American Apartheid

An essay for my Urban Politics class at Eastern University, composed 12/13/07.
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Though “apartheid” is an Afrikaans term usually associated with South Africa and Nelson Mandela, it has taken on new meaning in recent years. Social scientists are beginning to refer to the United States' entrenched system of institutional racism as the “American Apartheid.” This institutional racism is defined as the actions prescribed by an organization or social network of the dominant racial group that by intention have a negative impact on members of subordinate racial groups (Bullard et al.). Though systematic in nature, American Apartheid is enacted by individuals. And while the term may be relatively new, the individual decisions and actions that shaped the current condition are part of a centuries-old metanarrative of oppression. This oppression began, and is often driven, by race-based prejudice, but it is intimately tied to class as well. A dictionary definition of apartheid deems it “any system or practice that separates people according to race, caste, etc.” (Dictionary.com). Examined in the context of its more recent history, American Apartheid, not unlike South African Apartheid, has robbed millions of people of their human dignity and social voice based solely on their race or economic class.

American Apartheid spans the entire spectrum of social systems; it will be examined here in terms of its residential, economic, educational, and socio-political impacts. Almost universally, the racism discussed here is legal – not punishable by the current laws. The Residential Apartheid that is evident in most large U.S. cities today took shape in the era just before and just after World War II. Two vast movements occurred in close sequence – the Great Migration of African-Americans into northern cities from the South, and the deindustrialization of America's urban centers. These phenomena were prompted, at least in part, by two major federal acts – the National Housing Act of 1934 and the Interstate Highway Act of 1956. The National Housing Act created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), who would enable home mortgages to be issued with low down payments and long-term fixed interest rates. The FHA had its desired effect – home ownership increased by 22% - but African-Americans were completely excluded from these benefits through a process called “redlining.” As the minorities were denied access to new homes and nice neighborhoods, segregated ghettos began to form. This process was catalyzed by the Interstate Highway Act, in which the federal government subsidized 90% of the cost of building new highways, which enabled those with cars to move further and further from the city center and left those without to become increasingly “quarantined” (Fishman).

As a result, Philadelphia, Chester, Camden, and Norristown house 77% of this region's minority population, while the vast majority of the suburbs are over 90% White (Metropolitan Philadelphia Policy Center). Whereas residential segregation decreases for most racial and ethnic groups with additional education, income, and occupational status, American Apartheid has ensured that this does not hold true for African-Americans (Bullard et al.). Because for generations they were not eligible for mortgages, most African-American households have been forced to rent (Philadelphia Affordable Housing Coalition). The federal government defines housing as “affordable” that costs no more than 30% of a household's income, which means that more than one in five Philadelphians cannot afford their current housing. This is not to mention the city's homeless, for whom the government pays $67 million per year in shelter costs and other services (PAHC). It is clear that the inner city, and especially the African-American population, are in the midst of a residential crisis.

The Civil Rights Movement did prompt some legislative efforts to curb this crisis, including the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. These initiatives, however, and even their more recent revisions, have been ineffective and poorly enforced (Bullard et al.). Housing discrimination still occurs in a plethora of forms: absentee landlords, subjective lending, stereotyping about neighborhoods, discrimination in terms and conditions, refusals to deal, discriminatory advertising, falsely represented availability, and denials of real estate services. How has nothing been done to stop this blatant institutional racism? Because those with the power to change it are blind to its existence: 75% of U.S. Whites surveyed do not believe that housing discrimination even exists (Bullard et al.).

Deeply connected to the U.S.'s Residential Apartheid is its Economic Apartheid. Racial minorities and those with low incomes have been systematically prevented from participating in the “American Dream” of economic success or even stability. Industrial and other low-wage jobs have moved out of the city and even out of the country, and in their place is a rising high-skilled “knowledge sector.” Access to the knowledge sector comes only through higher education, which as the next section will demonstrate, has also been denied to non-Whites and the lower class. As a result, these apartheid victims have no stepping stone out of poverty. According to the Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board (PWIB), 45% of Philadelphia's working age adults are neither working nor looking for work, placing the city in 96^th place for labor force participation among the U.S.'s 100 largest cities. Even among those who do work, one out of three households in Philadelphia makes less than $20,000 per year (PAHC). Wages for low-skilled labor have also become less-than-livable, dropping 30% from 1970 to 1989 (Wilson). As if that weren't enough, Economic Apartheid has also left low-income residents paying higher prices for all their basic necessities:

• Car purchases: Low-income customers can pay over $500 more for the same car.
• Car loans: 50% of low-income customers pay above average, compared to only 25% of high-income customers.
• Car insurance: High-income customers pay a minimum of $400 less per year.
• Grocery prices: Bigger, cheaper stores don't exist in low-income neighborhoods.
• Cashing checks: Using check cashers instead of banks costs $450-900 in charges per year.
• Short-term loans: Predatory lenders such as payday lenders, tax preparation services that provide rapid refunds, pawnbrokers, and title lenders charge interest rates of up to 400%.
• Gas prices: Prices are higher in the city, where more low-income households are located.
• Home loans: 52% of low-income customers pay above average, compared to only 32% of high-income customers.
• Home insurance: High-income customers pay a minimum of $50-150 less every 6 months.
• Home appliances and furnishing: Low-income customers are more likely to use rent-to-own stores, which mark up items 90% above their retail prices.
• Real estate taxes: Low-income households have an error rate (difference between taxes paid and actual home value) 35% higher than the city average, while the high-income rate is 3% lower than the city average. (Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program)

These price differences can be attributed to any number of causes: real and perceived higher risks, a lack of information about markets and options, weak regulation and enforcement, and public sector control over goods and services (BIMPP). But realistically, they reflect a long-standing perception by the dominant class that poverty is a disease, contracted by laziness and cured with ambition and hard work. Until the White middle-class can perceive themselves, rather than their lower class neighbors, as historically infected, no one's plight has hope of improvement.

Another facet of the U.S. story's oppressive regime is its Educational Apartheid. Technically speaking, the segregation of public schools has been banned since the ruling in Brown v. The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in 1954. In actuality, however, academic segregation is still a ubiquitous reality in U.S. cities. High school dropout rates hover around 50%, and only 20% of Philadelphians have college degrees. The quality of education is also dismal; over 60% of adults in Philadelphia are considered low-literate (PWIB). The reasons for this are numerous, but a primary cause is inadequate resources and funding. Only four states in the country have educational funding more unequal than in Pennsylvania (MPPC). In most areas, school funding is directly linked to property taxes, so it is no wonder that rich neighborhoods have better schools. State support is also disproportionately poured into the predominantly White, middle-class suburbs rather than the struggling inner city schools. When school districts demonstrate a consistent failure to educate their students, there has been a growing trend for the state government to usurp control of urban education. Oftentimes, this means that power is taken out of the hands of the racial minority in one of the few sectors where they have been able to gain control (Hill). This top-down management of education, as history has proven, is the lifeblood of oppression. In his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire contrasts “bank education,” in which knowledge is deposited in a unilateral transaction, with “problem-posing education,” which promotes the emergence of critical consciousness through dialogue. He argues that banking education perpetuates myths among the oppressed that they are inferior, incapable of influencing society, know nothing, and are a disease to be purged (Freire). Thus, while the Residential and Economic forms of American Apartheid affect what the racial minorities in the U.S. are able to do, Educational Apartheid goes as far as to corrupt how they think.

This “marred identity” of the racially and economically oppressed is reflected and reinforced in what will here be termed Socio-Political Apartheid. Caught in the grip of centuries of institutional racism, minorities have been driven to remain in “survival mode.” As they have struggled for a competitive economic advantage and a political voice, they have been thwarted by internal problems: broken families, violence, and drug abuse. For families who cannot find work or a living wage due to Economic Apartheid, public welfare becomes an incentive not to get married, because single parents are eligible for more aid (Wilson). Violence is a plague for all; one in four Philadelphians would move because of crime if they had the resources (MPPC). Racial profiling means minorities spend more time behind bars than their White criminal counterparts, and they are thus prevented from furthering their educations and entering the productive workforce. The drug trade, realistically speaking, is a more cost-effective livelihood for Apartheid victims who have been otherwise excluded from the legitimate job market. All these social hurdles, however, appear to the oppressor as symptoms of poverty's disease, prompting them only to fortify the walls of their Socio-Political Apartheid.

In response to the clear evidence of a historically pervasive American Apartheid, journalist Michael Katz asks, Why aren't the U.S. cities burning? Where are the protests – outcries for justice? He answers his question in part with a theory termed the “management of marginalization.” Part of the tactics of the dominant race and class have been to allow for selective incorporation of minorities in the controlling regime, mimetic, ineffective reform policies, and indirect or incomplete minority authority. They have also perpetuated scare tactics and encouraged minorities to be enveloped into the culture of the Consumer Republic (Katz). These practices have fooled masses of Americans into believing that, for the most part, racism is dead. Until this myth is unmasked, the wheels of oppression will spin on unhindered. Just as Robert Kennedy concluded in the face of South African Apartheid, people must open their eyes and act: “Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Works Cited

“A Call to Action: Philadelphia's Affordable Housing Crisis and What We Can Do About It.” Philadelphia Affordable Housing Coalition (PAHC), 2003.

“Apartheid.” Dictionary.com. Random House, Inc., 2006.

“A Tale of Two Cities.” Philadelphia Workforce Investment Board (PWIB), 2007.

Bullard, Robert D., J. Eugene Grigsby III and Charles Lee, Eds. Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy. Los Angeles: University of California, 1994.

Fishman, Robert. “The American Metropolis at Century's End: Past and Future Influences.” Housing Policy Debate. Fannie Mae Foundation, 2000.

“Flight (or) Fight: Metropolitan Philadelphia and its Future.” The Metropolitan Philadelphia Policy Center (MPPC), 2001.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum International, 1970.

Hill, Michael. “Editorial: Race, Politics, and the Schools.” The Baltimore Sun. 28 May 2006.

Katz, Michael B. “Why Aren't U.S. Cities Burning?” Dissent. Summer 2007.

“The Price is Wrong: Getting the Market Right for Working Families in Philadelphia.” The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program (BIMPP), 2005.

Wilson, William J. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New York: Vintage Books, 1996.