Reddit reviews American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass

Your proclivity for discussing black pathologies and large scale civil unrest without proper context makes me call your intellectual honesty into question.

1. You summarily dismissed the Kerner Commission's findings as blacks rioting over "injustice" without actually quoting anything from the report to support your stance, and it's also a willfully reductive dismissal of their conclusions.
   
   
2. You ludicrously blamed segregated cities on fear of black criminality while ignoring housing discrimination and white racism as primary factors.
   
   
3. You incorrectly proscribed having children out of wedlock as a cause rather than a symptom of a problem.
   
   
4. You cherry picked the black on black murder rate while ignoring the fact that almost all murders are intra-racial for whites and blacks and that the uproar against the police has a totally different implication and resonance in black communities.
   
   
5. You failed to put the rioting of the Civil Rights Era in a larger context of failed avenues for political redress after years of non-violent protesting and petitioning the government for full citizenship.
   
   
6. You made facile, racist comments about the ethics and culture of the blacks people at large in Ferguson because of a few images of those with tatoos and jewelry.
   
   Here is a link of a thread I began on the root causes of the unrest in Ferguson and throughout US history. I'm genuinely curious to hear your responses. Given the tone and misrepresentations prevalent in your post, it seems like you're more interested in circle jerking in an echo chamber. I'm willing to be proven wrong though.

For one, race isn't genetic, it's socially constructed. Hereditary traits are not race. The reason that this is the case is that race is seen and treated drastically differently in various countries (e.g. compare Brazil to the U.S. and its immensely different), and racism and race relations divided along lines of white and black developed with the discovery of the Americas by Europeans. Race as a concept is 100% arbitrary with no scientific backing and no possible genetic or biological backing. Saying otherwise is to give false statements from a position of having no understanding of human biology and anatomy. Reference

For two, correlation is not causation. The more likely cause for IQ correlating with race is the material conditions that various racial groups have been subjected to. For instance, in the U.S., black people were the most heavily effected by systemic race-based slavery, and were the only group to ever experience ghettoization in America, which lasted for decades, with effects still seen today. Black people were continuously subjected to worse living conditions, establishing poverty related issues such as lead poisoning from outdated housing infrastructure, poor education from bad school systems, etc. Reference

For three, White Supremacism can take more forms than just Nazism, gas chambers, and slave plantations. Sports being comprised of mostly black players was not the case in the early-mid 20th century. This is why, for instance, Jackie Robinson was extremely controversial. Most sports were played by almost exclusively white people. Furthermore, sports having such a disproportionate prominence of black players is still evidence of racism and white supremacist cultural norms as it now has foundations in associating blackness with physical prowess -- i.e. associating hyper-masculinity with blackness -- and for many players was and is viewed as their way of getting out of poverty. Because of the poverty conditions many black communities experience, many children of marginalized racial minorities often end up associating with a "star script", regardless of the realistic likelihood of achieving the career they want (e.g. rapper, NBA player, etc.). Reference

You'd be surprised that today, it's rare to be black in an all-white neighborhood. Even education today is more segregated than it was in 1968 (the height of the civil rights movement).

"White flight" has resulted in all-minority neighborhoods in America. This results in less funding for local schools, lower property values, and fewer businesses wanting to establish themselves in low-income, racially segregated areas. This means that even grocery stores that sell fresh fruits and vegetables don't want to be in a low-income, high-minority neighborhood, limiting their access to healthful foods. Instead, they rely on the local corner store that doesn't even primarily sell food.

There isn't just an unequal standard of living, but also unequal access to opportunity. Your network (from family to your college alumni) can be so important when you're trying to find a job, but if you couldn't afford to go to college and your family has always been working class, you're already set up to have unequal opportunities compared to the kid whose parents are lawyers or doctors. Even if you look in the news today, you'll see instances of discrimination by banks, hiring managers, and federal regulations.

If you're really serious about learning more about why it's more difficult to be Black in America today, I urge you to pick up a book. Here are some of my suggestions:

American Apartheid by Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton

The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

The Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol

There is nothing natural or inevitable about American ghettoes, they were created because of racist federal, state, and local policy. Because of redlining, the explicitly racist policy of the Federal Housing Authority to deny backing of home loans for Black people while granting them for whites, as well as because of racially restrictive housing covenants, Black people did not have access to the main wealth building tool of the middle class, home ownership in neighborhoods where homes had actual value. This forced black people into racially segregated neighborhoods that became ghettoes.

I'd recommend reading this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining#History

And this one as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation_in_the_United_States#Hypersegregation

If you want to go in-depth check out these books:

American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0674018214/ref=redir_mdp_mobile

Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0226342441?pc_redir=1410759795&robot_redir=1

I'm not strictly talking about slavery. I'm talking about how they are treated and viewed now. Just look at the ghettos we have in America. In Massey and Denton's book American Apartheid they find a lot of interesting statistics. The largest amount of isolation any non-black minority has ever had (meaning, what percent of this population would have to move to make the overall population relatively uniform) was 56% for the Milwaukee Italian community in 1910. But by 1970, the lowest isolation percentage for blacks anywhere in the US was 56% San Francisco (pp 49). The highest in 1970 was 89% in Chicago. They also go into detail of how they were initially brought to those urban areas; to break union strikes in downtown factories. Combine that with WWI breaking out and extreme xenophobia with many European ethnicities, even more came. This lead to overcrowding, poor wages and conditions, white flight, and a continually worsening circle.

That was (and is) a horrible situation that isn't getting much attention: most criticism is put towards the people trying to adapt to the poor conditions and not how the conditions got there. This, in turn, breeds horrible stereotypes and more negative images and treatment in a feedback loop. While other minorities have experience mistreatment and oppression, I don't think any have been this persistent and horrible (though debating levels of oppression is inviting a pity party, which I would like to avoid).

No I definitely read my sources, I just could not afford to buy you a copy of the book "Race, Class, and Gender in the United States" by Paula Rothenburg. I've had that book assigned to me in 3 my classes, and my former academic advisor wrote a chapter in the newest edition of the book about internalized racism.

I read the New York Times whenever I get the chance since it is free to read on my blackberry.

I also am a higher education practitioner so I read the Chronicle of Higher Education everyday, which is where the article "Affirmative Action in Admissions: Right in Theory, Wrong in Practice" comes from. The chronicle requires that you have a subscription to view articles from them so that's why I included some seemingly obscure link. I was shocked to read the title of that article because the authors are very pro-affirmative action and it seems like they are anti-affirmative action, but I am fairly certain that this is not the case. Massey is a prominent sociologist and co-wrote Apartheid America (which was actually given to me by someone who went to school with Massey).I am fairly certain that the article "Affirmative Action in Admissions: Right in Theory, Wrong in Practice" is saying that affirmative action programs have the opportunity to work but they tend to stigmatize the people who are admitted. In other words they are theoretically beneficial but the way they are set up do not always encourage a positive response. Often times college campuses are ill-prepared to handle disadvantaged students, but thus is not really a reason to discontinue affirmative action, it's more of a reason to change the way you do things at higher education institutions to better serve underrepresented populations. If you pay attention to the article it also says that this is not very hard since athletes and legacies don't face stigmas. I am guessing you didn't read the last two paragraphs of the article:

>Our statistical analyses of the academic effects of affirmative action have produced results that challenge as much as reassure supporters of affirmative action in higher education. But the results of our research do not mean that affirmative action is necessarily detrimental to the academic interests of minority students and should be abandoned. Rather, the results imply that as currently administered by selective institutions, the application of race-sensitive admissions criteria appears to create a stigmatizing setting and should be reconsidered. Indeed, if the way affirmative action is administered and framed can be changed so as to mitigate the stigma now being created, its negative academic effects might disappear. ...In the end, our finding that affirmative-action programs can undermine grade performance by stigmatizing students and increasing the pressure they feel to perform tells us less about the inherent weakness of affirmative action than about the poor fashion in which programs are carried out. Affirmative action taken to ensure the inclusion of athletes and legacies has operated for decades without creating debilitating performance burdens on either football players or the children of alumni. There is no good reason that affirmative-action programs for minority students cannot be run in the same way.



Further more I would argue that based on the studies, even if affirmative action fails in practice, it is not hurting anyone. I am in no way moving away from my stance, just saying that even if affirmative action doesn't always work, it doesn't hurt white folks or anyone else.

Studies have shown that students of color who attend PWIs (predominantly white institutions) face internal problems because they tend to think that they are only admitted to college because of their race/ethnicity (partially because they see very few people who look like them). This even happens in schools in California where race-based admissions are illegal. They tend to call this the stereotype threat (google it if you want) which is not the most solid of theories but it works for my point. My point is that you would not discontinue admitting students of color because of a psychological fear that makes them "fail in practice."

Man I just want to say that this is an incredibly white-washed view of modern racism. Throughout the course of American history, Black people have suffered from institutional racism that has barred their access to the voting process, property, land access, economic opportunity, social security access, veteran's rights, personal freedom, you name it. This continues into the modern day. These modern issues will not be fixed by colorblindness; instead, they can only be fixed through race conscious affirmative action.

Here are some great books if you want to get more informed on historical and modern racism, proper reactions to it, and why "colorblindness" is not an acceptable form of dealing with it:

• Fredrickson, George M. 2002, Racism: A Short History
  
• Higginbotham, A.Leon, Jr. 1996, Shades of Freedom: Racial Politics and Presumptions of....
  
• Foner, Eric. 1990, A Short History of Reconstruction
  
• Packard, Gerald M. 2003, American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow
  
• Katznelson, Ira. 2005, When Affirmative Acton Was White: An Untold History of...
  
• Massey, Douglas S. 1993, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underc

I mentioned this somewhere else in this thread, but I really enjoyed American Apartheid, which goes into detail about this. We read it for my urban studies class... Heres the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/American-Apartheid-Segregation-Making-Underclass/dp/0674018214?ie=UTF8&keywords=American%20Apartheid&qid=1462765389&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

In the op there was no direct comparison that the law and restrictions in place in SW Michigan were the same as Apartheid South Africa. Just that the levels of racial segregation are.

That these levels exist without the overt structures present in South Africa, in my opinion are cause for greater alarm. Even though I do think that zoning laws that preserve class distinctions are a "law preventing either race from mingling" when socio-economic class and race are so intertwined as they are in this particular region. Also, a great book about preferences of racial mixture in neighborhoods is American Apartheid

http://www.amazon.com/American-Apartheid-Segregation-Making-Underclass/dp/0674018214

The video is part of a "Let's Play" for 50 Cent: Blood On The Sand. (Let's Play emerged as a form of follow-along entertainment from games forums. Reasonably skilled players with a humorous or well-informed approach would start threads titled e.g. 'Let's play Metroid' and then do so, often with audience participation for character names, in-game choices, etc. As an introduction I'd recommend Let's Play Trespasser, possibly the best video LP to date.) Chip Cheezum played the game in sections and then recorded color commentary (no pun intended) with General Ironicus. In this clip Ironicus is reading a long excerpt from American Apartheid to quell off-topic linguistic discussions within the thread. His conclusion after finishing is worth hearing.

In a similarly boring helicopter rail-shooter section of the game, he reads Massey & Denton's impressions of gender politics as presented in rap and hip-hop, neatly dissecting some major aspects of the game's plot. Chip's only immediate reply is "while you were reading that, I killed, like, a thousand guys."

http://www.amazon.com/American-Apartheid-Segregation-Making-Underclass/dp/0674018214

Here is the mobile version of your link