 4