African American
Related: About this forumWhere the White People Live
I found this an interesting read. I live in Seattle, and I've often noticed and wondered at this phenomena--which can also be traced back to corrupt and racist lending laws in the '60s and '70's (I think up to the eighties, and no one can tell me a form of this doesn't exist today, although not as blatant) Black families in substandard housing or unable to buy, helped the path to a lack of inheritable wealth and generational poverty. I've also noticed when the process of "gentrification" starts as in the case in a couple of Seattle neighborhoods, price and taxes sky rocket. Where I live is on the border of Seattle, with a well mixed group of people--in other words, when I go to the grocery store, the majority of people isn't white. The housing is quite often smallish post war '50's track housing. The housing projects down the street have been torn down and replaced by affordable housing "townhouses" the homes sit atop places to start businesses. They were built right before the market crash, so few businesses ever started or succeeded.
My neighborhood (just this side of a rough unincorporated area called White Center aka Rat city) still has large yards (becoming rarer in Seattle) and is still nominally affordable, although buying is still out of reach for many here. The highest concentration of black Families is in an area we call the Central district, another is Southest Seattle. The Cenral district started the process of gentrification, which basically means contractors buy the old houses and renovate them and sell them for much higher prices, but the market crash stalled the process.
I'm interested in any thoughts
There were protests about the border, and Grosse Pointe Park later said it would tear down the farmer's market and re-open the road, but the incident speaks volumes to the segregation that exists in Detroit, and the tensions that can grow as a result.
The fact that these two areas are so close is uniquethe border between Grosse Pointe Park and the city of Detroit is the only place in any of America's biggest cities where a very wealthy, predominantly-white area abuts a very poor, black one, according to research from a new working paper from the University of Minnesota. But the existence of self-segregated wealthy white areas close by low-income minority ones isn't unique, according to the Minnesota researchers. They have sorted census tracts in 15 of America's 20 biggest cities into "racially concentrated areas of affluence" and "racially concentrated areas of poverty," and find that many cities have more areas of segregated affluence than they do poverty.
Racially concentrated areas of affluence, by the researchers' definition, are census tracts where 90 percent or more of the population is white and the median income is at least four times the federal poverty level, adjusted for the cost of living in each city. Racially concentrated areas of poverty, by contrast, are census tracts where more than 50 percent of the population is non-white, and more than 40 percent live in poverty.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/04/where-the-white-people-live/390153/
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)Thank you
Maedhros
(10,007 posts)notadmblnd
(23,720 posts)they're afraid. They're afraid because they know their greed is wrong and think the poor is going to come after them for what they have.
ismnotwasm
(42,021 posts)When the income gap gets too wide, and the population has had enough--that's what happens. I don't know what will happen in our modern age.
bvar22
(39,909 posts)...tearing up the Constitution, and militarizing the Police Departments.
We live in interesting times.
(old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times).
ismnotwasm
(42,021 posts)And it does remind me of the type of dystopia sci-fi novels I've read. Sci-Fi has often at least been in the ball park with the future
bvar22
(39,909 posts)I thought it was a fictional novel.
It now appears to be an instruction book.
ismnotwasm
(42,021 posts)Interesting times indeed.
JustAnotherGen
(31,969 posts)Thank you for sharing this.