Week Two - The Emergence of Civil Rights as A National Issue in the United States
Share an idea or two from this week's reading. What was most interesting to you? What was most strange? How does the reading this week fit into issues and discussions we have had in this class?
For this week’s reading, one of the most important points that Ta-Nehisi Coates is about the true meaning of American democracy, and what American democracy was founded on. Coates makes this point when he talks about the H.R. 40 bill. Coates says that the H.R. 40 bill has never made it to the house floor because examining the damaging effects of slavery will reveal that the struggles of black and brown America are not “inexplicable” but a direct reflection of the years of oppression that America has caused black people. I think this point is so intriguing because it attacks the very fabric of America by saying that the oldest democracy in the world was founded on the oppression of blacks, but that America refuses to acknowledge the harmful effects of that oppression still to this day.
ReplyDeleteAs Rashad notes, Coates’ summation of the bipartisan inaction surrounding reparations indicates a pervasive unwillingness to accept reparations as a national necessity, which by Coates’ argument is clearly imperative to advance an anti-racist agenda. I was fascinated by his suppositions that white Americans are unwilling to accept the hypocrisy of US democracy and face the overwhelming evidence that the very fabric of our nation is rooted in a spirit of unfettered oppression for purposes of economic gain. Particularly, I want to question Coates’ claim that the resistance comes from a reluctance to sully the name of country, rather than a more pointed and individualized fear of admitting white complacency in a thriving racial hierarchy.
DeleteAnna, it's really fascinating to think about your comment in today's Memphis context. Economic gain has long been the primary driving force of Memphian society, from the cotton trade to the rise and fall of industry in North Memphis. The problem with this is that the economic gain is largely retained within a single demographic; that is, white urban elites from historically wealthy families and neighborhoods. As a result, we see generational poverty that continually oppresses black families in Memphis - as well as America as a whole - and the creation of cycle of harm that can largely be traced back to an economy built on segregation that benefactors of the established racial hierarchy either neglect or deny their involvement in the history of inequality in the city.
DeleteI enjoyed reading the Darden article for I felt like it gave light to the segregation found in the housing market in a very direct manner. Although Darden used St. Louis and Detroit as examples for the current state of the housing market, I feel that Memphis also exemplifies the injustices that Darden found in the other two cities. For instance, as in St. Louis and Detroit, a majority of the retail positions in Memphis are offered in suburbs such Cordova, Germantown, and Collierville, which would take an extended amount of time to reach using only public transportation. The progress made since the Fair Housing Act of 1968 has been severely limited, thus more attention needs to be directed to the distribution of jobs and the quality of public transport in order to allow further progress to be made.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to think about the readings in relation to the modern-day context of Memphis. As you mentioned the suburbs, it made me think back to Darden's article regarding "black suburbs" vs. predominantly white suburbs. More specifically, I am thinking about the region of Cordova, which is under "city limits," but is largely considered the suburbs by most Memphians. Thinking even further, I started to question how we have come to define "suburbs" contemporarily, because we often attribute affluent, white residents to this term. Furthermore, although Shelley v. Kraemer struck down against racial covenants on real estate in the legal landscape, it is jarring to see the ways in which people tend to skate around this, even today. For example, groups like neighborhood watches do enforce this "us vs. them" mentality in which the "us" in this setting can be characterized as the nice white people living in affluent communities, while the "them" are the suspicious black folks who invade the space.
DeleteAnya Tipton
DeleteSimilarly to Lamisa and Britney, I also had a lot of interest in the Darden piece, especially with regards to how landscapes have developed on a racial level. What resonated with me the most was the final section on concentrations of blacks in the inner city. For the past few years I have been researching gentrification, so I theorize a lot about the roles place and space play in black identity, and I have found that attachments to neighborhoods are often strongest in communities where common plights are shared. However, whites today continue to trivialize the importance of space and prioritize their own free and willful mobility over the constraints and vulnerability of black communities. White people have a history of pushing blacks in and out of neighborhoods, but never allow room for these communities to improve themselves from within. This piece made me wonder what form residential segregation will place in years to come.
For this week’s reading, I found the Darden piece particularly interesting. When Darden writes in his conclusion, “racial residential segregation is presently so deeply ingrained in American residential structures that the mere elimination of existing discriminatory practices may not be sufficient to eradicate it,” I was taken back and really thought about what he was saying throughout his piece. It is still difficult to believe that today over forty years after the Kraemer decision that we still face such daunting challenges in racial residential segregation. In my experiences working with Memphis Area Legal Services this summer, it really became apparent just how big of a problem this is especially in Memphis. As Britney pointed out, Memphis does exemplify many of the injustices Darden pointed out. While on the surface level we have eliminated many of the obstacles that prevented equal housing opportunity when you delve deeper into the issue, it becomes much more obvious how far we still need to go to reach such a goal.
ReplyDeleteBlakely Summerhays
DeleteWhile reading the Darden piece I also couldn’t help but draw comparisons to our modern-day housing market. The housing market is still fraught with racial discrimination. Issues like redlining are still very real occurrences that affect minorities, specifically African Americans, everyday. Darden references Detroit multiple times throughout this reading to serve as a case study for the more severe situations. Through my urban studies coursework I have learned that Detroit is still struggling in regards to housing integration. Much of the black community is concentrated in the inner city, while white communities mainly exist in the bordering suburbs. However, this issue is not only present in just Detroit. It’s a widespread epidemic that cities face all over our nation.
I found the Shelley v Kraemer decision to be particularly interesting. Allowing private discriminatory contracts so long as they are enforced by the state is like the court refusing to make a ruling. Understandably if the Court makes a decision that goes against popular public opinion, the Court can lose legitimacy. So I can understand how the Court may be stuck here. On one side, taking an extra-constitutional stand by incorporating constitutional values into private contracts may seem like the Court is overstepping its boundaries and thus, a ruling to this extent would probably be ineffective an not carried out by states and local actors. On the other hand, by not taking an affirmative stand, the Court is allowing private contracts that contradict the 14th amendment dictate public policies, which is handing white racists a loophole that they can use to get out of following the equal protection clause.
ReplyDeleteIn the first chapter of Gonda that we read, he remarks that there are four distinct bodies that worked to reinforce one another in order to maintain the discriminatory housing practices most common in the 1940s and 1950s. They were the "individuals, realtors, mortgage lenders, and the government...these groups fed off of each other to create, promote, and sustain both the rationale and the means of residential exclusion." In reading the unique ways that each body operated and worked to discriminate (individuals =violence, FHA= redlining), I began to wonder about which body was working to reify which. Was the government fueling the violence of the individuals or were the individuals affecting governmental change as well? To flip the script a bit, how might this line of thinking apply to affecting positive change?
ReplyDeleteWhile I knew that housing was, and has continued to be a problem for African Americans, I did not realize how it was at the forefront of issues coming out of World War II. I was also shocked by how the extent to which government endorsed racially restrictive covenants. To see that the FHA blatantly defined social attractiveness as "Satisfaction, contentment, and comfort... with persons of similar social attributes... [who] enjoy social relationships with other families whose education, abilities, mode of living, and racial characteristics are similar to their own" is appalling. I was even more surprised by the FHA referring to the blacks coming into predominantly white neighborhoods as "invasions."
ReplyDeleteBased on my reading of Shelly v. Kraemer, it seems that the SCOTUS was much less willing to hand down a racially progressive ruling than in last week's case, Smith v. Allwright. Specifically, the opinion was more measured in its assessment of private action versus state action. Justice Reed was unequivocal when he wrote that the white primary, put on by a private political organization, was unconstitutional given that it received enough state intervention and was central enough to the voting process to be reasonably considered state action. But in Shelly, Chief Justice Vinson was careful not to rule the private act of creating a racially restrictive housing covenant as unconstitutional, but rather that the enforcement of said covenant by a state court is, in fact, in violation of the 14th amendment. In practice, I'm not sure what difference this distinction makes, but it is an interesting distinction, nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteThe aftermath of Shelley v. Kraemer reveals that social practices like housing segregation extend beyond the realm of the courts. Removing the enforcement powers of covenants did not make for broad strides in reducing segregation. Private and institutional discrimination in housing persist. While it is entirely legal for a black family to move into a white suburb, it is also common practice for realtors to show black families homes in black neighborhoods, and for white families to flee neighborhoods that are becoming more integrated.
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ReplyDeleteWhile reading the Coates piece, I was reminded of many an American History class spent discussing the concept of American exceptionalism, how through hard work and perseverance supposedly anyone in this country is capable of getting ahead and changing their status. However, for the poorest people of color, it is unlikely that they will be able to "work their way out of the ghetto-and those who do often face the horror of watching their children and grandchildren tumble back" (Coates 15). The practice of redlining was an active denial of privileges to African Americans that could have been reparative to family life trajectories and socioeconomic status. The effects of redlining are a decades old assault on the "possibility of investment wherever black people lived". While racism at the individual level should of course be acknowledged, this piece asserts that the perpetuation of personal racist ideologies was in part "orchestrated by the shared racist presumptions of America’s public and private sectors" (Coates 37). While the bipartisan lack of initiative on the H.R. 40 bill is frustrating, it is not unsurprising. Our country continues to profit off white fear, and to directly pursue reparations would be to address the nucleus of American racial injustice upon which our country built itself. To answer the question posed at the end of our last class, I believe change happens only after we have confronted the flaws of a preexisting system.
I was interested to read in the Darden article about how even thought the 1960s did bring about lots of progressive change in terms of rights of African Americans, it did not have the radical effect of integration that might have been expected. Darden points out that although the civil rights legislation did spur many African Americans to move out of cities and into suburbs, something they may not have been able to do previously, they were not heading into the same suburbs that their white counterparts were moving to. Rather, they were moving into areas that were already predominantly black, which although on the surface might look like positive change really did nothing for housing integration. This meant that housing segregation remained very high through the 1970s, and this was interesting and surprising to me because I had always heard about the 1960s as such a time of progress in terms of these rights.
ReplyDeleteI thought Darden’s analysis on Shelley vs. Kraemer was very intriguing. Darden demonstrates how housing segregation was and still is an issue that stems from racism. In the beginning of his analysis, Darden writes, “’private agreements to exclude persons of designated race or color from the use or occupancy of real estate for residential purposes do not violate the Fourteenth Amendment’” (Darden 680). This quote reminds me of our discussion from the previous class about how powerless the U.S. government and its constitution is compared to states’ rights and even the rights of private groups. Darden’s discussion on the relationship between socioeconomic status and one’s housing was very interesting because everyone should be allowed access to the housing they can afford. However, for African Americans they were forced to stay in only certain parts of the city, that were less developed and farther away from job opportunities. This pattern to me, demonstrates a very dangerous cycle. The cycle of obscure racism is arguably just as dangerous as the cycle of overt racism. Racism rooted in housing segregation is more abstract than physical violence or another type of overt racism, which allows it to persist and be protected under the law. In chapter one, Gonda describes housing discrimination as the, “greatest obstacle to black Americans’ post war progress” (Gonda 21). I believe that this cycle of covert racism that is rooted in housing segregation is still very much a problem this country faces and until we acknowledge the dangers and presence of any form of racism, we are at risk of perpetuating this dangerous and unjust cycle.
ReplyDeleteAfter having previously read the Ta-Nehisi Coates article in high school, it was refreshing to read once again about the injustices done to African Americans in the housing sector. What was so suprising to me still, was the extent to which white supremacists would go to bring down African Americans. More than ever, racism was truly rooted in different facets of society. This was most visible when he gave the story of Clyde Ross, the black man who fled worsening conditions in Mississippi with the dream of eventually owning a home in Chicago. Despite him and his wife working several jobs they still struggled to make ends meet because of the practice of white "predatory contract sellers" at the time who charged exorbitant prices with little to no legal protection for buyers. So, while segregation may have been over, Coates highlights the unjust practices built into society that restricted the "drivers of growth" to African Americans that have led to the gap of inequality that we see today. It's also hard to comprehend that no matter how much those like Clyde Ross tried to dig themselves from the bottom, they were constantly being pushed back down.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading about Shelley vs. Kraemer because it helped me understand how it had an impact on segregated or unfair housing based on race and socioeconomic status today. Through allowing residents to form racially discriminatory covenants, African Americans and other nonwhites were forced into the worst housing conditions. Additionally, the vocabulary used by the justices in this case allowed for this racist decision to happen. They often refer to the white members of the covenants as "petitioners," implying that they have a right to racially discriminate because they are exercising their right to petition under the First Amendment. What the justices fail to consider, however, are the rights of those being turned away at fair housing. This decision proves that our Constitution was written with whites only in mind, causing others to be unfairly persecuted.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was interesting was the straw-party salesman in the real estate business, how a realtor would serve as a middle man between the white seller of the home and the african-american buyer of the property, yet significantly raise the value of the home when selling to the black buyers. The strangest aspect was of Chief Justice Frederick Vinson, and how some of his contemporaries that sat on the Court refused to respect him as an equal in terms of judicial knowledge. The focus on housing limitations for blacks is still ever-present today, especially in the complex segregated city of Memphis. It is here in these early 1900s of housing protections that serve to be the roots of race layout in Memphis today.
ReplyDeleteI think that the conversation about housing and discrimination and the correlation between the two is an important and still valid topic in our current conversations about race. Housing impacts all aspect of life, making fighting for integrated housing about many other issues, such as fighting for a shared community and for quality public education. I visited the National Civil Rights Museum over the weekend, and they had a diagram of major modern day cities, including Memphis, that displayed the racial make-up of each part of the city. It is obvious from these diagrams that the Supreme Court's decisions have not ended this de facto segregation, which perpetuates inequalities in a number of ways. For example, public schools in primarily poorer, African American-dominated areas of Memphis are likely to be underfunded and understaffed whereas public schools in affluent, white neighborhoods thrive and provide a higher quality education. This issue leads to a systematic cycle of inequality.
ReplyDeleteIt is a historically common concept, the need to make up for something while it is widely understood, consciously or not, that whatever is done will never be enough. Sympathetic actions now will not protect someone's ancestor from knife wielding discrimination or extinguish the desperation of a runaway slave. Ta Nehisi Coates elaborates on the necessity for monetary reparations for those whose families were hurt by slavery in antebellum America, but I think his best suggestions involve the reformation of policies which would get at the structural nature of something so deeply rooted and multifaceted. This would involve access to quality education and fair-treatment in the hiring process for blacks, people living today, but are still experiencing the residue of the past.
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