Urban Injustice: How Ghettos Happen Read Online Free Page A
Author: David Hilfiker, Marian Wright Edelman
Administration mortgage guarantees, more easily given for new housing in new neighborhoods and completely unavailable for black or mixed urban neighborhoods, encouraged (white) families with even modest incomes to invest in suburban home ownership. Between 1950 and 1970, seven million whites left center cities. 5
The effects of this “white flight” were drastic, not only concentrating the population of poor African Americans in center cities, but also drawing jobs away from those same areas, especially jobs that paid a living wage.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the United States had become the overwhelming leader in worldwide manufacturing. Many of its factories were still located in the large cities of the North. They offered good employment, even for workers who entered the job market with little education and few skills. By this time, most unions accepted African Americans—there were also primarily black unions—and high levels of unionization in industry meant that jobs were secure, wages relatively high, and chances for advancement good if one stayed with the company. During the immediate post-World War II period, such blue-collar jobs were the primary way out of poverty for many African Americans.
Major structural changes in the global economy over the last four decades, however, have drastically altered that situation. After the destruction caused by World War II, the Europeans and Japanese gradually rebuilt their manufacturing sectors, which by the 1970s had begun to compete, often quite successfully, with American companies. In the later 1980s and 1990s, less developed countries like Korea and Taiwan expanded their manufacturing, too. By the turn of the millennium, American manufacturing was competing not only with the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut but also the former Eastern Bloc nations, Mexico, and Latin America.
Within the United States, changes in technology and transportation eliminated the need to locate factories in the middle of cities, so industry, too, joined the exodus to the suburbs. Rural areas in the North and the cities and suburbs in the Sun Belt of the Southwest also proved increasingly attractive to industry because land was cheaper, taxes lower, and unions far weaker. More recently, the development of large, transnational corporations able to create “global assembly lines” has led to further loss of manufacturing in the United States as “American” plants move to the Third World, where wages are drastically lower, unions often nonexistent, environmental laws few, and expensive regulations to protect workers from harm seldom on the books, much less enforced.
With the increasing computerization and mechanization of manufacturing worldwide, moreover, many of the better-paying jobs that remain in the United States require higher levels of education. There are jobs for those who analyze data, write computer programs, manage people, administer organizations, or do financial planning. Increasingly, however, the bulk of jobs remaining for poorly trained or educated people are in the service sector—as domestics, janitors, clerks, salespeople, nursing aides, or cashiers—where wages have historically been low and benefits poor or nonexistent. To make matters worse, over the last thirty years, wages in the service sector have declined both in real dollars and relative to other sectors of the economy, so even full-time workers in such jobs now find it difficult to stay out of poverty.
A continuing pattern of residential segregation that is no less rigid for being informal makes it that much more difficult to find well-paying jobs outside of black areas. Yes, poor African Americans can get jobs in the suburbs, but only the most persistent succeed. Not only is discrimination in employment still a problem, but public transportation from the center city to the suburbs is also complicated, unreliable, and, most of all, time-consuming. Owning a car is too
The effects of this “white flight” were drastic, not only concentrating the population of poor African Americans in center cities, but also drawing jobs away from those same areas, especially jobs that paid a living wage.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the United States had become the overwhelming leader in worldwide manufacturing. Many of its factories were still located in the large cities of the North. They offered good employment, even for workers who entered the job market with little education and few skills. By this time, most unions accepted African Americans—there were also primarily black unions—and high levels of unionization in industry meant that jobs were secure, wages relatively high, and chances for advancement good if one stayed with the company. During the immediate post-World War II period, such blue-collar jobs were the primary way out of poverty for many African Americans.
Major structural changes in the global economy over the last four decades, however, have drastically altered that situation. After the destruction caused by World War II, the Europeans and Japanese gradually rebuilt their manufacturing sectors, which by the 1970s had begun to compete, often quite successfully, with American companies. In the later 1980s and 1990s, less developed countries like Korea and Taiwan expanded their manufacturing, too. By the turn of the millennium, American manufacturing was competing not only with the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut but also the former Eastern Bloc nations, Mexico, and Latin America.
Within the United States, changes in technology and transportation eliminated the need to locate factories in the middle of cities, so industry, too, joined the exodus to the suburbs. Rural areas in the North and the cities and suburbs in the Sun Belt of the Southwest also proved increasingly attractive to industry because land was cheaper, taxes lower, and unions far weaker. More recently, the development of large, transnational corporations able to create “global assembly lines” has led to further loss of manufacturing in the United States as “American” plants move to the Third World, where wages are drastically lower, unions often nonexistent, environmental laws few, and expensive regulations to protect workers from harm seldom on the books, much less enforced.
With the increasing computerization and mechanization of manufacturing worldwide, moreover, many of the better-paying jobs that remain in the United States require higher levels of education. There are jobs for those who analyze data, write computer programs, manage people, administer organizations, or do financial planning. Increasingly, however, the bulk of jobs remaining for poorly trained or educated people are in the service sector—as domestics, janitors, clerks, salespeople, nursing aides, or cashiers—where wages have historically been low and benefits poor or nonexistent. To make matters worse, over the last thirty years, wages in the service sector have declined both in real dollars and relative to other sectors of the economy, so even full-time workers in such jobs now find it difficult to stay out of poverty.
A continuing pattern of residential segregation that is no less rigid for being informal makes it that much more difficult to find well-paying jobs outside of black areas. Yes, poor African Americans can get jobs in the suburbs, but only the most persistent succeed. Not only is discrimination in employment still a problem, but public transportation from the center city to the suburbs is also complicated, unreliable, and, most of all, time-consuming. Owning a car is too
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