America’s history of separate lives is a root cause
Nobody chooses to live in segregated districts, they were created by a rigged system that still operates with scorn and bigotry.
Housing projects like this one in Baltimore, Maryland, can condemn residents to lives of poverty.
Natalie Y Moore London Guardian
After the shooting of Philando Castile in Minnesota last Wednesday, the state’s appalled governor, Mark Dayton, said police wouldn’t have killed Castile if he had been white. Here’s a white politician recognising racism and not swatting it away like a pesky mosquito. But we need to recognise that a rigged, racist system of police brutality is indicative of deep-seated institutionalised racism.
Many of our cities are defined by entrenched residential segregation that created black ghettos and continues to perpetuate inequity. This was not by accident. In the 20th century, the government created housing policies that discriminated against black people and favoured white people in terms of wealth building. Despite the idea of “separate but equal” being struck down by our courts, the ideology still lingers in housing and public education. This isn’t about hokey ideas of harmony, of black and white people smiling and getting along just for the sake of getting along. Instead, if we start to address segregationist policies, we may have some hope of creating fairness.
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After racial uprisings in US cities in the 1960s, the Kerner Commission released a report, which asserted that our country was moving towards two societies: one black, one white, separate and unequal. The report said: “Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to white Americans. What white Americans have never fully understood – but the Negro can never forget – is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it and white society condones it.”
These words still ring true today.
Police brutality isn’t isolated from other forms of racism. Segregation is about division, disinvestment and uneven resources based on race. In policing, we often see white officers who grew up in homogenous white places placed in black urban settings. These officers enter without understanding racial and cultural differences. It’s a set-up for failure.
Segregation isn’t about choosing to live among like-minded or racially similar people. American segregation is historic and intentional and must be a part of any conversation on race as the root of many of our problems. It looks like unemployment, boarded-up buildings, foreclosures, lackadaisical enforcement of fair housing laws, predatory lending, vacant land and troubled schools. Black homes in black neighbourhoods are valued less than white homes in white neighbourhoods for no other reason than skin colour. This then undermines how one builds wealth through home-ownership and reflects a race-based, not class-based, system.
Addressing segregation means disrupting the patterns of inequity by creating more housing and job choices. It’s ensuring that all resources and benefits are equally distributed in American society.
Some sources of authority are beginning to recognise this. What (happily) surprised me about a recent report into police accountability – it covered Chicago, but its findings and recommendations could apply more widely – was that it didn’t tout midnight basketball between youth and officers as a way to rebuild trust. It dug deeper by acknowledging racism: more black people shot by police officers than white people in the city (74% v 8%), and it called on politicians to implement programmes addressing housing segregation, poverty and systemic racism.
I quote from its impressive words. “Both informal and formal local and national laws and policies have been identified as factors in contributing to racial and economic segregation, including discriminatory housing policies, barriers to healthcare services, inequity in the criminal justice system and unbalanced public school funding. In effect, these longstanding practices have resulted in the creation and preservation of poor and isolated neighborhoods where minorities have been denied equal socioeconomic opportunity. The impact of these policies persists today, and the cumulative effects of poverty and isolation make it extremely difficult to break the cycle of poverty.”
Changing policies and laws is easier than changing people’s misperceptions and stereotypes. There’s no denying that. But to ensure a just society, we must start somewhere. The former is a good place to start.
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