L&C Ch.9 Race, Class, and Neighborhoods

This reading illustrates the various tactics to exclude people of color, predominately poor African Americans, from living in good neighborhoods. The problem with ‘spatial segregation’ has to do “how elite actors write legislation and execute plans that benefit members of their own class and exploit, disadvantage, or exclude poor and working class urban residents, thereby reproducing place-based economic inequality” (265). This illustrates how elites use their status in many ways to retain all white neighborhoods and restrict African Americans to move into these areas. By doing so, whites benefit by excluding African Americans from enjoying the abundant resources available in white communities, i.e. jobs, schools, housing. This ongoing spatial segregation relates back to post War World II housing boom in suburban areas (Levittown’s) which only whites could purchase affordable homes. African Americans who could afford to buy these homes were unable to do so because of redlining.

The particular case in North Kenwood-Oakland, Chicago exemplifies how blacks living in land that was attractive for purchase at low cost resulted in Conservation plan, “areas of the central city, which were targeted for demolition and reconstruction” (271). The reconstruction resulted in gentrifying this part of Chicago for its proximity to attractive sites, i.e., downtown area, University of Chicago. Since poor residents lived in the area of North-Kenwood-Oakland and they also wanted a safe neighborhood to reside, when community improvements began, “all nine hundred unites in the high-rises were vacated” (276) and not much efforts were attempted to locate these displaced tenants. This scenario relates to the first quote on how elite actors attempt to improve community circumstances but only for their own benefit. The bigger issues here is how spatial displacement for African Americans goes far beyond losing a home, but how all the social ties and way of living are disrupted.