Housing Segregation Research Articles

Building a healthy generation together: parents’ experiences and perceived meanings of a family-based program delivered in ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Sweden

Introduction and aimEthnically diverse neighborhoods encounter pronounced inequalities, including housing segregation and limited access to safe outdoor spaces. Residents of these neighborhoods face challenges related to physical inactivity, including sedentary lifestyles and obesity in adults and children. One approach to tackling health inequalities is through family-based programs tailored specifically to these neighborhoods. This study aimed to investigate parents’ experiences and perceptions of the family-based Open Activities, a cost-free and drop-in program offered in ethnically diverse and low socioeconomic neighborhoods in Sweden.MethodsResearchers’ engagement in 15 sessions of the Open Activities family-based program during the spring of 2022, and individual interviews with 12 participants were held. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis.ResultsThe analysis resulted in three main themes and seven sub-themes representing different aspects of the program’s meaning to the participants as parents, their families, and communities. The main themes describe how parents feel valued by the program, which actively welcomes and accommodates families, regardless of cultural differences within these neighborhoods. The themes also show how cultural norms perceived as barriers to participation in physical activity can be overcome, especially by mothers who express a desire to break these norms and support girls’ physical activity. Additionally, the themes highlight the importance of parents fostering safety in the area and creating a positive social network for their children to help them resist criminal gang-related influences.ConclusionsThe program’s activities allowed parents to connect with their children and other families in their community, and (re)discover physical activity by promoting a sense of community and safety. Implications for practice include developing culturally sensitive activities that are accessible to and take place in public spaces for ethnically diverse groups, including health coordinators that can facilitate communication between groups. To enhance the impact of this program, it is recommended that the public sector support the creation of cost-free and drop-in activities for families who are difficult to reach in order to increase their participation in physical activity, outreach, and safety initiatives.

Legacy effects of housing segregation on urban mammal communities in Washington, D.C., USA

Racist public policies in the US, like redlining, segregated many communities of color to resource poor and impoverished areas, and codified how resources were distributed to communities based on race. Redlining, a historic discriminatory housing policy used to value city neighborhoods by race has codified segregation in cities today. Research has shown how the practice of redlining has shaped the economic and social fabric of modern U.S. cities, but only recently have researchers explored how these discriminatory policies have influenced the ecology in cities. Here, we used camera trap data collected in the Washington, D.C. region to assess if historic redlining impacts medium-sized mammal diversity in present day. We found no significant difference in species richness or community composition among historic neighborhood classifications. We did find that urbanization alone had a significant negative correlation with the persistence of raccoon and occupancy of Virginia opossum, but these variables did not vary significantly between housing classifications for any species. Our study adds to a growing body of knowledge on how historic land use decisions affect biodiversity in cities, allowing managers to better understand where conservation and habitat improvements should be made to reduce nature inequalities.

Shelter from the storm: The growing threats from climate change to housing in the United States

AbstractClimate change and its related impacts are fast becoming the dominant force in the housing market. The fundamental role that housing plays in people's lives makes these effects particularly pernicious, often impacting employment, school attendance, undermining physical and mental health, disrupting social networks, and contributing to food insecurity. The complexity of addressing these issues is compounded by the cyclical and reciprocal relationships among these factors, with housing inequalities frequently lying at the core and climate change impacts percolating throughout. I introduce the framework of acute, secondary, and pre‐emptive/reactive impacts to help understand these mechanisms. To understand and contextualize these connections, I provide a brief overview racial segregation in the United States and related inequalities that place some individuals, groups, and communities at greater risk. Other key sources of housing instability in the United States that are often closely related to housing segregation include lack of affordable housing, growing income inequality, housing discrimination, evictions, and foreclosures, all of which contribute to unequal housing outcomes. These factors are explored using the temporal framework to discuss their connection to climate change, which is in and of itself a major force of housing instability.

Towards design reparations: remedying urban morphologies through policy reform in Harlem, New York

This article critically examines the paradox of housing as a symbol of societal progress in the United States, juxtaposed against the historical legacy of housing segregation, regulatory policy and market biases. It underscores the far-reaching consequences of such policies, which have not only exacerbated the current national housing crisis and widened the racial wealth gap, but also entrenched social inequalities, disproportionately affecting marginalised and minority communities. The article assesses the role of housing market segregation, slum clearance, urban renewal and contemporary zoning regulations and architecture in steering urban development practices, and how they have inadvertently and, in some cases intentionally, hindered equitable spatial opportunities, particularly in housing. Utilising a case study centred on Harlem, New York, this article explores the concept of spatial reparations as a catalyst for policy reform and emergent spatial morphologies that promote redressing both past and current injustices. It emphasises the potential of design-based interventions that materialise from the use of policy as a crucial medium of exploration, in this case for future models of housing-supply innovation. These explorations aim to stimulate meaningful policy and design debates about just-city making, while concurrently serving as a strategic countermeasure to the detrimental consequences of advancing gentrification and related market forces. This research offers a transformative examination of urban housing in the United States and Harlem, challenging traditional perspectives and practices, and advocating for more equitable spatial distribution and opportunities.

Rhythm Is a Marker of Ethnicity in Modern Hebrew: Evidence from a Perception Study and Actors' Ethnicized Portrayals.

In Modern Hebrew, only three segmental markers are typically acknowledged as ethnically conditioned, and usage of these markers has significantly decreased in second and third generation speakers. Yet the sociolinguistic situation of diverging language backgrounds of first generation speakers, compounded with ethnic segregation in housing and the workforce, seems like a fertile ground for social identification from speech. We report two studies on prosodic variation in Modern Hebrew: a perception study and a "matched-pairs" corpus study. The results of the first illustrate that even in the absence of the known segmental markers, ethnicity perception of young native speakers may still diverge between two major ethnic identities, Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) and Ashkenazi (European). The main acoustic correlate was rhythm, measured as the proportional duration of vowels in the utterance. In the second study, actors' speech rhythm was found to be modulated by their portrayed ethnic identity in the same direction, suggesting that this variable is socially salient-and for some speakers, controllable-enough to be involved in style shifting. This study joins a growing body of work illustrating that relatively mild rhythmic variation can contribute to social identification, and in the current case, also for ethnicity portrayal.

COVID-19, Housing, and Environmental Injustice

In the United States, there has been a long history of environmental injustice that disproportionately affects racial and ethnic minorities and low-income communities due to racially targeted policies and widespread discrimination. Environmental racism can be revealed in housing discrimination that perpetuates inequities in exposure to environmental pollutants. Biased credit and mortgaging practices such as redlining have led to housing segregation of racial and ethnic minorities in the USA, permitting policymakers to diminish and disinvest in these communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified housing instability for families of color, including Black and Hispanic/Latinx communities, putting them at increased risk for COVID-19 exposure. There is a need to investigate how environmental injustice intensifies the COVID-19 pandemic, illuminates racial and ethnic inequities in exposure to environmental contaminants, and fuels disparities in COVID-19 outcomes. The aims of this paper are to analyze and discuss environmental injustice and racial and ethnic disparities related to COVID-19 and housing. We also propose recommendations to address this pervasive issue.

Residence in segregated settlements (colonies) rather than Roma identity increases the risk of unfavourable mental health in Hungarian adults.

Roma are the largest and most disadvantaged minority in Europe, but there is few research on how mental health and social support of Roma people living in segregated settlements compares to the majority population. Our aim was to compare the subjective well-being, life satisfaction, mental status, and social support of representative samples of adults living in segregated settlements (colonies) and identifying as Roma with those of the general population in Hungary. A cross-sectional study was conducted with random samples of 417 individuals from the general Hungarian adult population (55.6% female, mean age = 43.89 ± 12.61 years) and 394 adults living in segregated settlements (colonies) (73.9% female, mean age = 42.37 ± 12.39 years). Demographic questions were used as well as the WHO Well-Being Index (WBI-5), the single item Life Satisfaction Scale, the 12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), and the Oslo Social Support Scale (OSSS-3). Residents of colonies reported significantly lower levels of subjective well-being and life satisfaction than the general population. The proportion of individuals at high risk for mental morbidity was more than twice as high among colony dwellers (16.4%) as in non-colony dwellers (7.6%). Similar unfavorable differences were seen at the expense of self-identified Roma compared to self-identified Hungarians but no difference was found in terms of social support either by type of residence or ethnicity. 32.2% of colony-dwellers self-identified themselves as Hungarian. Mental health assessed by principal component was directly determined by settlement type of permanent residence, age, educational attainment, employment, financial status, and social support but not ethnic identity. The study based on representative data shows that residents of segregated settlements are in worse mental health than those not living in colonies; that housing segregation is not limited to Roma people, and that housing conditions and financial status are major social determinants of mental health for which data must be collected to avoid using self-reported Roma identity as a proxy measure of socioeconomic deprivation.

Beyond Isabel Archer's Door: The Underground Railroad and the Condemned Plot for Freedom

Abstract This article radically reframes Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady in relation to the Underground Railroad, the transatlantic slave trade, US slavery, and racial housing segregation. Focusing on the house in Albany, New York, where Isabel Archer stays in the 1850s, it asserts that Isabel's pursuit of freedom is grounded in her 1850s childhood when the Underground Railroad was particularly active in Albany. It examines the Albany home within the historical context of the 1870s and 1880s, when, respectively, Isabel returns to Albany and The Portrait of a Lady was first published. Taking into account the Supreme Court's 1883 Civil Rights Cases, which facilitated housing discrimination against Black Americans, this article argues that the Albany home, whose door remains bolted to the “vulgar street,” protects James's American lady from a vulgarity associated then with African Americans. By examining a critically overlooked function of the Albany house—its spatial representation of the novel's plot—this article shows how narratives of Black people escaping slavery along with late nineteenth-century definitions of vulgarity centrally define Isabel's pursuit of freedom. Analyzing the plot's architecture, the article reveals how James strategically alludes to two novels about racism—overtly to George Eliot's Daniel Deronda and covertly to Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin—to construct his highly influential narrative about a white woman's transatlantic journey toward freedom.

The Impact of the Anti-Poverty Relocation and Settlement Program on Farmers’ Livelihood: Perspective of Livelihood Space

To better promote the new anti-poverty strategy and serve as a reference for poverty alleviation in other developing countries and regions, this paper discussed the impact of the anti-poverty relocation and settlement program (ARSP) on the livelihood of farmers from the perspective of livelihood space. Existing research focuses on quantitative research on the relationship between relocation and livelihood, but lacks a perspective that combines livelihood and space. In this study, Nanshan village was selected as the research area, using the semi-structured interview and the semi-participatory observation methods to obtain the original materials, and the snowball sampling method was used to determine the interviewees. This study found that the ARSP has a more significant effect on the expansion of production space of young people and farmers with high household savings; meanwhile, by changing the traditional folk house layout, the non-agricultural resettlement mode also forces farmers to adapt to urbanized living, which is a slow process. Affected by factors such as housing segregation and cultural elements, farmers’ social interactions show the characteristics of self-isolation in the short term. However, the evidence shows that this trend is declining; after the relocation, the village was incorporated into the community jurisdiction. Similar to urban–rural interfaces, with the transformation from rural to urban, it is difficult for the normalizing management mode and service supply capacity of communities to meet the growing demand for urbanized services of farmers. The clarification of the above impact provides a basis for future relocation community governance and policies.

A scoping review of institutional policies and recommendations for trans inpatient mental health care.

INTRODUCTION: Access to culturally sensitive care is critical for addressing known mental health disparities among trans-and gender-non-conforming (TGNC) individuals. Although there has been a proliferation of TGNC healthcare guidelines from accrediting bodies, policies have failed to address the needs of TGNC patients in inpatient psychiatric settings. To identify unaddressed needs in policies and policy recommendations for the care of TGNC patients to inform recommendations for change. A scoping review protocol was developed following the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses 850 articles were reduced to seven relevant articles with six themes identified via thematic analysis. Six themes were identified: lack of consistency in preferred and pronoun use, lack of communication among providers, lack of training in TGNC healthcare, personal bias, lack of formal policies, and housing segregation by sex rather than gender. The creation of new guidelines or bolstering of existing guidelines to specifically address identified themes and gaps may improve the well-being and treatment outcomes of TGNC individuals in inpatient psychiatric settings. To provide a foundation for future studies to integrate these identified gaps and inform the future development of comprehensive formal policies that generalize TGNC care in inpatient settings.

AN ANALYSIS OF HOMELESSNESS IN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: POLICY IMPLICATIONS

This study analyzed the perceived causes of homelessness in United States of America, characteristics of homelessness in United States of America by family types, percentage of people experiencing homelessness by community setting to assist policymakers to develop programs and policy frameworks to address homeless issues across the country (USA). Homelessness affects the entire country. Homelessness is not someone else’s issue but national in scope. The issue of homelessness has a ripple effect throughout the community. It impacts the availability of healthcare resources, crime and safety, the workforce, and the use of tax dollars. Further, homelessness impacts the present as well as the future growth of the nation. Above all, the knowledge of homelessness benefits all of us to break the cycle of homelessness, one person, one family at a time. Therefore, in order to assist policymakers to effectively tackle the issue of homelessness, the study adopted a descriptive research design to analyze the policy issue of homelessness in United States of America. The data source for the study analysis came from the 2021 Census data, the 2022 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the National Alliance to END HOMELESSNESS. The study revealed that most of the homeless peoples were individuals without families and children (i.e. 70 percent), and the rest were people living in families with children. Also, the study further revealed in the homelessness dataset that males are far more likely to experience homelessness than their female counterparts. That is, out of every 10,000 males, 22 are homeless (representing a total male homeless population of 352,211), while for women and girls, that number is 13 homeless (representing a total female homeless population of 223,578). In addition, the homelessness historical data revealed that marginalized groups are more likely to be disadvantaged within housing and homelessness spheres. It also revealed that higher unemployment rates, lower incomes, less access to healthcare, and higher incarceration rates are some of the likely factors that contribute to higher rates of homelessness among people of color, and marginalized groups. Also, historically marginalized racial groups are far more likely to experience homelessness as a result of segregation and discrimination in employment and housing, among other things. The study strongly recommends that the federal government should create more programs and employment opportunities that will give equal opportunities to all. The study further recommends that by taking into consideration programs that will create more affordable houses, and to also take care of both natural shocks (i.e. hurricanes, fire outbreaks, etc.), and human shocks (i.e. domestic abuse) will go a long way to help the country minimize the homelessness rate. Keywords : Homelessness, Marginalized, Housing, Sheltered, Policymakers, Discrimination, Unsheltered, Poverty, Unemployment, Programs DOI: 10.7176/IAGS/98-05 Publication date: March 31 st 2023

Publicly housed Black mothers' experiences of structural racism in their everyday lives

AbstractObjectiveDrawing upon critical race and feminist theories, the objective of this qualitative study was to understand, through Black mothers' narratives, how structural racism operates within a public housing system located on the outskirts of Washington, D.C.BackgroundStructural racism has been identified as a root cause of racialized housing segregation, concentrated poverty, and health inequity—factors that disproportionately affect Black mother‐headed families living in public housing. Yet, more research is needed to delineate the underlying mechanisms of structural racism at play in public housing systems.MethodUsing a community‐based participatory action research (CBPAR) approach, the research team partnered with public housing residents and staff of a non‐profit organization to guide the study. From 2017 to 2019, community partners co‐developed the research protocol, recruited participants for in‐depth interviews (N = 15), and assisted with data analysis, interpretation, and local dissemination of findings.ResultsBlack mothers' narratives depicted in detail the structural manifestations of racism perpetuated in public housing systems, including: (a) systemic neglect; (b) economic oppression; (c) eviction threat; and (d) community surveillance. Findings suggest that structural racism is enacted and enforced by many dispersed agents of power, including street‐level bureaucrats (e.g., caseworkers and maintenance workers) and White and wealthier neighbors.ConclusionCritical perspectives and community‐driven research approaches can deepen understanding of how structural racism and institutional power relations operate to reproduce Black family marginalization within complex social systems like public housing. Directions for future research are discussed.

You don’t need zoning to be exclusionary: Manufactured home parks, land-use regulations and housing segregation in the Houston metropolitan area

Manufactured home parks (MHPs), businesses that are “designed, developed, operated and maintained.for the placement and occupancy of manufactured homes on a long-term basis,” are an important source of affordable housing in the United States and other countries11Law Insider, “manufactured home park” definition. https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/manufactured-home-park. The social and spatial stigma surrounding MHPs has been widely documented, and the location of these communities is a key feature of their marginalization. We examine the how land use regulations contribute to the spatial distribution and segregation of MHPs in Greater Houston, a fast-growing urban region in the southern United States. At the local-government scale, we collect land-use regulations from the 134 jurisdictions in the Houston MSA to analyze how jurisdictions shape development, expansion, or improvement of MHPs within their boundaries, and how the regulation of MHPs varies across jurisdictions. At the scale of the individual MHPs, we draw a random proportionate sample of 400 MHPs and collect data from primary and secondary sources including tax parcel records, local zoning maps, remotely sensed imagery, and a proprietary real estate dataset. We discuss four key findings. First, local governments use a variety of land-use tools, not just zoning, to exclude, limit, or condition the placement of MHPs within their respective jurisdictions. Second, we show that these land-use regulations have widely varying requirements for the (re)development of MHPs. Third, we find that a significant number of MHPs are already located in unincorporated areas and that new MHPs will be less likely to be in incorporated areas. Finally, we find that local governments often treat MHPs as something other than housing, which introduces important uncertainties about the future of MHPs.

Threatening Property: Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods

While many scholars have documented attempts at urban housing segregation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, historian Elizabeth Herbin-Triant reveals how, in North Carolina, ideologies regarding housing segregation in cities also influenced the southern countryside. White demands to control where African Americans lived grew more fevered as Black families grew in economic power. Concerned about continued loss of property and economic standing, middling whites in particular tried various methods to control and suppress Black property acquisition in urban and rural areas.Herbin-Triant starts her history by explaining how North Carolina's geography and large population of independent, yeomen farmers meant that a significant segment of white farmers embraced a vision of self-sufficiency, democratic engagement, and individualism. These small white farmers acutely felt competition for property from increasingly successful Black farmers. At the turn of the twentieth century, Black farm ownership was expanding and white land ownership was diminishing, a fact that many whites attributed to African Americans' willingness to accept “lower standards of living” (37). Migration to urban areas, too, produced racial tensions. In cities such as Winston, middling whites grew alarmed by growing numbers of Black workers seeking homes in historically white neighborhoods near employment centers. Resentment from working poor and middling whites produced violence and experiments with property segregation that took the form of restrictive covenants and, when those measures failed, racial zoning (which was soon ruled unenforceable).Clarence Poe, the young editor of Progressive Farmer, eventually the largest circulating farm journal in the Southeast, followed such urban segregation practices and the writings of South African apartheid architect Maurice Evans closely, considering how property segregation might be used to advance white small farmers' interests. Embracing populist ideals, Poe promoted yeomen self-sufficiency and the idea that white farmers should work together to benefit white farmers as a group. He sought a successful recipe for land segregation that would strengthen white farmers' economic opportunity and withstand challenges in court, and he regularly promoted the advantages of property segregation in his journal and in other venues. However, elite whites (whether urban industrial interests or rural planters) saw few advantages in property segregation: they saw no reason to hobble Black economic achievement, particularly because it did not threaten their own economic standing. They did not want to encourage migration by stifling Black success, as they depended on easy access to low-cost Black labor, and some thought individuals should be able to dispose of property as they wished. Thus, elites thwarted the property segregation efforts of middling whites in towns and the countryside.While there are already a number of scholarly works examining housing segregation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Threatening Property makes several important contributions to the subfield. Herbin-Triant shows that property segregation was an evolving conversation between urban and rural areas, and at least some white leaders saw advantages to implementing racial segregation in nonurban spaces. Furthermore, she outlines how this North Carolina story is both locally contingent and illustrative of national trends: North Carolina had a white independent, yeomen tradition that meant that farmers who owned (or had owned) small farms felt particularly threatened by and had the potential to be mobilized against Black economic success, a situation that Democratic political leaders took advantage of and that resulted in, among other things, Black disenfranchisement. At the same time, Winston reflected national engagement with racial segregation practices: it mimicked other cities in its attempts to confine Black families to neighborhoods lacking in resources or with fewer advantages. But the author is particularly successful in demonstrating how elite and middling whites experienced and responded to the “threat” of Black economic success in different ways. The elite white inclination to allow some measure of Black economic progress prevailed because elites held significantly more power. Thus, within the white community, conflicting class desires meant that some white supremacist agendas failed, even while white supremacist infrastructure (such as de facto social segregation) endured. And at least in the instances described, the failure of the middling white agenda benefited Black families who owned property or sought to, even while white racist terror continued.

Herd Racialization and the Inequalities of Immunity

Herd Racialization and the Inequalities of Immunity Neel Ahuja (bio) The COVID-19 pandemic has been the context for public health institutions, epidemiologists, and a range of social scientists to make a public case for an idea concisely stated by the American Medical Association in November 2020: "Racism is a threat to public health."1 While activists and medical historians have long noted inequalities of access and outcomes for patients as well as exploitative conditions for research subjects based on race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and disability, such a statement by the AMA reflects a shift in public discourse at an organization that has historically worked to entrench such inequalities through its advocacy against universal health care and an elitist approach to medical training.2 At the moment of this public statement on racism, the intersection of the global pandemic with public activism against police violence created conditions for a reckoning with medical and health institutions' complicity in racially unequal life outcomes, which Ruth Wilson Gilmore centers as racism's production of "group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death."3 In the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin and the summer of Black Lives Matter protests that followed, the AMA Board of Trustees and other health officials made public statements about the health consequences of racism, the consequences of Trump-era xenophobia, and the historical discrimination against Black patients and doctors.4 Such statements of the causative relation of racism to poor health outcomes were echoed by other institutional authorities. The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) clarified that not only is racism an interpersonal relation, it is a structural one, which requires addressing a full range of social determinants of health.5 The World Health Organization convened an expert panel in March 2021 to address the relationship between health inequalities in COVID-19 outcomes and "discrimination" based on race and ethnicity.6 [End Page 689] At the same time that the Black Lives Matter movement spurred some public health experts and institutions to more directly address racial difference, both media discourse and scientific research on COVID-19 publicly highlighted inequalities in viral exposure, case rates, hospitalization rates, death rates, vaccine uptake, and other indicators of vulnerability. Recognition of widespread inequalities has also led social scientists and epidemiologists to set forth interdisciplinary analyses of COVID-19 as they relate to social phenomena ranging from housing segregation to occupational health to transportation inequalities.7 Although such innovative work has moved toward producing more contextual knowledge of race, in particular localities, industries, and legal contexts related to public health, much of the national-level reporting and data suffer from problems based on data sets that flatten the complexity of racial identity and fail to capture experiences of Indigenous and multiracial individuals. Based on large data sets collected by the CDC and state health agencies, the main data on racialized differences in health outcomes in the era of COVID-19 tends toward a "four food groups" model of minoritization, highlighting vulnerabilities experienced on a mass scale by Black, Asian American, Latinx, and Indigenous groups (with the category "Hispanic" still in use for Latinx in a number of studies). Notably, the "Native American" category often gets removed from the analysis due to a small sample, repeating a larger problem that exists in social science data that reproduce the absenting of Indigenous peoples in North America.8 Data on racial disparity have often been helpful in articulating certain stark differences, such as the significantly higher case and hospitalization rates among Black and Latinx people relative to population in the early phases of the pandemic.9 Although many media reports highlighted inequality facing Black and Latinx groups, the more comprehensive and critical data sets showed from an early stage that there were also unequal outcomes for American Indians and Asian Americans affected by the virus.10 Recent published data from the CDC put American Indian risks of hospitalization rates at triple those of whites and the death rate as the highest of all racial groups in the US.11 When some data showed that Asian Americans experienced case and hospitalization rates similar to or lower than whites, breakdowns of the...

THE MANY LIVES OF CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

THE MANY LIVES OF CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

AMERICA’S RACIAL STAIN The Taint Argument and the Limits of Constitutional Law and Rhetoric

AMERICA’S RACIAL STAIN The Taint Argument and the Limits of Constitutional Law and Rhetoric

Mexican Americans with Moxie: A Transgenerational History of El Movimiento Chicano in Ventura County, California, 1945–1975

In Mexican Americans with Moxie, Frank P. Barajas eloquently makes a case that Ventura County was very much a part of the Chicana/o movement and by doing so forces a reckoning with Chicana/o movement historiography that largely omits mixed rural/urban settings. Ventura County is situated only four hours from the US–Mexico border and sixty miles northwest of Los Angeles, making it a top destination for Mexican migrants, who, he claims “also became Chicana-Chicano as they witnessed, participated in, and adapted to the cultural crosscurrents of the time” (p. 5, p.13).Barajas not only expands the regional parameters of the Chicana/o movement, he also argues that the Chicana/o movement was transgenerational and not solely made up of youth activists. He contends “that a collection of people from the Mexican American and Chicana-Chicano generations defined El Movimiento (the Chicano movement) in Ventura County” (p. 3). This transgenerational approach is what makes Mexican Americans with Moxie innovative. For Barajas, the Chicana/o movement was one that included two generations: “one born before World War II that came of age prior to the 1960s, and the other subsequently” (p. 2). He argues, and I agree, that Chicana/o movement historiography needs to move away from categorizing this politicized cohort as solely a youth movement.The book is divided into eight chapters, not including an introduction and conclusion. The first chapter sets up the political landscape of Ventura starting with the arrival of Cesar Chavez in 1958 and the establishment of the Community Service Organization (CSO) a year later (p. 14). Chapter 2 details efforts of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and CSO to end segregation in local schools as well as police brutality. This cross-racial coalition pre-dates the Chicana/o movement and sets the foundation for future efforts in the region to address racial imbalance in Ventura County. The third chapter turns to the formation of the Brown Berets of Oxnard and continues with a discussion of the CSO, Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA). Chapters 4 and 5 situate the legal struggles with the Oxnard Elementary School District to desegregate its schools and expose many of the school board members as successful in institutionalizing racism. These chapters also reveal what scholars of race and ethnicity have already confirmed—that housing segregation mirrors school segregation. For example, “Within schools, district officials created staggered attendance and playground schedules” (p. 115). Chapters 6 and 7 look at farmworker organizing efforts through the help of Chavez's UFW, highlighting the strike of Egg City, one of the nation's largest egg producers, on July 13, 1967, as well as other farm labor rights efforts. When UFWOC “led the men and women on a march through the city's streets,” students at Oxnard High School marched alongside them—demonstrating the cross-generational alliances during El Movimiento (p. 145). The final chapter, Chapter 8, follows the push by college students to bring Chicana/o studies programs to their campuses, especially at Moorpark College, and their efforts to hire Chicana/o faculty. This chapter also highlights how Chicana/o student activists worked with the Black Student Union at Ventura College to secure the Minority Student Center (pp. 176–77).For Barajas, it didn't matter much if one self-identified as Chicana/o, as was the case with César Chávez. What mattered most was the political engagement and consciousness against racist structures. Here, Barajas also emphasizes another important misjudgment of the Chicana/o community in the 1960s. The majority of Chicanas/os resided in mostly urban settings and consequently many had little to no experience working in California's agricultural industry. Yet they espoused, “WE ARE MEXICAN-AMERICANS, non-farmworkers who support Cesar Chavez . . . ” (p. 1). Chávez and the United Farm Workers union resonated with Chicana/o movement activists’ pleas for economic justice. The book demonstrates that indeed the Chicana/o movement was by all accounts and purposes a social movement that transcended generational lines (p.160).Although the book is rich in archival and oral histories, a discussion on the political significance of MAPA, Brown Berets, CSO, and others would have been helpful—mostly to hone in on how Ventura County differs or is similar to organizational chapters elsewhere. The discussion on desegregation could have also used further national context, especially because efforts to desegregate met similar resistance in other regions of the United States, more specifically, the East Coast. This conversation could have strengthened his argument and added to larger historiographical interventions.Mexican Americans with Moxie will undoubtedly be of use in Chicana/o studies, ethnic studies, social movement, history, twentieth-century race and ethnicity, and political science courses. Graduate and undergraduate students will find it an easy and enjoyable read. Barajas's book also serves as a reminder to today's young activists that they are part of a long trajectory of political activism.

Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness by Maureen H. O’Connell

Reviewed by: Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness by Maureen H. O’Connell Ki Joo Choi V Let me begin by acknowledging the significance of Maureen O’Connell’s book. It takes enormous courage to air the disquieting truth that white Catholics like her family were hardly innocent bystanders to racism but were, in actuality, its enablers. The question that I wish to raise is how we should think about the nature of that enabling. Though O’Connell’s discomfort with her family’s complicity in anti-Blackness is made clear, she never finds positive proof that their anti-Blackness was by design or intentionally malicious. This does not excuse their complicity, but it leads her to cast repeated dismay at church leaders: had only they preached a genuinely liberating ethic, and resisted assimilationist pressures, then her ancestors would have more likely inclined toward racial inclusivity. Her frustration testifies to how identities and agency are not separable from social structures. But the slippage from saying that her family is complicit to saying that their complicity is a function of the influence of the anti-Blackness of church leaders, as well as governmental policies (190), makes me wonder: Does this mean that her family—and, by extension, most white Catholics—are off the hook? Consider O’Connell’s response to anti-Blackness. She calls for structural change within and without the church. But what about at the personal level? O’Connell explicitly admits that her family directly benefited materially from the very structures that she believes— rightly—needs upending. That benefit is evidenced in the real estate success of her grandfather Bill Gallagher, which is noted as the “foundation of [her] own financial well-being” (194). Her admission affirms the extent to which the material prosperity of many Americans is attributable to anti-Blackness even if they lack clear lineage to slavery itself. That underscores why talking about reparations only in relation to slavery is limiting; it should also be tied to slavery’s afterlives (e.g., housing segregation, educational inequality, etc.) But if that is the case, then can calling for structural change be enough? The church failed on multiple fronts—this much is clear. Also clear is how this failure turned into a material boon to many white Catholics. [End Page 68] Thus, it is not difficult to see how incentives for families like O’Connell’s to demand better from the church were hardly there. This underscores how the resilience of structures depends on persons continuing to benefit from them. If so, then structural change will have to be more consequential than the “racial reconstruction” (versus “reconciliation”) that O’Connell proposes (110). Re-envisioning the church is necessary (196–197). Yet how successful can that be if a reconstruction of everyday lives is still lacking? After reading O’Connell’s book, I cannot but wonder if calling for structural change—however important— ultimately becomes the easier path. Is structural change possible so long as “affluent” neighborhoods exist, property is the basis for the good life, and families retain the wealth that was/is generated because of anti-Blackness? Can the knots of racism be undone, in other words, if there’s an unwillingness to undo them where it would really hurt, in the pocketbook? [End Page 69] Ki Joo Choi Princeton Theological Seminary Copyright © 2022 American Catholic Historical Society

Race and energy poverty: Evidence from African-American households

Even though energy poverty has been widely discussed in many countries, only a few studies attempt to understand the nexus of race and energy poverty. To fill the gap in the literature, this study analyses the effect of race on energy poverty by employing the U.S. representative household panel data with 9043 complete surveys. This research addresses possible endogeneity issues by employing the novel method proposed by Oster (2019) as a robustness check in addition to the application of logistic regressions and ordinary least squares estimates. The empirical results show that the probability of exposure to poverty is higher for African-American households. The empirical outcome also presents that health and income are significant factors through which race influences energy poverty. This study suggests that subsidy programs would be beneficial in ensuring the breakage of the link between race and energy poverty by providing preferential discounted rates and easier access to energy to specific demographics of the population. At least ending with the housing segregation of African-Americans in the USA would be a way to surpass these difficulties and decrease energy poverty. Further discussions are presented in this study.