1st Edition

Cities and Race America's New Black Ghetto

By David Wilson Copyright 2007
    192 Pages
    by Routledge

    188 Pages
    by Routledge

    This fascinating book examines the 1990s rise of a new black ghetto in rust belt America, 'the global ghetto'. It uses the emergent perspective of 'racial economy' to delineate a fundamental proposition; historically neglected and marginalized black ghettos, in a 1990s era of societal boom and bust, have become more impoverished, more stigmatized, and functionally ambiguous as areas.

    As these ghettos grow in size and become more stigmatized entities in contemporary society, our understanding of them in relation to evolving cities and society has not kept pace. This book looks to the heart of this misunderstanding, to find out how race and political economy in cities dynamically connect in new ways ('racial economy') to deepen deprivation in these areas. This book is an essential read for students of geography, urban studies and sociology.

    Part I: Glocal Black Ghetto Emergence  1. Introduction.  The Frame.  An Uneasy Global Trope.  Perspective and Definitions  2. Rise of Glocal Ghetto.  The Beginning.  Things Get Worse, 1965–1980.  The Reagan 1980s.  The Post 1990 Global Obsession.  Formation of the Global Ghetto  3. The Global Trope.  Introduction.  The New Spaceless Entrepreneur.  Problem Inner Cities.  New Heroic Mayors As Salvationists.  The Result  Part II: Current Ghetto Dynamics  4. Glocal Ghetto Changes.  Introduction.  Deepened Deprivation.  The New Stigma and Marginalization.  The New Ambiguous Ghetto-Prison Connection  5. The Current Federal Role – Bush Policy Effects.  Introduction.  Bush Urban Policy.  Faith-Based Interventions.  Changed Workfare.  No Child Left Behind.  The Future Federal Role – Block Grants  Part III: The Active Black Ghetto  6. Ghetto Responses.  Introduction.  Resistance to the Glocal Ghetto.  The Outcome  7. The Crisis of the Black Ghetto.  Introduction.  A New Uneven Development

    Biography

    Wilson, David

    Cities and Race details how fluid racial characterizations change in response to political economic pressures.

    David Wilson's commitment to making scholarship useful for undoing the cruelties of anti-black racism in general, and the new black ghettos in particular, is without question.

    reviewd by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, University of Southern California, USA 

    At his best, Wilson lays bare the inner working of this discourse through the scalar common sense it creates. Bradley Gardener Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences CUNY Graduate Centre