Residential Segregation Essay

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From slavery to Jim Crow, the impact of racial discrimination has had a long lasting influence on the lives of African Americans. While inequality is by no means a new concept within the United States, the after effects have continued to have an unmatched impact on the racial disparities in society. Specifically, in the housing market, as residential segregation persists along racial and ethnic lines. Moreover, limiting the resources available to black communities such as homeownership, quality education, and wealth accumulation. Essentially leaving African Americans with an unequal access of resources and greatly affecting their ability to move upward in society due to being segregated in impoverished neighborhoods. Thus, residential segregation plays a significant role in …show more content…

This is known as de jure segregation which essentially states that the segregation was implemented by public policy and law instead of private discrimination practices held by individuals (Rothstein). Thus, “racial segregation in housing was not merely a project of southerners in the former slaveholding confederacy [but instead] it was a nation-wide project of the federal government in the twentieth century, designed and implemented by its most liberal leaders” (Rothstein). With this nation-wide project, numerous racially explicit laws and government practices were combined in order to develop a system of urban ghettos where African Americans were designated to live (Rothstein). Moreover, highlighting that while privately held discrimination did play some role on the residential segregation of African Americans, the government primarily played a crucial part in reinforcing the racially explicit laws that inevitably led to racial discrimination in

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