Ghetto Formation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Ghetto Formation - Essay Example Its sheer size has induced a constant exchange and migration of people who move to facilitate employment, education, achievement of social status or family improvement. Thesis Formation of ghettoes is a cause of the problems of racial discrimination and segregation persisted despite the upheavals of war and the changes brought by social progress. Formation of ghettoes is caused by racial differences and racism, racial discrimination and oppression. Historically, the formation of the ghettoes was a response of newly arrived immigrants to the confusion and strangeness of the nineteenth-century city. Originally these "ghettos" were merely ethnic enclaves on a par with a series of other ethnic concentrations. This ethnic enclave based upon language difference or foreign origin became a fixture of urban areas. It was a form of social protection and expression and a testimony to the pluralist character of national life (Edwardson 339). During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, dozens of such immigrant clusters dotted the cities. These neighborhoods provided the setting for the drama of ethnic group life (Purdy 457). Today, critics underline the emergence of a new type of ghetto, 'outcast ghetto' "as a result of industrial decentralization and globalization. [It is] composed only of the poorest segments of subjugated racialized groups (mostly blacks and Hispanics) who are marginal to current production needs" (Walks and Bourne 29). It is important to note that seclusion can be voluntary or involuntary. In modern cities, the seclusion is voluntary used as a protective measures against racial segregation and racial oppression. In ghettoes people condition the common attitude and expectations with regard to the family and residential life of ethnic groups within the larger urban society. The ethnic neighborhoods almost always establish a picture in the public mind of poor living conditions and social disorganization (Fay 217). For over a century this picture was transmitted to a nation dominated by rural, native-born citizens, who prided themselves on their isolation from "foreign" influences and w hose virtues of self-reliance and stability contrasted with the disorders of the struggling urban immigrant groups. Today, the fluidity of urban society creates a great hunger for social status. Distinctions based on ethnic and racial characteristics become important instruments in the status seeking. Following Thabit (2003, 56) rising educational levels have reduced the crudity of the prejudices and stereotypes inherited from the immigration experience, that experience is too sustained and significant not to leave lasting impressions. The Negro areas have become something unique in their size and persistence (Winant 34). They are striking testimonies to the extension of racism right into the most advanced and active portions of society. The concentration of people of color in the "black belts" or urban centers has made a full-scale national phenomenon of a system of racial attitudes and restrictions which is formerly a regional condition.The greatest motivating force behind the mov ement of minority families in the urban centers, however, is the desire to overcome the housing problems. The desire for family improvement has been the positive element of this drive and has led to strenuous efforts to escape the old areas for newer ones (Chekki 585; Glazier 78). The movement