Racial segregation in the United States

Factors that led to racial segregation

Racial segregation in the United States is considered as the separation of access to services, facilities, and opportunities such as medical care, housing, employment and education along racial line. The most expressed refers to the socially or legally enforced separation of African Americans against the white communities. Racial segregation has been caused by a number of factors that have been the root of disparities in the United States between the white communities and the African American. These factors include school and education, cultural, social norms and Socio-economic factors.

The practices of restricting areas of residence and separation of institutions such as the schools and churches have been the basis of the alleged racial segregation. Social discriminations due to the stories that the white people tell themselves about the beliefs of the African American communities has led to segregation and discrimination in use of public facilities as well as voting. Socio-economic factors have also been linked to racial segregation due to the growing inequality that has reflected the racial wealth gap (Shedd, 2015). In education, a black American achievement gap has been considered to persist largely due to the fact that because the poorest students are taken to racially homogenous schools where the instructions are termed to be overwhelming. For instance, the racial differences have led to race-based residential segregation which have highly contributed to the disparities between the African American and the white community. Ideally, these schools are segregated due to the segregation of the neighborhoods.

Organizing immigrant community

Formation of immigrant communities begun during the 18^th century due to the growing population of immigrant I the United States (Portes and Rumbaut, 1996). The process of community formation within the immigrants begins around interactions rather than geographic concentration. The everyday processes through which the migrants tend to engage with each other leads to community formation. The process of building a community begins with acculturation, integration, adaption, assimilation, and absorption into a new group or community. Assimilation is the process through which the minority group of immigrants adapts to the attitudes and the prevailing customs and culture. This is whereby the groups or persons acquire memory, attitudes, and sentiments of other persons through sharing their history and experience that have incorporated into a common culture. Finally, the concept of adaption in the same phenomenon is considered as the final results whereby the immigrants have incorporated into ma new community. The immigrant community is a source of diverse experience and knowledge. They increase creativity, innovation, and prosperity as well as enriching cultural fabric by introducing new music, traditions, food, beliefs, interests and traditions. Increased immigrant groups can lead to residents benefits from new local festivals and cultural celebrations.

Immigrants come to the United States for one purpose which is to escape their overwhelming poverty, only to find out that it is difficult for them to escape poverty. There exists discrimination against immigrants in the United States based on religion, race, and ethnicity. They have faced racial barriers in employment and education thus imposing a great challenge for immigrants to improve their standards of living. Relatively, in the labor market, they are paid low wages which have constituted to the high rates of poverty among the immigrants.

Gentrification

Gentrification is considered as the process if renovating the deteriorated urban houses in the neighborhoods. This results in increasing the attraction of an area as well as having high-income individuals that spill over the neighboring cities. Gentrification has contributed population displacement and migration that hinder genuine progressive approaches for urban development techniques.  Gentrification relates to many of the same ideas which include social change, class and social justice.  The Neoliberalism is considered a political ideology that encouraged private property.

The elected officials in the Neoliberal cities encourage gentrification since they argue that poor neighborhoods need revitalization and regeneration as a way of creative renewal.  The mission of liberal officials is to enhance diversity. They believe that gentrification trickles down to benefiting everyone as a transformation of economic inequality and growth of the state.

The current gentrification wave has been the roots inequality and pressure on the minority residents. Gentrification leads to negative impacts to the minority residents due to forced displacement that results in a discriminatory behavior to the low-income individuals.  The major direct impacts that pressure the low-income individuals is the increased property price, raised rents that have been led by renovation and improvement of the neighborhoods (Heiman, 2017).  Through gentrification, the poorer neighborhoods are converted into high-end communities with expensive housing alternatives such as condominiums and high rises. Ideally, as the property increases its value the original residents who are low-income residents are forced out in varying ways such as increased rents and selling off buildings at higher prices. The conversion of ordinary living places has negative impacts on the lives of low-income pressures who have been displacement and pressure on the housing markets as a result of inflated prices and rents.

References

Heiman, D. B. (2017). Two-way immersion, gentrification, and critical pedagogy: teaching against the neoliberal logic(Doctoral dissertation).

Portes, A., & Rumbaut, R. (1996). Moving: Patterns of immigrants settlement and spatial mobility. Immigrant America.

Shedd, C. (2015). Unequal city: Race, schools, and perceptions of injustice. Russell Sage Foundation.