Is segregation today the same as segregation in the 1950s and 1960s? Certainly not. Although de jure segregation is not alive today, de facto segregation clearly exists. By de jure, it is meant that even though schools and transportation are not legally segregated, there seems to be a pattern of subconscious segregation in the human mind. In a recent observation at the Georgia Institute of Technology, it is evident and common to find a group of friends that all share the same race or ethnicity, i.e. Koreans spend time with Koreans, Hispanics carry conversations with other Hispanics, and African Americans walk with other African Americans. Nevertheless, it is not rare to find a group where each member has a different background. This introduces us to a larger scale of segregation, which consists of transportation and housing patterns. Public transportation services must expand to the suburbs in order to help disrupt some of these patterns and, in this way, create more united communities. Otherwise, the communities could drastically diverge to the point where segregation seems present again.
On December 1, 1955 an African American lady named Rosa Parks refused to give her seat to a white American man. This event sparked great debate between the African American community and the white American community. At this time, public transportation was segregated by “white people” and “colored people” busses and trains. The African American community fought firmly for desegregation, but the political branch of the state created an even bigger gap than before when President Eisenhower signed a project to build a highway interstate system. Not only did they build this system by destroying the homes where many African Americans lived, but it limited transportation by car to only the middle- and high-class American community. According to the documentary “Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race and Inequality” only seven per cent of African Americans owned a car, while twenty-four percent of white Americans owned their own vehicle. Although expansion of public transit is needed, it must not come with such harsh and horrendous consequences. In fact, it is not only necessary that the public transportation system expand within the city, but it is crucial for it to expand out towards the suburbs to increase accessibility to many of the communities that are not able to easily commute to a job in the city.
This leads us to housing patterns. The term housing patterns is referring to the communities of people with the same race living in the same area of town or in a certain location of a city. The lack of public transportation in this towns and cities are making it nearly economically impossible for minorities to reach their destination. It is a fact that African American and Hispanic minorities earn a lower income than white Americans. Also, with the rising prices of housing in the city, these minorities are pushed to the suburbs, where they try to live as close to the transit stations as possible; thus, separating them from the American culture and communities. Such an example, which is also used on the documentary mentioned above, is MARTA, which only travels in two directions in the city of Atlanta. The association of African Americans with MARTA is becoming stronger since these communities are the ones facing more trouble and more need for a public transportation system. Of course, these claims are based on statistics and a more general view instead of concentrating on the small percentage of high-income African Americans.
In conclusion, an expanded transportation system will diminish the gap between the African American and white American communities, as well as the income levels within each race. If the transportation system continues as is, these cultures will keep isolating themselves to the point where the issue of segregation emerges again. Even though America does not hold any laws supporting segregation, de facto segregation is still flourishing as a consequence of the contracted, or minimized, public transportation system.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Yuen, Laura, and Casey Miner. Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race and Inequality. Prod. Andrea Bernstein and Nancy Solomon. Transportation Nation. WNYC, New York, New York. Radio.
Desegregating Public Schools. U.S. Postal Service, Celebrate the Century: Search the Web for U.S. History of the 1950s. Education World, 15 Nov. 1999. Web. 13 Sept. 2011. http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson148. shtml.
Lorena, I think that you make a great point that though segregation is definitely not the same as it was in the 1950s and 1960s, it is still prevalent today. Some segregation is by choice, like on Georgia Tech's campus and some of it is clearly not, like between the white American's, who can afford their own transportation, and other races, who have to rely on public transportation. One of the most ridiculous problems we have is that the people who need to ride public transportation don't have access to it, but those who don't need it, don't want it around. We as Americans need to let the segregated past fall away and let a new America emerge where more people have equal opportunities to things as simple as public transportation.
ReplyDeleteAn interesting point was made by both of you. I think its interesting that society still sees evidence of segregation even after so many years. And that the indirect segregation that happens mostly in public transportation and housing is related to social mobility.
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