Week 2 Post 2

 Week 2 post 2

Formal Synthesis

    The development of public housing in the U.S. was a tool used by the federal government to uphold segregation post World War II. This was explored through a few different cities, but had a heavy focused on Detroit, Chicago, and again, San Fransisco. The first public housing that was not created for defense purposes was created during the Great Depression with the signing of the new deal. New public housing was originally only open to white tenants, while black people in need had to continue living in temporary housing that was only meant to exist during wartime. As the years continued in the 1950s and 60s, the government realized there was an increasingly larger demand for public housing for African Americans, and many cities began building segregated projects for black people, however majority were still reserved for whites only. Many cities, including Detroit, Chicago, and San Fransisco could not built black and white projects right next to each other because of the tremendous backlash they recieved trying to place black people in a predominately white area. Public housing was strictly segregated even when white people became a small minority of people living in projects. White public housing became underpopulated with lots of vacancies but did not allow African American tenants who were desperate for housing. 

    Although segregation of public housing was de jure, since the government decided that they were going to segregate public housing, it cannot be denied that de facto segregation was a factor in the continued segregation of cities as a whole. De facto segregation came in the form of protests of integrated projects, and black projects in neighborhoods with white private housing. But at the end of the day, de jure segregation was the driving factor of public housing segregation. The federal government case push blame to local and state governments all they want, or to the people protesting integration, but every administration up through the 1980s continued to look past the seperate but equal clause of the fourteenth amendment and allow for loopholes for cities to continue to treat African Americans unfairly in public housing, with poor facilities, inconvienent locations, and overcrowded, small apartments. 

Comments

  1. Ms. DunleyApril 11, 2023 at 1:15 PM

    What role do you think racism played in public housing developments in Des Moines?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sofia ReamMay 15, 2023 at 10:54 AM

      I'm still doing research on this, Des Moines however is not as extreme of an example due to our small population. Because we have less people than a major city like Detroit or Chicago, we need less public housing, so we had less strict racial barriers in public housing.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 6 Post 2

 Week 6 Post 2- Formal Synthesis  Blockbusting was an epidemic of real estate agents manipulating the market to make money while causing black people to be framed as the cause of housing values depreciating. The FHA claimed that black people moving into neighborhoods causes the value of homes in that neighborhood to go down. The FHA had no evidence to back up this claim, in fact, black families could sometimes raise property values since middle-class black families were charged more for homes in neighborhoods with middle-class white families than the white families were. The chapter explains blockbusting, a process in which realtors tried to scare white families into selling their houses by making it seem like their neighborhood was in danger of integrating. They did this by hiring black women to push baby carriages around, hiring black men to blast music from their cars and drive in the neighborhood, and hiring black families to go with real estate agents when they were showi...
Read more

Week 7 Post 1

Image
 Week 7 Post 1- Notes  Chapter Name- IRS Support and Compliant Regulators The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments were written specifically to protect black people from constitutional rights being violated  De jure segregation is committed when state real estate commissions publish codes mandating discrimination  We cannot blame church’s and universities as part of the state, but we can acknowledge that we have the right to expect that if these private institutions promoted segregation they would not get tax exceptions  “The IRS has always had an obligation to withhold tax favoritism from discriminatory organizations, but it almost never acted to do so” IRS regulations allow for charity deductions for organizations that “eliminate prejudice and discrimination” and “defend human and civil rights” the irs still granted tax exceptions to private whites only school until 16 years after brown v board  The IRS denied a tax exception to bob Jones in 1...
Read more

Week 8 Post 2

 Week 8 Post 2- Formal Synthesis     There were several strategies used by various U.S. cities to segregate neighborhoods while avoiding explicit anti-segregation legislation. There are many examples of strategies used by various U.S cities to continue to segregate their neighborhoods while evading anti-segregation legislation. The chapter began with a continuation of a story that began the book, of black Ford plant workers in northern California and their struggle to find fair housing. The suburb of Milpitas had been constructed for white Ford workers, but of course, being sponsored by the FHA, was whites only. An up-and-coming businesses man decided he wanted to create an integrated community in the Santa Clara County for people of color working at the Ford plant. When board members discovered this, the developer was met with incredible amounts of backlash, and had to fight every loophole city officials jumped through to try and prevent his development from being built....
Read more