Segregation Breeds Inequality

My focus was to learn about how segregation has affected people’s ability to achieve the American Dream. Up to this point we have defined the American Dream a million times so for this project I wanted to learn about something that I care a lot about. I care a lot about the problem of segregating communities based off of race. It makes me annoyed and angry because it is straight up unfair. No one deserves to be discriminated because of their skin tone and that's supposed to be obvious but still it happens... A LOT. The town I grew up in was almost all white and all the African American kids lived in a town one exit over from the freeway. They all went to my school and I’ve played basketball with them since I was little so i’ve grown close to a lot of them. But what pisses me off is that everyone knew in my high school that if there is a black kid in their class that they lived in Marin City. But why is it that way? That is what I wanted to figure out from this project.

In the chapter “Dreaming in Black and White” that some of us read I read some stuff I already knew but I also learned some new things. I learned how housing projects were made and many African Americans were pushed out there to live with each other. James Loewen, the author, explained it as the whites didn’t feel as comfortable living with a bunch of blacks back in the day. And today we have this as a result. We have the inner cities and housing projects where a majority of the African Americans live. And the opportunity in those places is just ridiculous. It’s far less than what suburbs and big cities have (not the inner cities). When I did additional research to the peer reviewed texts I learned more about how it is very hard for people to get out of the housing projects especially because the education and jobs are so inferior. It leads to higher crime and less money. Therefore achieving the American Dream feels impossible to them and that’s why they have higher crime rates because it may feel as though that it the only way they can make a sustainable living.

I am still learning more as I go but I have definitely come to the conclusion that segregation breeds inequality. I believe that statement 100% it’s a fact to me. Some people may say they are lazy and don't work hard but that’s BS and if they were in those circumstances they would do the same thing.