Historical Racial Discrimination, Essay Example

Paleontological scholars comment on how people are often defined by their outer visual concept, which many times have been misdirecting or typically an imperative account of a person’s makeup. Racism is eminent both in the institutional forms and personal prejudices; those ill beliefs significantly contributed to declining of the city of Baltimore, leading to abandonment and fragmentation, safety and health threats, and wage loss that has negatively impacted several generations (Bergmann 17). This paper describes two discriminatory policies and practices and how they have shaped the landscape of Detroit. Additionally, the paper explores specific examples by explaining how the legacy of these policies has concretely affected the everyday lives of Bergmann’s subjects.

One of the discriminatory practices in the landscape of Detroit was employment discrimination. Among the most severe as well as harmful, unfair practices, including those that were aimed at strengthening and maintaining differential access to wealth. In the industrial North, employment was regarded as a beacon to the black southerners scrambling in the collapsing agricultural economy during the late and early 19th and 20th centuries, respectively. That need was encouraged by the reduced level of immigration at the time of world war one as well as world war two. Harsh employment and limited job discrimination that was subjected to migrants of the black origin upon their arrival in Detroit were among the most significant factors hindering their accomplishment of socioeconomic equality with their white colleagues (Bergmann 23). Those differences, when mixed with other discriminatory policies and practices that had been inherited from several generations, rendered African Americans with insufficient agencies to dictate upon the physical and political environments of their cities, and these triggered severe capital constraints at the time of postwar suburbanization.

Baltimore and downtown Detroit with the remnant of their citizens, were left being bankrupt a practice that led to an adverse cycle of poverty in the metropolitan areas that would critically underfund and hence cripple resource delivery in the municipal schools to emergency services. The position of employment in heavy industries, which historically had been occupied immigrants who had not participated in founding those industries such as defense manufacturing, encountered drastic immigration policies and soaring demands for production in world war two. The social landscape found in the south was treacherous since Jim Crow laws approved racial discrimination and supported a dangerous atmosphere for African Americans who highly anticipated to exercise their full rights as citizens of the land (Bergmann 26). With the rising in societal pressure emerged a growth in lynching, which disproportionately claimed African American victims. Consequentially, African Americans migrated to the northern cities because of the practices of employment discrimination.

Given the fact that Detroit was an ideal environment due to its being home to many automobile industries, people of color were severely discriminated in domestic manufacturing sectors. Moreover, the busy port of Baltimore, as well as the thriving steel company, waved job seekers. The unionized powerhouse of the city’s Bethlehem steel increased wages, sick leave, vacation, and health benefits for the whites (Bergmann 30). Due to employment discrimination in Detroit and Baltimore cities, the African American civil litigators began an evolution of employment discrimination movement. The movement was aimed at voicing the plea for a change in the doctrine for social conditions.

The other discriminatory policy that brought a different shape in the landscape of Detroit was the housing discrimination policy. The advanced economic status of African American immigrants that were employed, despite being marginal, could not afford the necessary conveniences of American life in the urban cities. Some African Americans were living in Baltimore and Detroit. Despite numerous challenges, some African Americans living in Baltimore and Detroit accumulated considerable stature and wealth. Multiplying or securing such wealth, however, became hard because whites controlled how and where African American families could empower their earnings. What had started as restrictive neighborhood covenants was transformed into the discouragement of selling houses to African Americans. As a result, the constraints were full-fledged as policies upon the increased arrival of immigrants. While black populations increased, they were denied the right to venture to real estate in equal measures as their white counterparts in both cities of Baltimore and Detroit. Overcrowding, with its encompassing challenges, affected the inner-city tracts in the poorest and oldest sections of Detroit and Baltimore (Bergmann 44). Those looking for property and trying with all efforts to get themselves out of the slums encountered an endless string of obstacles ranging from arrogant real estate agents to being discriminated by banking institutions.

Additionally, African Americans were compelled to pay massive amounts of money for dilapidated residences. During that time, one’s residential status determined the possibility of getting employment, public transportation, education, safety services, health, political leverage, and wealth. So, the African Americans were entirely blocked from accessing such resources with fear that they will gain parity with their white counterparts.

The civil rights housing policy was enacted in 1960. During this time, the whites were fleeing from urban areas to and relocating to their newly developed capital in the suburbs, where African Americans began to be excluded again. Consequentially, both municipalities in Detroit and Baltimore met an endless string of challenges related to overcrowding with people with disproportion needs and disproportionally minimal resources. Together with the struggling infrastructure due to deindustrialization and reduced backup from the federal government of the United States of America, this led to the day of the cities in postwar. New neighborhoods increasingly became restrictive about their residents. Many blacks who were wealth professionals attempted to purchase homes in deteriorating areas dominated by whites.as a result, the white neighborhoods created a protection association to bar blacks from buying homes in certain avenues to curb further geographical mobility of African Americans (Bergmann 38).

In the subsequent months, there was increased fear for sensationalization and mongering that changed the neighborhood scandals into a racial profiling-based city. Famous publications in the streets began to run headlines that warned “encroachment by negros,” followed by unusual huge spreads that numerated the endangered neighborhood name by name. According to the protection association policy, the African American people were not permitted to encroach in some of the most magnificent real estates in the two cities as this would coax the whites to vacate their best residences. As a result of these sentiments, actions began when politicians played upon popularization leading to the beginning of segregation laws. The housing discrimination policy led to the beginning of the struggle for housing quality in the landscape of Detroit. National polices were enacted to safeguard the interests of African Americans among them, including the fifth, thirteenth, and fourteenth amendments.

Bergman’s subjects that are covered in the film “Race: The Power of an Illusion” and the book “Getting Ghost: Two Young Lives and the Struggle for the Soul of an American City” include the existential issues of contemporary segregation. The policies of employment and housing discrimination have significantly impacted Bergman’s subjects in everyday lives since several policy enforcements have taken place to ensure equality in the U.S.  For example, the legacy of these discriminatory policies has led to the implementation of mechanisms to eradicate racial profiling and discrimination. Additionally, the economic, geographical, and cultural isolation of African Americans has been curbed. In the mid-twentieth century, the Baltimore and Detroit populations encountered significant whit flights, and as a result, the residents were only left with little wealth that they had amassed. Depopulation challenges combined with problems of industrialization, wage depression, and job loss, for example- eradicated the hope of African Americans to improve their lives (Bergmann 36). However, going by the subjects of Bergman, such cases have been addressed daily through movements, and they no longer exist in massive numbers as they were initially.

In summation, the African Americans experienced massive segregation and oppression at postwar. Racial profiling was high in Detroit and Baltimore in economic, social, and political fields. Whites benefited is much from discriminatory practices and policies that ended limiting African Americans’ housing and employment opportunities. Resource hoarding was a common practice whereby the whites took advantage of race dominance and residence to hoard both economic and political resources such as education, jobs, and public services from the impoverished African Americans. The disparities that this power and wealth cultivated between the whites and the blacks led to a different living environment of the two races in urban areas. Within the narrative of racism, the substandard residential regions and lack of employment were defined as a reflection, poor skills, and character instead of many years of discrimination (Bergmann 40). However, the subjects of Luke Bergman have helped society in advocating for equal treatment in the.U.S.

Work Cited

Bergmann, Luke. Getting Ghost: Two Young Lives and the Struggle for the Soul of an American City. Ann Arbor, Mich: University of Michigan Press, 2010. Print. 23(5)1-315