Summary Of Black Suburbanization

The excerpts from William Julius Wilson’s “When Work Disappears: New Implications for Race and Urban Poverty in the Global Economy” and Kimberly S. Johnson’s “‘Black’ Suburbanization: American Dream or the New Banlieue” offer varying perspectives on the implications of race vis-à-vis economic status, especially as it pertains to the pursuit of employment and the assurance of fiscal security. Indeed, both contend that a lack of financial security is inimical towards the amelioration of poverty and other strife. However, Wilson addresses cultural racism and the self-imposed diffidence in employment applicants resulting from race whereas Johnson diverges and confronts the emergence of suburban racialized housing. Indeed, Wilson first …show more content…
Further, consider the disposition of the nation as a whole on the outlook for their children: “Many believed that for all their hard work, their children’s lives will be worse than theirs.” As a corollary of this, Wilson seems to suggest that the reiteration of these ideals is in fact a perpetuation of the heretofore persistent socioeconomic condition. Johnson similarly examines the housing situation as it relates to those neighborhoods with a majority African-American population, focusing especially on the idea that the supplanting of African-Americans by voluntary measures may decrease their ability to effectuate their interests and rights. Indeed, Johnson suggests that “the political fragmentation of the suburbs as well as the fiscal straitjacket of suburban economies may place blacks in a far worse political and fiscal position than they experienced before.” Attributing this fragmentation to a community that has borne “the mark of this racialized lending pattern,” Johnson argues that the suburbanization of the African-American community is engendering the continued repression of the political and social ambitions …show more content…
Indeed, Wilson suggests that the perpetuation of a culture commensurate with an informal economy ultimately engenders a lack of requisite skill amongst the aforementioned population that inhibits their acquisition of lucrative positions. Conversely, Johnson argues that both the voluntary and forced relocation of African-Americans to suburban settings does not resolve the problem; rather, it merely conserves the existing problems in a transplanted location. In both cases, the maintenance of an existing system of discrimination and racial prejudices serves only to further the preexisting system and offers little hope for a marginal amelioration of