City and Community article encourages new thinking on African American residential patterns before the Civil Rights Era
September 29, 2010 at 6:28 pm | Posted in cities, geography, housing, neighborhoods, race, what to read | Leave a commentIn the newly published article, “African American Locational Attainment Before the Civil Rights Era,” (City & Community, volume 9, September 2010), Lance Freeman challenges conventional wisdom that prior to the Civil Rights era, blacks of all classes lived side-by-side due to intense discrimination. According to this view, individual socioeconomic status did not translate into improved locational outcomes. By analyzing individual-level data from the 1910-1950 Public Use Microdata Samples, Freeman reveals how individual-level socioeconomic status translated into neighborhood-level outcomes for blacks. Among blacks, individual-level socioeconomic status played no role in determining residential proximity to whites. However, individual-level socioeconomic status for blacks was an important determinant of other neighborhood outcomes. His ground-breaking research suggests that upper-stratum blacks did indeed live in neighborhoods set apart from poorer blacks.
More information about this article available at:
A new frontier in the analysis of urban nightlife establishments
July 9, 2010 at 2:57 pm | Posted in amenities, cities, consumption, culture, geography, race, reading list, social capital, what to read | 1 Comment
In “The Nightly Round: Space, Social Capital, and Urban Black Nightlife,” sociologist Marcus Hunter uses participant observation and semistructured interviews to consider the ways in which nightlife is used to mitigate the effects of social and spatial isolation, complementing the accomplishment of the daily round. Through an analysis of the nightly round—a process encompassing the social interactions, behaviors, and actions involved in going to, being in, and leaving the club—Hunter demonstrates that understanding the ways in which urban blacks use space in the nightclub to mediate racial segregation, sexual segregation, and limited social capital expands our current understanding of the spatial mobility of urban blacks as well as the important role of extra-neighborhood spaces in such processes. Further, the article highlights the ways that urban blacks use space in the nightclub to leverage socioeconomic opportunities and enhance social networks. While Hunter found that black heterosexual and lesbian and gay patrons used space in similar ways, black lesbians and gays were more likely to use the club as a space to develop ties of social support. The article can be found in the June 2010 issue of City and Community (volume 9, number 2).
State of Metro America report finds dramatic transformations in U.S. cities
May 9, 2010 at 8:39 pm | Posted in data, economic development, geography, neighborhoods, race, what to read | Leave a comment
The report, by the Brookings Institution, argues that a decade of transformation and turmoil has resulted in “five new realities”: the rapid growth and outward expansion of metropolitan areas; a dramatic diversification of the nation’s ethnic composition; the sharp growth of the 55-64 year-old population; a highly uneven increase in educational attainment; and a continuing rise in income inequality. Bruce Katz and Judith Rodin discuss some of the implications of these trends.
New book examines the historical mechanisms behind residential exploitation
February 24, 2010 at 3:31 pm | Posted in housing, neighborhoods, new books, race, reading list, what to read | Leave a comment
Rutgers University History Professor Beryl Satter, highlights the financial mechanisms of residential segregation in her new book, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America. The daughter of Mark Satter, a Chicago lawyer who uncovered redlining tactics in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Satter highlights the history that is buried in the minds of so many Chicago families, especially hers. Placing the story of a young African American couple, Albert and Sallie Bolton, at the center of the book, Satter provides personal examples of the hardship endured by African Americans during the Great Migration. The book goes into depth about contract selling, the practice in which landlords sold African Americans overpriced homes, kept the titles until black homeowners paid them off, and charged excessive interest rates to insure they never could. Contract selling cost thousands of migrating blacks their livelihoods and solidified many of the economic disparities in housing and access to credit that social scientists are working to understand today.
New edition of “Human Services as Complex Organizations” released
December 18, 2009 at 4:39 pm | Posted in amenities, job centers, new books, non-profits, poverty, race, social service agencies, welfare offices, what to read | Leave a comment
Sociologist and social welfare scholar Yeheskel Hasenfeld has recently published a new edition of his seminal volume, Human Services as Complex Organizations. This comprehensive and state-of-the-art collection on human service organizations weaves the latest theoretical and empirical studies in macro theory with contemporary examples from hospitals, schools, social service organizations, mental health centers, and public welfare agencies. Blending theory with application, this outstanding anthology highlights the moral choices and accomplishments made by human service organizations. University of Michigan Professor Emerius Mayer Zald writes, “Hasenfeld has done it again. An excellent collection of essays on many of the most important trends and issues involving human service organizations.” The volume features essays from urbanorgs.org members Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Evelyn Brodkin, Stephen R. Smith, Jodi Sandfort and many others.
Breast cancer as an ethnic variable
October 28, 2009 at 4:27 pm | Posted in breast cancer, health, neighborhoods, race | Leave a comment
Over time, the number of women dying from breast cancer has decreased. While there is no cure, early detection, mammography, and treatment have made breast cancer survivable. A diagnosis is no longer a death sentence—though that edict may not ring true for all.
Although breast cancer prevalence is higher in Chicago’s White female population, mortality rates of Black women are significantly higher. In light of research on the topic in 2005, WBEZ’s Gabriel Spitzer spoke to survivors and surgeons, experts and advocates, to bring us the series, Twice as Deadly: Chicago’s Race Gap in Breast Cancer Survival.
While some cite genetic predisposition, Steven Whitman’s (Sinai Urban Health Institute) research links the disease to Chicago’s social fabric. Whitman’s research argues that Black women have less access to screening and treatment, the very things that make breast cancer beatable.
African American women seek mammograms at lower rates and are diagnosed in later stages, significantly decreasing their chances for survival. Additionally, facilities providing mammograms in largely-Black neighborhoods are rare. Those in existence are expensive, and their machines are often old or broken.
It’s a domino effect of barriers:
Black women die from breast cancer at high rates…
Because they don’t catch their cancer in the early stages…
Because they don’t get mammograms…
Because they can’t afford the costs of the procedure or transportation to facilities offering free services is inconvenient…
Because they have low incomes.
We are aware how variable economic, social, and geographical barriers impact health, but access and quality should not be rogue variables.
An institutional problem in Boston area police departments?
July 31, 2009 at 10:35 am | Posted in police, prison system, race | Leave a commentJust as the controversy over the arrest of black scholar Herny L. Gates at his Cambridge home by a white police officer appeared to be nearing an end, a Boston police officer has written a letter to the Boston Globe comparing Gates (multiple times) to a “jungle monkey”: “If I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance. “ Officer Justin Barrett has been suspended; he insists he is not a racist. (Barrett’s lawyer explains that his client’s comparison would have been “much less offensive, if [his client had] used a different species of animal.” [!]) Mayor Menino wants him fired. Watch the NECN report, via boston.com. Is this a free speech issue? Is it evidence of an institutional problem in Boston area police departments? As the Boston Globe reports, detective Larry Ellison, president of the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers, points to multiple incidents, including that of a white officer who posted an article, “Slavery: Best Thing that Ever Happened to Blacks.” For more on police department culture, see the blog of sociologist and police officer Peter Moskos .
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