The Metropolis in Black and White: Place, Power and Polarization - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 088285139X ISBN 13: 9780882851396

Publisher: Routledge, 1992

Synopsis

The Metropolis in Black and White highlights a stark fact: America’s metropolitan areas are more polarized along racial lines than at any time since the mid-1960s. Though urban areas have become multicultural, the editors argue that black–white racial differences will outlast ethnic differences in metropolitan America and that the race issue in most urban areas is perceived as a black–white one.

Galster and Hill perceive that the theme of place, power, and polarization is most powerful when blacks and whites are contrasted. African Americans, on average, are the poorest, most segregated, most disadvantaged urban racial (or ethnic) group, because they are deeply entangled in the web of interrelationships connecting place, power, and polarization. Since these interrelationships form a comprehensive set of social structures that oppress African Americans, they can be judged to be racist at their core. Race, not merely class, continues to play a pivotal role in shaping urban African Americans.

In clear analyses, the contributors examine employment, income, the underclass, education, housing, health and mortality, political participation, and racial politics. Intertwined themes of spatial isolation, political empowerment, and racial disparities—place, power, and polarization—guide the analyses. Thisis a vital text for courses in urban affairs, American studies, economics, geography, sociology, political science, urban planning, and racial and ethnic studies.

About this title

About the Author

George C. Galster is Clarence Hilberry Professor of Urban Affairs at Wayne State University. He has authored more than one hundred scholarly articles and book chapters on topics that include housing policy; neighborhood dynamics; discrimination and segregation in housing, mortgage, and insurance markets; metropolitan opportunity structures for the poor; and urban sprawl.

Review

“The strength of Galster and Hill’s collection of essays is its assembly of a set of informed and generally factually-based views of what is wrong about race relations in the United States today, and their willingness to let authors disagree with each other (and with the editors) on policy recommendations . . . [T]his is a book with much solid factual material . . . [T]he book is useful as an overview and an honest juxtaposition of some of the conflicting points of view on perhaps the knottiest problems of our times.”

—Peter Marcuse, Journal of the American Planning Association

“This book is the outcome of seminars held at the College of Wooster in Ohio and at Cleveland State University in the fall of 1989 . . . In sum, this book provides a documented account of persistent racial inequality in the areas of employment, housing, education, health, and politics. A major theme of the book is that racism still powerfully affects the quality of life and the life chances of both lower and middle class blacks . . . The editors are to be commended for synthesizing the array of papers from a multidisciplinary group of authors and presenting a coherent theme . . . [T]he book should be read by scholars and students in the field. Furthermore, I strongly recommend the book as a text in upper level undergraduate classes in urban or racial studies.”

—Joe T. Darden, Professional Geographer

"A useful way to stimulate thinking about the still unresolved problems of race and class in the cities."

—Planning

"[A] genuinely collaborative effort based upon . . . dialogue between urban scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. . . . Each chapter has something useful to say."

—Economic Geography

"The definitive text on the plight of urban America."

—Urban Mission

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 088285139X
• ISBN 13: 9780882851396
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 405
• Editor: George C. Galster, Edward W. Hill