African-American Culture - Neighborhoods

Neighborhoods

African-American neighborhoods are types of ethnic enclaves found in many cities in the United States. The formation of African-American neighborhoods is closely linked to the history of segregation in the United States, either through formal laws, or as a product of social norms. Despite this, African-American neighborhoods have played an important role in the development of nearly all aspects of both African-American culture and broader American culture. Many affluent African-American communities exist today including Baldwin Hills and Ladera Heights, California; Redan and Cascade Heights, Georgia; Mitchellville, Maryland; Southfield, Michigan; Quinby, South Carolina; Forest Park, Oklahoma; and more. These communities embody a support system for Blacks to survive. These communities defy stereotypes that African Americans cannot survive without white influence. Most of these neighborhoods are self-sufficient in that the schools, government, and commerce are all maintained by African Americans and are doing fairly well, if not better than, their white counterparts. Due to segregated conditions and widespread poverty some African-American neighborhoods in the United States have been called "ghettos." The use of this term is controversial and, depending on the context, potentially offensive. Despite mainstream America's use of the term "ghetto" to signify a poor urban area populated by ethnic minorities, those living in the area often used it to signify something positive. The African-American ghettos did not always contain dilapidated houses and deteriorating projects, nor were all of its residents poverty-stricken. For many African Americans, the ghetto was "home", a place representing authentic "blackness" and a feeling, passion, or emotion derived from the rising above the struggle and suffering of being of African descent in America. Langston Hughes relays in the "Negro Ghetto" (1931) and "The Heart of Harlem" (1945): "The buildings in Harlem are brick and stone/And the streets are long and wide,/But Harlem's much more than these alone,/Harlem is what's inside." Playwright August Wilson used the term "ghetto" in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (1984) and Fences (1987), both of which draw upon the author's experience growing up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, an African-American ghetto.

Although African-American neighborhoods may suffer from civic disinvestment, with lower-quality schools, less effective policing, and fire protection, there are institutions such as churches and museums and political organizations that help to improve the physical and social capital of African-American neighborhoods. In African-American neighborhoods the churches may be important sources of social cohesion. For some African Americans the kind spirituality learned through these churches works as a protective factor against the corrosive forces of racism. Museums devoted to African-American history are also found in many African-American neighborhoods.

Many African-American neighborhoods are located in inner cities, and these are the mostly residential neighborhoods located closest to the central business district. The built environment is often row houses or brownstones, mixed with older single family homes that may be converted to multi family homes. In some areas there are larger apartment buildings. Shotgun houses are an important part of the built environment of some southern African-American neighborhoods. The houses consist of three to five rooms in a row with no hallways. This African-American house design is found in both rural and urban southern areas, mainly in African-American communities and neighborhoods.