Urban opportunity structure and racial/ethnic polarization

George C. Galster

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

    Abstract

    In his seminal, if controversial, work published in 1978, The Declining Significance of Race, William Julius Wilson argued that individuals’ minority status per se was becoming a relatively less important barrier to their socioeconomic advancement than their lower-income status (Wilson, 1978). In this chapter I offer a different conceptual perspective on the issue of race, class, and opportunity. I argue that, for people of color who also happen to have low incomes, space is increasingly becoming the primary barrier to their socioeconomic advancement and the central means for perpetuating racial/ethnic polarization. The key dimensions of space in this essay are segregation of neighborhoods and schools by race/ethnicity and by class and, secondarily, the location of economic activity. These spatial dimensions form the key links in a model of cumulative causation in which race-class prejudice, discrimination, segregation, and socioeconomic disparities interact in a mutually reinforcing fashion to constrain severely the opportunities of low-income minorities residing in the cores of American cities.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationResearch on Schools, Neighborhoods, and Communities: Toward Civic Responsibility
    EditorsWilliam F. Tate
    Place of PublicationU.S.
    PublisherRowman and Littlefield
    Pages47-66
    Number of pages20
    ISBN (Electronic)9781442204690
    ISBN (Print)9781442204683
    Publication statusPublished - 2012

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