The history of the United States is full of events based on racial differences of ethnic groups living in the country. Racism has been the bane of the USA for a very long time. It was the background of shaping the cities when they were established and developed. Racism-based issues are present in modern society as well. Cities are unofficially divided into districts inhabited by African-Americans or Latinos, or the people of the Chinese descent. These districts have been usually considered as low-income ones with deprived backgrounds. Considering the peculiarities of the historical development of cities in America, the paper aims to explore the factors such as economic, cultural, and legal ones that shaped the position and functions of the low-income African-American districts as well as the influence these factors had on the achievement of a degree of economic stability by the residents of these districts.
Factors
The history of African-American social group in the USA can be called tragic, considering the way black people had appeared on the American soil and how their communities developed further. Slavery and continuous oppression by white people have made African-Americans unite to withstand aggressive domination leading to misery. Therefore, communities had emerged in the cities as well when African Americans were allowed to settle down. The abolishment of slavery in 1865 provided them with freedom, but it did not help black people with education, integration into society of white people, and similar issues. In other words, African-Americans had no opportunities to get the quality education and thus, appropriately paid jobs (Reese, Deverteuil, & Thach, 2010). It had created the environment of low-income, poorly educated people who were considered as second-class citizens. Such state of things promoted the criminal environment to emerge and flourish in the districts were African-Americans were allowed to live first (Dreby, 2015). Later, the need in the communities has created the culture of districts where African-Americans were welcomed to live just to avoid them living in the white people’s neighborhoods.
Influence
Low level of education, hundreds of years of making people think of them as second-class citizens, lack of workplaces with decent pay, and high criminal influence of the African-American districts in the cities have created the environment, in which young generations were unable to break the vicious circle and integrate into a more successful environment (Harvey, 2008). In addition, the bias of the white social group regarding African-Americans conditioned the politics of making ghettos the places where undesired social classes were supposed to live.
Discussion
The cultural, legal, and economic context has made African-Americans become outsiders in society (Low, 2001). Because of living in such environment generation after generations, a certain psychological model had emerged among African-Americans. Moreover, young African-Americans probably did not even want to change their lives, so they lived in districts provided them by the white ruling class.
Conclusion
Summing, the paper considered the peculiarities of the historical development of cities in America and explored economic, cultural, and legal factors that had shaped the position and functions of the low-income African-American districts as well as the influence these factors had on the achievement of a degree of economic stability by the residents of these districts. It appeared that silent segregation had always been present in the process of creation and development of various urban environments for African-American citizens across America. The combination of insufficient funding, long-term cultural oppression, and high crime rate in the African-American districts has created a solid background for young African-Americans to fail in the achievement of some degree of economic stability. Lack of quality education, biased attitude of white people, and criminal environment are the factors that impede the successful integration of African-Americans to the class of people having economic stability.
References
Dreby, J. (2015). Stigma: Illegality in different immigrant neighborhoods. Everyday Illegal: When Policies Undermine Immigrant Families (pp. 133-170). Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Harvey, D. (2008). The right to the city. New Left Review, 53, 23-40.
Low, S.M. (2001). The edge and the center: Gated communities and the discourse of urban fear. American Anthropologist, 103(1), 45-56.
Reese, E., Deverteuil, G., & Thach, L. (2010). ‘Weak-center’ gentrification and the contradictions of containment: Deconcentrating poverty in downtown Los Angeles. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34(2), 310-327.