Donut Effect: The City Of Detroit

257 Words1 Page
bulb-icon

Recommended: African american poverty essay

The author applies a blend of personal experience as historical research to approach the complex and unique ‘donut effect’ the city of Detroit is facing. Safransky summarizes the hardships that the predominantly African-American population face in inner city Detroit. Citizens are forced to squat in abandoned homes where others must grow their own food in gardens because grocery stores gouge basic commodity prices. She faults current conditions back to the 1950’s, when the automotive industry began to decline. The “white flight” of white families left for the suburbs and the poorer blacks were stuck in central locations. This in turn created the ‘donut effect’, where white people amalgamated in the outer ring through the suburbs, and African-Americans

Show More
Related

  • Sociological Aspects of "The Devil in the White City"

    1607 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The Devil in the White City” by Erik Larson was a mix between two stories that overall worked well together. The stories worked together to convey the true overall meaning of the theme good versus evil. Good and evil are seen everywhere throughout the novel, even in the most obvious of places such as the title. Good and evil, dark and light, they all stand for the same thing. White is normally found to be pure and good. By the author naming the book, The Devil in the White City, he is trying to tell the reader that the novel is about how even in truly pure places evil will follow. Although, good and evil is the main theme of this novel, I found that if you look deeply into the way he tells the story, he is also trying to tell his reader about other themes. These other themes that you can find all throughout the book are things such as pride and determination. These other themes were very prominent and played very well into the plot and the theme of the story.

    Read More

  • The Original Underclass Analysis

    293 Words  | 1 Pages

    One of the most critical observations about the state of our sociological health is observed by MacGillis of the Atlantic’s article entitled “The Original Underclass”. That is that the social breakdown of low-income whites began to reflect trends that African American’s were primary subjects of decades ago such as unemployment, and drug addiction.

    Read More

  • Gentrification and White Preference in the Rhode Island Housing Market

    929 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Gentrification is a general term for the arrival of wealthier people in an existing urban district, a related increase in rents and property values, and changes in the district's character and culture.” (Grant) In layman’s terms, gentrification is when white people move to a black neighborhood for the sake of cheaper living, and in turn, raise up property values and force black neighbors to leave because of a higher price of living. Commonly, the government supports gentrification with the demolition of public housing in areas that are developing with more white neighbors. This is causing a decreasing amount of African Americans to be able to afford to live in the neighborhood as their homes are taken away from them, forcing them to relocate. Whilst gentrification normally has negative connotations, there are several people who believe gentrification brings about “an upward trend in property values in previously neglected neighborhoods.” (Jerzyk) On the other hand, this new trend in property value and business causes those...

    Read More

  • Gilbert Osofsky’s Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto

    1090 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “Part One: The Negro and the City,” Osofsky describes the early Black neighborhoods of New York City, in the lower parts of Manhattan: from Five Points, San Juan Hill, and the Tenderloin. He describes the state of Black community of New York in the antebellum and postbellum, and uses the greater United States, including the Deep South, as his backdrop for his microanalysis of the Blacks in New York. He paints a grim picture of little hope for Black Americans living in New York City, and reminds the reader that despite emancipation in the north long before the Civil War, racism and prejudices were still widespread in a city where blacks made up a small portion of the population.

    Read More

  • ook Review: The Great Inversion and the Future of the American City

    724 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book The Great Inversion, author Alan Ehrenhalt reveals the changes that are happing in urban and suburban areas. Alan Ehrenhalt the former editor of Governing Magazine leads us to acknowledge that there is a shift in urban and suburban areas. This revelation comes as the poorer, diverse, city dwellers opt for the cookie cutter, shanty towns at the periphery of American cities known as the suburbs. In similar fashion the suburbanites, whom are socioeconomic advantaged, are looking to migrate into the concrete jungles, of America, to live an urban lifestyle. Also, there is a comparison drawn that recognizes the similarities of cities and their newer, more affluent, residents, and those cities of Europe a century ago and their residents. In essence this book is about the demographic shifts in Urban and Suburban areas and how these changes are occurring.

    Read More

  • Ghetto Takes Shape

    1561 Words  | 4 Pages

    A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930 explains in detail how the author deciphers the ghettoization process in Cleveland during the time period. Kusmer also tries to include studies that mainly pertained to specific black communities such as Harlem, Chicago, and Detroit, which strongly emphasized the institutional ghetto and dwelled on white hostility as the main reasons as to why the black ghetto was

    Read More

  • More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City

    1316 Words  | 3 Pages

    More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City (Issues of Our Time)

    Read More

  • Development of Neighborhoods in Chicago

    1872 Words  | 4 Pages

    Chicago in the 1920s was a turning point for the development of ethnic neighborhoods. After the opening of the first rail connection from New York to Chicago in the 1840s, immigration sky rocketed from that point on. Majority of the immigrants to Chicago were Europeans. The Irish, Italians, eastern European Jews, Germans, and Mexicans were among the most common ethnicities to reside in Chicago. These groups made up the greater part of Chicago. The sudden increase in immigration to Chicago in the 1920s soon led to an even further distinguished separation of ethnicities in neighborhoods. The overall development of these neighborhoods deeply impacted how Chicago is sectioned off nowadays. Without these ethnicities immigrating to Chicago almost 100 years ago, Chicago neighborhoods would not be as culturally defined and shaped as they are today.

    Read More

  • Vancouver Gentrification Essay

    741 Words  | 2 Pages

    Vancouver is not affordable to live for the young professionals due to gentrification problems. The economy requires gentrification to develop the city. In order for a city to flow better, more people have to spend and sell. Furthermore, for people to spend or sell more, it requires more people to live. However, gentrification is pushing people away from their homes, and makes it difficult for the young professionals to move in. Therefore, a lot of young professionals and working class would move out and live outside the city.

    Read More

  • The Newark Riots of 1967

    600 Words  | 2 Pages

    Newark began to deteriorate and the white residents blamed the rising African-American population for Newark's downfall. However, one of the real culprits of this decline in Newark was do to poor housing, lack of employment, and discrimination. Twenty-five percent of the cities housing was substandard according to the Model C...

    Read More

  • Housing Segregation and Minority Groups in the United States

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    The downgrading of African Americans to certain neighborhoods continues today. The phrase of a not interested neighborhood followed by a shift in the urban community and disturbance of the minority has made it hard for African Americans to launch themselves, have fairness, and try to break out into a housing neighborhood. If they have a reason to relocate, Caucasians who support open housing laws, but become uncomfortable and relocate if they are contact with a rise of the African American population in their own neighborhood most likely, settle the neighborhoods they have transfer. This motion creates a tremendously increase of an African American neighborhood, and then shift in the urban community begins an alternative. All of these slight prejudiced procedures leave a metropolitan African American population with few options. It forces them to remain in non-advanced neighborhoods with rising crime, gang activity, and...

    Read More

  • Gentrification Analysis

    804 Words  | 2 Pages

    Michelle Boyd’s article “Defensive Development The Role of Racial Conflict in Gentrification” also focuses on gentrification addressing the failure to explain the relationship between racial conflict and its effect on gentrification. This article adds a new perspective to gentrification while studying the blacks as gentrifiers.

    Read More

  • The Harlem Renaissance

    1572 Words  | 4 Pages

    Before African Americans moved to this area, Harlem was “designed specifically for white workers who wanted to commute into the city” (BIO Classroom). Due to the rapid growth of white people moving there and the developers not having enough transportation to support those people to go back and forth between downtown to work and home most of the residents left. Th...

    Read More

  • Policy Solutions for Jobless Poverty

    1782 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the report A New Form of Social Dislocation in the Inner-City Ghetto, William Julius Wilson analyzes three research studies conducted in Chicago between 1986 and 1993. In these studies, Wilson identifies a new type of poverty, which he coins jobless poverty. Jobless poverty represents the growing number communities that are compromised of a high percentage of unemployed individuals. These communities have the same recurrent themes of isolation in inner-city ghettos where the surrounding area is abandon, desolate or deserted of economic opportunities and community benefits. In contrast to living in employed poverty or unemployed poverty in neighborhoods of high employment, jobless poverty causes negative effects that lead to individuals and their families becoming stuck in a continuous cycle of jobless poverty. As a result of these negative effects, it is important to consider policy solutions that would address this growing problem and provide opportunities for individuals to escape the cycle of jobless poverty. The most affective solutions to jobless poverty are more mixed-use developments and a larger public transportation networks.

    Read More

  • The Symbolism Of Crime In Detroit

    380 Words  | 1 Pages

    Detroit city used to be the most dazzling symbol of the American dream. For a century, it has witnessed the prosperity and decline of the American auto industry. But right now, all these things are gone. Under depression and crumbling, Detroit is like an old man entered the twilight years.

    Read More

More about Donut Effect: The City Of Detroit

Open Document