Apartheid. USA 1988

April 1, 1987:

Are housing patterns a critical factor in race relations? A poll and a series of interviews conducted by New York

[p. 56]

Times indicated that a majority of people interviewed or polled said relations between blacks and whites in New York had not improved during the past decade or that they had grown worse. ‘People tend to stay in their own neighborhoods when they come home from work,’ said the Reverend Anthony Failla of St. Finbars Roman Catholic Church in the predominantly white section of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn. ‘If all they know of blacks is what they see on television and what is highlighted in the news stories, then relations between the races are bound to worsen. Once I mingle with you, I know you, but if I don't know you, I don't know you.’

Underneath a pattern of changing and shifting ethnic neighborhoods the overall level of racial separation in the 1980's appears to be little changed from what it was at the start of the 1970's. The resegregation, however, is occurring despite open housing laws, the movement of blacks to the suburbs and the emergence of a growing black middle-class. It is regarded by many experts as a development that punctures the dreams of a racially-mixed society envisioned in the civil rights movement two decades ago. The city has, of course, always been a conglomerate of ethnic enclaves as new immigrants arrive, settle in and embark on the generational process of assimilation. What seems to set the blacks apart, the experts say, is that when they move out of one area and into a new one there is a tendency for the new area to resegregate.

‘We are seeing wholesale resegregation of communities in five to eight years,’ said Joan M Thompson, director of fair housing for the New York City Commission on Human Rights. Specialists in demographics and housing cite both economic and social reasons to explain continued segregation and resegregation. Many blacks cannot afford to move into white areas, and a variety of discriminatory practices, more subtle than those of an earlier past, persist.^78.

78. The New York Times, from a report by Ronald Smothers

[p. 57]

Hispanic workers are capturing an increasing share of the nation's new jobs, Government figures show. They generate a debate over whether a breakthrough has been achieved or simply whether many new jobs are so marginal that few other workers want them. Of all the jobs created in the United States last year, Hispanic workers took nearly a quarter, or 23 percent, a far higher proportion than their 7 percent representation in the population. In four years, since 1983, the number of Hispanic people employed in the nation has grown by 1.8 million, to 7.6 million. Government labor analysts say most of these jobs have been in the service industries, which in recent years have been the fastest growing sector of the economy. But service jobs, which include such positions as retail clerk, data processor and hospital aide, also tend to pay lower wages - frequently at or near the minimum wage of 3.35 dollars an hour - than industrial jobs.

Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of LA RAZA, a Hispanic civil rights group in Washington, warned of the creation of ‘a permanent Hispanic underclass’, stuck in working poverty because of low wages and deprived upward mobility.^79.

79. The New York Times, from a report by Judith Cummings