White Space, Black Hood

The history and impact of ghettos as an institution and linchpin of inequality and a call for abolition of the new American caste.The "ghetto," and all of our ideas about it perform a political function that reinforces inequality and, as Sheryll Cashin argues, is the key holdover of the supremacist regime that has yet to be dismantled. Drawing on nearly two decades of research on cities including Baltimore, MD; St. Louis, MO; Chicago, IL; New York, NY; and Cleveland, OH, Cashin traces America’s investment in the ghetto before unpacking its legacy on today's society, illustrating how a combination of white opportunity hoarding and divestment from Black neighborhoods has resulted in an anti-Black caste. While Jim Crow laws subordinated Blacks in the South, northern cities embarked on an intentional process of ghettoization, defining black space through redlining and other policies, and attributing the declining conditions caused by containment to the...