Sociology 8th Edition by Margaret Andersen ,Howard Taylor ,Kim Logio

Exercise 2

American Apartheid
The term apartheid was used to describe the society of South Africa prior to the election of Nelson Mandela in 1994. It refers to the rigid separation of the Black and White races. Sociological researchers Massey and Denton argue that the United States is now under a system of apartheid and that it is based on a very rigid residential segregation in the country.
Research Question: What is the current state of residential segregation? Massey and Denton note that the terms segregation and residential segregation practically disappeared from the American vocabulary in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These terms were spoken little by public officials, journalists, and even civil rights officials. This was because the ills of race relations in the United States were at the time attributed, though erroneously, to other causes such as a "culture of poverty" among minorities, or inadequate family structure among Blacks, or too much welfare for minority groups. The Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968, and the problem of segregation and discrimination in housing was declared solved. Yet nothing could be farther from the truth.
Research Methods and Results: Researchers Massey and Denton amassed a large amount of survey data demonstrating that residential segregation not only has persisted in American society but also that it has actually increased since the 1960s. Most Americans vaguely realize that urban America is still residentially segregated, but few appreciate the depth of Black and Hispanic segregation or the degree to which it is maintained by ongoing institutional arrangements and contemporary individual actions. Urban society is thus hypersegregated, or characterized by an extreme form of residential and educational segregation.
Conclusions and Implications: Massey and Denton find that most people think of racial segregation as a faded notion from the past, one that is decreasing over time. Today, theoretical concepts such as the culture of poverty, institutional racism, and welfare are widely debated, yet rarely is residential segregation considered to be a major contributing cause of urban poverty and the underclass. Massey and Denton argue that their purpose is to redirect the focus of public debate back to race and racial segregation.
Questions to Consider
Do you think the problem of racial- ethnic residential segregation in the United States is largely "solved"? How so or why not?