African American Suburbanization And Its Impact On Ghettoes (1970-2000)

The great suburbanization of African American since the 1970s is a new trend ofsignificance and becoming a regular phenomenon. It is a controversial issue in the Americanacademic community.This paper will start from the historical process of black suburbanization, investigates thecausing and restricting factors of black suburbanization and the great influence to Americanghetto.The first part concentrates on that the black suburbanization has started at the firstbeginning of American suburbanization, and developed along with the great south blackpopulation moving during 20 century. The 1970s is the climax period and the great changetime of black suburbanization history. The black population increased fast in everymetropolitan area suburb, its pace even surpassed the white. However, the distribution ofblack in suburb is very unbalanced, mainly concentrated in large metropolitan area suburb orthe inner-suburb nearby the central cities.Compared to the suburbanization of Asian Americans and Spanish Americans, however,the black suburbanization is relatively lagging at the population-increasing rate and theproportion in suburb total population.The second part mainly discusses the push and pull factors of black acceleratedsuburbanization: First, the acts and plans which enacted and implemented by federalgovernment provided the policy and law ensure to black moving into suburb. Second, thegreat change of American industrial structure after Second World War resulted masses ofwork opportunities suburbanization, pulling the black into suburb. Third, the decline ofcentral city and the overflow of society problems made the living environment deteriorated,pushing the black into well surrounding suburb. Forth, the prosperity of American economyand the development of higher education provided new opportunity and more wide space, theblack new middle class grown and expanded quickly, settling the class base to blacksuburbanization.The third part analyzes the factors that restricted the step of black suburbanization. Thelimited of federal government's acts and the continued existence of discrimination andisolation prohibited the speed of black suburbanization. Blacks living in the central citygutter in a long time form a kind of poverty culture, which against the mainstream society. Inthe fierce market economy competition, the disadvantaged blacks must be the failure.The forth part investigates the great impact of the black suburbanization to Americanghetto. The suburbanization of outstanding upper black classes brought away the economicresource and the morality model of the black community, broke down the stable societyorganization. The hostility and discrimination that came form the suburban white andhousing market lead to the new ghetto in suburb, the central city ghetto suburbanization. Thesuburban black implement the same exclusion policy, stopped from the moving of under classblack, which formed the space, class and mental isolation among black.