Vanishing Eden: White Construction of Memory, Meaning, and Identity in a Racially Changing City (Urban Life, Landscape and Policy)

For many whites, desegregation initially felt like an attack on their community. But how has the process of racial change affected whites’ understanding of community and race? In Vanishing Eden, Michael Maly and Heather Dalmage provide an intriguing analysis of the experiences and memories of whites who lived in Chicago neighborhoods experiencing racial change during the 1950s through the 1980s. They pay particular attention to examining how young people made sense of what was occurring, and how this experience impacted their lives.

Using a blend of urban studies and whiteness studies, the authors examine how racial solidarity and whiteness were created and maintained—often in subtle and unreflective ways. Vanishing Eden also considers how race is central to the ways social institutions such as housing, education, and employment function. Surveying the shifting social, economic, and racial contexts, the authors explore how race and class at local and national levels shaped the organizing strategies of those whites who chose to stay as racial borders began to change.

Michael Maly is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Policy Research Collaborative at Roosevelt University in Chicago. He is the author of Beyond Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods in the United States (Temple).  Heather M. Dalmage is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Mansfield Institute for Social Justice and Transformation. She is the author of Tripping on the Color Line: Black-White Multiracial Families in a Racially Divided World.