American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass

Massey and Denton propose a theory of the American "urban underclass" that is based on premise that residential segregation--the ghetto--is a condition that has been created and perpetuated by white America throughout the 20th century and intensifying since the 1950s. Based exclusively on US Census data, they show that African Americans are by far the most segregated demographic in the US: the richest African Americans are still more segregated than the poorest Hispanics. The consequences of residential segregation are devastating and, Massey and Denton argue, are the precipitating factors in the perpetuation of the urban underclass. They include poorly funded neighborhood schools (which fail to give students exposure to a more diverse racial environment, multiplying the challenge of escaping the cycle perpetuating the ghetto) and isolation from social networks (that are the primary connection to jobs and upward mobility for whites).White flight and black exclusion are the two ways that residential segregation is perpetuated. If exclusion methods like neighborhood associations, real estate agent steering, and threats of violence do not do the job and the black population grows beyond 10% or so, whites leave the neighborhood in droves for the suburbs. When polled, few African Americans say they prefer to live in all black neighborhoods. To the contrary, they overwhelmingly support an even proportion of 50% black and 50% white, supporting the argument that the ghetto is imposed by whites upon blacks.Massey and Denton's hypothesis does not require (though they do mention approvingly) the assumption that black urban culture itself contributes to urban poverty, a view that African American Studies scholars like Robin D.G. Kelly reject. Residential segregation alone can account for the crisis. For this reason, I think it is an issue that deserves more attention than any other facing urban America today, and this book convinced me. ( )