The Debate Over Racial Steering
Please note: the notion of "a debate over racial steering" should in no way be taken to suggest that racial steering is lawful in the US. It is not. Under US civil rights law racial steering in order to create or maintain segregation is unlawful and has been the target of civil rights reform since at least the mid-20th century.
Is having racially segregated neighborhoods such a bad thing? This is the major question being posed by leading researchers. There are two dominating theses. The first thesis suggests that racially segregated neighborhoods are characterized as being blighted, having a lack of educational resources, and having high levels of violence. The second thesis challenges this notion and suggests that these neighborhoods are thriving economically. They have developed protective markets, have strong and stable social networks, and because of these networks, they have built high levels of social capital.
Read more about this topic: Racial Steering
Famous quotes containing the words debate, racial and/or steering:
“My first debate in high school—”Resolved: Girls are no good”—and I won!”
—Donald Freed, U.S. screenwriter, and Arnold M. Stone. Robert Altman. Richard Nixon (Philip Baker Hall)
“Please stop using the word “Negro.”... We are the only human beings in the world with fifty-seven variety of complexions who are classed together as a single racial unit. Therefore, we are really truly colored people, and that is the only name in the English language which accurately describes us.”
—Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954)
“In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round,—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)