The dialect of the black ghetto, black English vernacular, can also lead to problems. The ability to speak, write, and communicate effectively in standard English is essential for employment in most white-collar jobs (meaning that most ghetto residents will be considered only for blue-collar work). But even blue-collar employers frequently make use of language as a screening device. While black English vernacular has, in fact, all the rules and grammar of any dialect, white employers in particular may interpret its use as a reflection of lack of intelligence or ability. If he does not speak standard English well, a prospective employee may fail the “telephone test,” never even making it to an initial interview. While it may be easy enough to sympathize with an employer looking for qualified applicants, from the point of view of the job seeker, discrimination by geographic profiling is no less virulent than a straightforward prejudice against African Americans.
It is no longer acceptable in many white circles to admit to racial prejudice, but as recently as 1990, a National Opinion Research survey of non-black respondents found that 65 percent thought blacks were lazier than other groups; 56 percent thought them more prone to violence; 53 percent saw them as less intelligent; and 78 percent thought them less self-supporting and more likely to live off welfare.
3
AMERICAN APARTHEID
The continuing severe segregation of African Americans from the rest of society is undoubtedly the single most important cause of urban black poverty.
4
The ghetto itself is the problem.
Although the degree of black segregation in the United States has declined somewhat in the last decade, African Americans in every large northern city are still more segregated than
any
European ethnic group has
ever
been in
any
American city.
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Sociological analysis uses several different statistical indices of segregation. Perhaps the most common is the “index of dissimilarity,” which calculates the percentage of a minority population that would have to move into other neighborhoods in order to achieve an even distribution. Imagine, for example, a city that is 20 percent black. An even distribution, therefore, would mean that each neighborhood was 20 percent black. The index of similarity is the percentage of the city’s blacks who would have to move to achieve that even distribution. An index of dissimilarity less than 30 is considered low, between 30 and 60 moderate, and above 60 high. After the Civil War, the average indices of dissimilarity for blacks and whites in northern cities ranged from 20 to 45, indicating levels of segregation comparable to those of European ethnics who had recently immigrated. By 1910, however, the average index of dissimilarity in the black ghettos of the largest northern cities had reached almost 60, and in 1940, just before the outbreak of World War II, the average index of dissimilarity in northern cities had soared to almost 90, meaning that 90 percent of African Americans would have had to move from their neighborhoods into white ones in order to achieve perfect integration.
Before 1900, the small numbers of African Americans living in northern cities and the low levels of segregation meant that most African Americans lived in largely white neighborhoods. Whatever poor residential conditions they experienced were due more to discrimination in employment than in housing. A black elite of artisans and professionals was economically tied to the white community, had relationships with whites in power, and generally believed in accommodation with whites, leading, they hoped, to some form of gradual integration someday, a position argued at the time by Booker T. Washington. But the sheer numbers of southern blacks who came north in the first great migration created unique problems.
Racism flared. Employers and white workers sometimes forced skilled black craftsmen to start over as unskilled workers, while factory owners often hired newly arrived blacks as scabs to break strikes and prevent the establishment of unions. Unlike white immigrant strikebreakers, however, black scabs were usually discharged at the conclusion of the strike. The role of African Americans as strikebreakers only increased racial tension between working-class whites and blacks. Bombings and other violence threatened blacks, and beginning as early as 1900 there were massive race riots. Blacks in the “wrong” parts of a city might be attacked; whites who lived in predominantly black areas moved out. Violence at the borders between white and black neighborhoods kept black areas from expanding.
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,
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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.
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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.
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