The dream revisited: Contemporary debates about housing, segregation and opportunity, edited by Ingrid Gould Ellen and Justin Peter Steil

《The dream revisited: Contemporary debates about housing, segregation and opportunity, edited by Ingrid Gould Ellen and Justin Peter Steil》

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作者: Anne B. Shlay

来源: JOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS,Vol.42,Issue4,P.691-693

语言: 英文

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作者单位: Georgia State University

摘要: The quest to understand the dynamics of race and place is central to urban studies. The study of urban segregation began early. The Chicago School focused on what they saw as the voluntary construction of segregated communities through self-selection. Conversely, Dubois and others demonstrated the role of discrimination and racism in creating and maintaining segregation. Eventually with the civil rights movement, segregation became a central focus of protest and policy. Recognizing that segregation for racial minorities did not occur by choice, fair housing became the watch word. Martin Luther King proclaimed, “I Have a Dream” to end racial inequality, much of it traceable to housing segregation. With racial discrimination declared illegal by the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the task became monitoring and enforcing the elimination of discrimination leading to segregation. Yet eliminating racial and ethnic segregation has proved to be challenging. Studies continually show that while racial segregation levels are decreasing they remain high. Through segregation, economic opportunities are thwarted. Although scholars debate whether segregation levels are declining or stagnant, most agree that racial segregation levels are too high. Good intentions with the backing of law should have led to change. The scarcity of authentic neighborhood integration, not simply the transition of neighborhoods from one race to another, remains ephemeral. Within this context, The Dream Revisited is a welcome addition to debates on housing segregation. It is no ordinary book on segregation. The book contains 96 essays debating virtually every issue embodied in the racial and ethnic segregation issue to date. The contributors are a virtual who’s who in the field. The essays, though most by scholars, are largely experiential and reflective based on the writers’ research experiences and understandings. This book is accessible to scholars and students alike, even at the undergraduate level. Policymakers should find the book very useful. It could easily serve as a central text book in an undergraduate class as well. That is quite a feat. There are four dimensions of segregation addressed: its meaning, causes, consequences and policy. Among these dimensions are 24 discussions that largely debate each topic. Many questions are raised. How are race riots rooted in segregation? Who are the victims of racial segregation? Is segregation largely the domain of entrenched poverty? Is racial segregation a problem for education, policy or what? Part one focuses on what the editors call the meaning of segregation. Is integration a goal? Who is integration for? Do other countries experience the problems of segregation so prevalent in the U.S.? Are segregative patterns reproduced in the suburbs? Are educational disparities between racial groups rooted in segregation. This foundational section sets the stage for further discussion. We have only just begun. Notably, racial segregation is not just about race but about the socio-economic outcomes connected to race. Concentrated poverty goes hand in hand with segregation resulting in a socio-economic death sentence for poor families. Bulldozing high rise public housing projects did not open neighborhood opportunities for impoverished residents—it simply redistributed concentrated poverty. These essays show that the structural conditions accompanying race are overwhelmingly destructive. Individualizing poverty leads nowhere in terms of improved social outcomes. The popular focus on resilience simply begs the question. The second part of the book addresses causes of segregation. Is ending segregation possible? Why is it that progress toward integration is so ephemeral? Is segregation’s persistence because of White mobility, racial preferences, discrimination, or the more general charge of racism? If the level of racism is reduced, will race-based neighborhood mobility practices change? Racial segregation is caused by the structure of individual preferences that emerges out of racism. But how do racial preferences change within such a racialized United States? The third part addresses segregation’s consequences. U.S. segregation creates a social world of violence, death, poor health, financial destruction, and political inequality. One set of essays focuses on Ferguson—called by several writers as “the Ferguson moment.” Riots are the product of structural conditions including segregation and disinvestment. But it is policing that ignites such unrest, particularly among young Black men who are sick and tired of being harassed nonstop by racist police. Is the Ferguson moment, a single event? Of course not, the authors argue. These moments of riots and destruction in racially segregated neighborhoods represent the crescendo of staccato irritations that are part of the everyday experiences of minority men. And with this going on, are White mobility practices likely to change? I don’t think so. Policing and racial profiling are manifestations of a racist, segregated world that are routine for minorities. How disappointing that the end of slavery and the move toward fair housing and equal opportunity have led to the racial morass embodying metropolitan areas today. Policy, addressed in the final part of this book, must be the fix. Such intractable problems deserve interventions on a massive scale. Yet ideas of constructing a more equal America collide with the contemporary absence of consensus on what constitutes social problems. No policy consensus exists on the preference of integration over segregation. The goal of integration has been losing ground. The necessary optimism from which good policy emerges is scarce. Yet the revisit to the dream persists in its quest for racial fairness. The finale and largest section of this book is rightfully about policy. The ideas are reasonable. The discussion starts with the Fair Housing Act, a law which only became enforceable in 1988. A recent innovation is using public money and leverage to “affirmatively further fair housing.” The idea is to use existing policy to leverage better outcomes, essentially to do more with what we’ve got. Yet good legislation and rules are crippled by a political apparatus that is not going to do anything to solve these problems. Where there is a will there is a way and lately, its absence will affirmatively further nothing. Would new urban policies help? Some ask for more people-oriented policies as opposed to simply place based policies. An alternative and intriguing recommendation is to apply affirmative action for places. Let’s correct years of discrimination by privileging neglected minority neighborhoods, akin to the privileges White neighborhoods have enjoyed from the get-go. Even Ernest Burgess singled out Chicago’s Black belt as an anomaly among the social mosaic of neighborhoods. Over a century of neighborhood neglect requires substantial interventions to bring comparability to communities. Gilding the ghetto may be the only way to bring resources to segregated minority communities. But what White leaders are going to put that in play? A powerful policy tool, the Low-Income-Housing-Tax-Credit, could encourage development opportunities in lower income neighborhoods. The LIHTC is the largest housing development policy in the federal toolbox. It can be used as a mechanism for enriching low income neighborhoods and for economic redistribution. Yet even this alleged color blind policy that is not even a HUD program per se (it is implement through the Department of the Treasury), works to concentrate poverty and perpetuate segregation. So we can tinker away. Inclusionary zoning could leverage more mixed income suburban (and urban) communities which hopefully would become racially integrated as well. Public infusions of money for developing new moderate-income housing adjacent to higher income housing is another mixed-income housing strategy. The expansion of housing vouchers, subsidies that allow poor residents to move to higher income communities in both cities and suburbs is advocated. But the number of housing vouchers is simply not enough. Without encouragement many housing voucher recipients will relocate to housing voucher “hot spots.” And more money and support for making good location choices is requisite policy for vouchers to create economically meaningful housing alternatives. Gentrification is offered up as a tool for racial integration. Yet how that is managed is a policy challenge. Gentrification is one of the most significant manifestations of contemporary urban development creating further economic and racial segregation in cities. Integration can happen in these communities, but it will take a lot of subsidies and substantially more sophisticated thinking to preserve affordable housing in gentrifying communities. Is that likely to happen? The Dream Revisited lays out contemporary problems of segregation and outlines a series of tools to be used in U.S. cities. It is probably the most intelligent and thoughtful read on segregation in recent years. Despite highlighting so many debates and differences, I consider it a hopeful and useful policy tool. With knowledge and experience, change should be inevitable. We have been at this for a long time. Yet in the words of Led Zeppelin, it makes me wonder.