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Theme 1:

1. Who am I?

My name is Aaliyah Zarate, I am 18 years old and was born in Fresno, CA.

2. Who do I pretend to be?

I pretend to be someone who has it all figured out, even though nobody truly has all the answers.

3. Who do people think I am?

People think I can be quite overzealous but passionate too.

4. Who do I wish I could be?

I wish I could be a more confident person and be more organized.

5. How has race or ethnic identity played a role in any of these responses?

My ethnic identity can cause a little bit of nervousness and growing up in a mostly Caucasian family made me feel out of place.

Theme 2|

1. What was your first experience with race?

My first experience with race was me noticing that most of my mom's side of the family were Caucasian, while my dad's side were all Hispanic.

2. How old were you?

I was around 5 or 6 years old when I actually noticed.

3. What emotions do you associate with the experience?

I felt quite anxious since I wasn't the same race as my mom's side of the family and I didn't feel as included.

4. Have you ever talked about the experience?

On many occasions I have spoke with my mom about this and how I sometimes felt like an outcast growing up.

5. How have your early experiences with race shaped your worldview?

My early experiences with race have shown me that some people do not see others for their race, while others can and will make it a problem.

Section 3|

Your experiences with identity and race will shape your sense of self. If you grew up with a negative experience related to your identity and race, you will most likely have a negative sense of self. Your self esteem can be effected by your experiences and how others have treated you. Of course, you still can have control of your perception of yourself but a negative experience may make it more difficult. If you constantly are told something about yourself you may begin to truly believe it. I would assume someone who positively identifies with African American Psychology might have a stronger sense of self. Being understanding and compassionate will allow you to be kind to yourself too.

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2.4 Ubuntu, Afrocentricity and Nguzo Saba

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2.4 Ubuntu, Afrocentricity and Nguzo Saba

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THEME 1: Ubuntu

1. The spirit of Ubuntu is alive and well today in African American culture due to African American's seeming to always have such a tight-knit community. The Black Lives Matter Movement is a good example of this, showing how African Americans gathered to support each other.

2. In both African and African-American culture, community is very important. Some examples of this would be church communities or having extended family.

THEME 2: 7 Concepts of Afrocentric Psychology

1. Sankofa, which means "to return and get it" is the most present in the African American community. This basically means to learn from the past in order to build a better future. Juneteenth is a good example of this.

2. Inclusive metaphysical epistemology is the least present in the African American community. While many African American communities are religious, things like holistic medicine aren't as common due to it being seen as primitive or old-fashioned.

THEME 3: 7 Principles of Nguzo Saba

Umoja means 'unity' and emphasizes the importance of community. This resonates with me because having support from others, such as my family, has always had a positive impact on my life and is what led me to attend college. I've seen this value in action in the Umoja Community, a community "dedicated to enhancing the cultural and educational experiences of African American and other students."

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3.1 MULTIDIMENSIONS OF ETHNIC SELF IDENTIFICATION

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3.1 MULTIDIMENSIONS OF ETHNIC SELF IDENTIFICATION

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1. For the category of Natal Measures, I chose my birthplace and natural parents because growing up in the uglier parts of Fresno is what made me want to move to a different city and the way my parents raised me affected my personality now.

2. Under the category of Behavioral Measures I chose electronic media use patterns and language patterns because my family usually spoke with lots of 'foul language' and their main hobbies were video games, which is why I'm infatuated with video games and sometimes I do struggle with cursing.

3. Under the category of Subjective measures I chose assessment of own acculturation status because I grew up with a mixed family with both Europeans and Mexicans.

4. Under the category of Situational-Contextual Measures I chose education and religious because my mom would always stress the importance of going to school and she regularly attended church, which influenced my love for the church and motivated me to graduate high school and attend college.

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3.2: MULTI-GROUP ETHNIC IDENTITY MEASURE

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3.2: MULTI-GROUP ETHNIC IDENTITY MEASURE

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1. My Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure score is 24.

2. To me this score means I have a weak sense of cultural identity.

3. I think that this means that I have a weak bond with the Mexican American community because I don't enjoy participating in most of the culture and I feel like I just don't fit in.

4. Something that surprised me about the analysis was my low score for every question.

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3.3 Padlet post: ROSENBERG'S SELF-ESTEEM SCALE

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3.3 Padlet post: ROSENBERG'S SELF-ESTEEM SCALE

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1. My score was 10 on the self-esteem scale.

2. To me my score means that I need to practice on improving my self esteem but it's difficult since it's been low for a long time.

3. I believe my score is what it is because I grew up in a toxic environment.

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1. In the section "Biracial People" I'm in the "Choice of Group" stage.

2. I think I'm in this stage because I feel like I'm stuck between two ethnic identities due to the cultures being very different.

3. I know I've passed through the previous stage, "personal identity" because I remember when I was a child I paid no mind to my race/ethnicity and just saw myself for my hobbies like reading/video games.

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POST 3.5: FIND YOUR RACIAL IDENTITY RESOURCE

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POST 3.5: FIND YOUR RACIAL IDENTITY RESOURCE

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I resonate with this video because I've had similar feelings growing up, feeling as if I don't fit in with either of my ethnic identities.

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1. On slide 2, I've seen cultural racism and individual racism in the world. On slide 3, I've seen internalized racism (both racial superiority and inferiority)

2. We do not live in a post racial society. There are still many instances of racial injustice and discrimination. An example of this would be African Americans having a lower employment rate and lower household income.

3. My definition of race is the social quality of a person. I think race is a social construct because people of the same skin tone are not always of the same background, and skin color cannot ultimately determine someone's culture and ethnic background.

4. "During the time of slavery in the U.S. South, the skin tone of enslaved peoples lightened over the years as babies were born from the Union, often in the form of rape of enslaved individuals, by slave owners and other Whites. As it became difficult to tell who was Black and who was not, many court battles over people’s racial identity occurred. People who were accused of having Black ancestry would go to court to “prove” they were White in order to avoid enslavement or other problems (Staples, 1998)." This source shows that race isn't a biological construct, but a social construct. The courts didn't care for people appearing as white (due to slaves having mixed races as a result of rape) so they instead determined if the individual had black ancestry. (Source is listed above)

5. Something that stood out to me in this unit was that race can be a social construct. Initially, I saw race as simply the color of one's skin, but as I read more I realized it's much more than that.

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The well-known “Thomas theorem” in sociology is defined as follows: “if men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”. While we can acknowledge that race is a social construction and not a biological reality, it is also true that our race has an incredible impact on our identity and life chances. In this way, the effects of the idea of race are real.

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4.4 Race and Racism: Racial Microagressions

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4.4 Race and Racism: Racial Microagressions

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1. In the audio clip, there were examples of ableism and racism. The main type of racism present in the clip were microaggressions. An example of this were one of the viewer's stories telling the hosts how after she finished her presentation, someone told her how articulate and well spoken she is. Or another viewer telling how other people chalk up her accomplishments simply due to her being Asian.

2. This audio clip is a great example of how we do not live in a post racial society. All of the submissions are people telling their own experience of racism.

3. My definition of race is someone's social quality and experiences related to their ethnic background. Race is a social construct because people of the same skin tone do not always have the same ethnic background and culture.

4. "Yudell said that modern genetics research is operating in a paradox, which is that race is understood to be a useful tool to elucidate human genetic diversity, but on the other hand, race is also understood to be a poorly defined marker of that diversity and an imprecise proxy for the relationship between ancestry and genetics." This is important because it states that someone's skin color alone cannot identify their ancestry/genetics.

5. Something that I learned throughout the lesson is that racism and discrimination can come in many different forms. This is significant because it's important to be aware of how the things you say or do can be harmful to others.

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Racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out

By Megan Gannon & LiveScience

More than 100 years ago, American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois was concerned that race was being used as a biological explanation for what he understood to be social and cultural differences between different populations of people. He spoke out against the idea of "white" and "black" as discrete groups, claiming that these distinctions ignored the scope of human diversity.

Science would favor Du Bois. Today, the mainstream belief among scientists is that race is a social construct without biological meaning. And yet, you might still open a study on genetics in a major scientific journal and find categories like "white" and "black" being used as biological variables.

In an article published today (Feb. 4) in the journal Science, four scholars say racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out. [ Unraveling the Human Genome: 6 Molecular Milestones]

They've called on the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to put together a panel of experts across the biological and social sciences to come up with ways for researchers to shift away from the racial concept in genetics research.

"It's a concept we think is too crude to provide useful information, it's a concept that has social meaning that interferes in the scientific understanding of human genetic diversity and it's a concept that we are not the first to call upon moving away from," said Michael Yudell, a professor of public health at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Yudell said that modern genetics research is operating in a paradox, which is that race is understood to be a useful tool to elucidate human genetic diversity, but on the other hand, race is also understood to be a poorly defined marker of that diversity and an imprecise proxy for the relationship between ancestry and genetics.

"Essentially, I could not agree more with the authors," said Svante Pääbo, a biologist and director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, who worked on the Neanderthal genome but was not involved with the new paper.

"What the study of complete genomes from different parts of the world has shown is that even between Africa and Europe, for example, there is not a single absolute genetic difference, meaning no single variant where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one, even when recent migration is disregarded," Pääbo told Live Science. "It is all a question of differences in how frequent different variants are on different continents and in different regions."

In one example that demonstrated genetic differences were not fixed along racial lines, the full genomes of James Watson and Craig Venter, two famous American scientists of European ancestry, were compared to that of a Korean scientist, Seong-Jin Kim. It turned out that Watson (who, ironically, became ostracized in the scientific community after making racist remarks) and Venter shared fewer variations in their genetic sequences than they each shared with Kim.

Assumptions about genetic differences between people of different races have had obvious social and historical repercussions, and they still threaten to fuel racist beliefs. That was apparent two years ago, when several scientists bristled at the inclusion of their research in Nicholas Wade's controversial book, "A Troublesome Inheritance" (Penguin Press, 2014), which proposed that genetic selection has given rise to distinct behaviors among different populations. In a letter to The New York Times, five researchers wrote that "Wade juxtaposes an incomplete and inaccurate account of our research on human genetic differences with speculation that recent natural selection has led to worldwide differences in IQ test results, political institutions and economic development."

The authors of the new Science article noted that racial assumptions could also be particularly dangerous in a medical setting.

"If you make clinical predictions based on somebody's race, you're going to be wrong a good chunk of the time," Yudell told Live Science. In the paper, he and his colleagues used the example of cystic fibrosis, which is underdiagnosed in people of African ancestry because it is thought of as a "white" disease. [ The Best Genealogy Software for Tracing Your Family Tree]

Mindy Fullilove, a psychiatrist at Columbia University, thinks the changes proposed in the Science article are "badly needed." Fullilove noted that by some laws in the United States, people with one black ancestor of 32 might be called "black," but their 31 other ancestors are also important in influencing their health.

"This is a cogent and important call for us to shift our work," Fullilove said. "It will have an enormous influence. And it will make for better science."

So what other variables could be used if the racial concept is thrown out? Pääbo said geography might be a better substitute in regions such as Europe to define "populations" from a genetic perspective. However, he added that, in North America, where the majority of the population has come from different parts of the world during the past 300 years, distinctions like "African Americans" or "European Americans" might still work as a proxy to suggest where a person's major ancestry originated.

Yudell also said scientists need to get more specific with their language, perhaps using terms like " ancestry" or "population" that might more precisely reflect the relationship between humans and their genes, on both the individual and population level. The researchers also acknowledged that there are a few areas where race as a construct might still be useful in scientific research: as a political and social, but not biological, variable.

"While we argue phasing out racial terminology in the biological sciences, we also acknowledge that using race as a political or social category to study racism, although filled with lots of challenges, remains necessary given our need to understand how structural inequities and discrimination produce health disparities between groups," Yudell said.
Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue

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Racial categories are weak proxies for genetic diversity and need to be phased out

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1. The Black family is unique due to their resilience. Many face racial stigma everyday but find the strength to continue working hard and provide for their family.

2. Some strengths of the Black family would be their resilience and adaptability. It takes a lot of emotional and mental strength to withstand racism and social stigma, but many in the family stay strong and don't let it negatively affect them, and it only helps them become stronger. Some weaknesses of the Black family would be mass incarceration rates and media misrepresentation. The justice system is much harsher on those who are black, which leads there to be more black people to be imprisoned, which could ruin that individual's future and cause stress for their family. In media, it displays a false reality, shoving harmful stereotypes of black people into the viewer's mind, which can cause even more hate.

3. Racial socialization can keep parents comfortable with themselves which shows their children that they should love themselves the way the are. Sometimes these teachings will need the child to see that in the real world they will sometimes experience racism, but knowing that they should feel prideful will make them less likely to be negatively affected by other people's nasty comments.

4. One of slavery's consequences: 'lack of economic and social upward mobility' has impacted Black families the most today. According to the NCRC, "In 2022, the median White household held $284,310 in wealth,[14] more than six times that of the median Black household at $44,100 and 4 times that of Hispanic households at $62,120."

stresses the impact the Black family have had on social, political, and economic structure of the U.S

mentions Carter G. Woodson, an author, historian, and journalist who founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

explains the origin of Black history month.

The article is informative and important for educating yourself on key parts of Black history and what makes the Black family unique. It also helps you understand why its important to preserve this history.

6. One thing interesting I learned was just how big an impact slavery had on how today's generation of the Black family is. Many people believe it shouldn't impact this generation of the Black family as much as it should the older generation, but generational trauma is a real thing and the pain cannot easily be forgotten, even decades later. But, this event is what has made the Black family as strong as it is today.

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ASALH - The Founders of Black History Month - Association for the Study of African American Life and History (est. 1915)

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The Black Resistance theme publication and posters are available. Order early to support plans for Black History Month, Woman's History Month, and Juneteenth. Three hi-gloss posters on Black Resistance and one Juneteenth poster...

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Resource: https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2024/04/opinion-mixed-race-belonging

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Template_ Racial Autobiography Outline (Aaliyah Zarate)

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1. Imposter syndrome is one's inability to absorb their accomplishments along with the fear that they'll be exposed as a fraud.

2. In a student's educational journey and career experiences, imposter syndrome can drain their confidence, making them feel like they're not smart enough for such accomplishments, and will not bother to strive too high in their goals.

3. Imposter syndrome is usually caused by other people's negative, doubting comments, which can make people and more specifically African American women begin to doubt themselves. When it comes to careers, this can make African American women feel like their accomplishments don't mean much.

4. Race and gender play a role in an African American woman's experience in the workplace due to both racist and sexist assumptions being pushed onto them. They have to deal with the expectation that they're unintelligent, a negative stereotype for both women and black people.

5. One strategy that would address this issue and improve the workplace for women of color would be to have diversity in higher positions. Seeing a person of color in high positions can be inspiring for women of color and show them that their potential is not limited to what people think of them.

6. One thing that stood out to me in this unit was just how hard African American women have it in the workplace because they are a part of two of the most oppressed groups in society.

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7.6 Intersectionality, Bias and Microaggressions

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7.6 Intersectionality, Bias and Microaggressions

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1. The psychological consequences of experiencing subconscious racial slights as a person of color can be increased stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem.

2. One of the most common stereotypes perpetrated has to do with intelligence, such as the backhanded compliment people of color can receive, "you're so articulate and well spoken".

3. This theme can affect stereotypes based on gender and socioeconomic status.

4. These theories of intersectionality, racial microaggressions, bias or white privilege can make someone feel like they don't belong, make them feel ashamed of their ethnic identity/background, and begin to believe these negative stereotypes themselves.

5. This resource explains how racial microaggressions, bias, or white privilege can all reshape one's identity for better or for worse, and how intersectionality can be a useful tool for self-reflection.

6. Identify exactly what someone did/said that could be offensive. Explain to them how it could be harmful to others despite their intentions.

7. What stood out to me in this unit was just how often microaggressions are experienced in daily life, and how that may result in it being overlooked.

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8.2 Final Four Page Racial Autobiography Paper

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8.2 Final Four Page Racial Autobiography Paper

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9.5 Discussion: Thesis, Direction and Resources for Critical Analysis Project

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9.5 Discussion: Thesis, Direction and Resources for Critical Analysis Project

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Psych 110_ Resources and Questions for Critical Analysis Project 

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1. STRENGTHS: Black communities have a strong bond, bonding through music, festivals, art, and cuisine.

2. WEAKNESSES: Black neighborhoods can sometimes suffer from underfunding of housing and schools, resulting in hazardous living spaces and unsatisfactory education.

3. OPPORTUNITIES: Black Americans should vote as a community, create community-owned businesses, and vote accordingly to what aligns with their culture.

4. THREATS: Black neighborhoods can leave little room for growth, as many have to prioritize their immediate needs, such as housing and their jobs.

5. I've learned that the weaknesses of black neighborhoods have been occuring for decades.

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RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

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Abstract

This article studies the evolution of African American neighborhoods since the publication of the groundbreaking Kerner Commission report in 1968. We first examine how black and riot-affected neighborhoods evolved in four representative cities-Detroit, Newark, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.-during this period. Among black neighborhoods in these cities, we find that black neighborhoods not directly affected by riots fare better but trend similar to those that were. Notably, a number of disparities the commission identified as policy priorities-such as relatively lower income, higher poverty, and higher unemployment-persist despite declines in racist attitudes, extreme segregation, and an increased suburbanization of blacks. Fifty years after its publication, these findings suggest that the concerns of the Kerner Commission report remain relevant.

The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, colloquially known as the Kerner Commission, was tasked by Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) to examine the causes and propose solutions to the destructive urban rioting that marked the 1960s. The resulting report (1968) focused primarily on the abject living conditions in many African American communities as a principal cause of the rioting. Its narrative voiced the growing recognition that efforts culminating in the adoption of civil rights legislation and Great Society programs were not enough to quell rising discontent within many black communities. Rampant housing and labor market discrimination driven by white racism, the report argues, contributed to the formation and maintenance of black ghettos, places characterized by extreme segregation, concentrated poverty, poor public good provision, and limited access to mainstream jobs. The commission outlined a program for direct government investments in housing, education, and employment coupled with active antidiscrimination campaigns especially in suburban areas. Deemed radical by many then, as well as by many today, the commission's omnibus recommendations were largely ignored (Kerner Report 1968; Russell 2004).

The Kerner Commission understood that neighborhood living conditions are a large component of individual and family-level socioeconomic well-being and the report notes that prior to the 1960s, neighborhood conditions facing blacks in cities outside the South remained quite difficult. The "promised land" in the north-away from the southern Jim Crow regime-had provided little of the prosperity that many black migrants sought (Olzak, Shanahan, and McEneaney 1996). The roughly fifty years since the report's publication, however, have seen a dramatic change in the overall institutional environment. Blacks as a group have made substantive gains both socially and economically; overt efforts to exclude blacks or constrain where blacks can live have largely disappeared. In particular, as Reynolds Farley describes in this volume about Detroit, peripheral city neighborhoods and formerly all-white suburbs now boast large or majority-black populations ( 2018). Yet, despite these apparent advancements in other sectors of society, racial segregation continues to characterize cities; blacks face lower educational attainment levels and higher unemployment; disparities in income and wealth persist at levels near those that commission chairman Otto Kerner and his colleagues described five decades ago.

This article examines how the features of black neighborhoods that concerned the Kerner Commission have evolved. Ultimately, we seek to understand how, in light of the attention brought by the Kerner report and others focused on problems in urban neighborhoods, these black neighborhoods have evolved vis-à-vis their white and other nonblack counterpart neighborhoods. Despite reductions in racial animus and discrimination over time, as recognized by the authors of the Kerner report, blacks still remain largely in segregated neighborhoods. Hence, it is important to determine what relative progress in black neighborhood quality, if any, has occurred since the Kerner report issued its call for black neighborhood improvement fifty years ago.

To conduct our analysis, we combine U.S. census data harmonized across five decades in the Neighborhood Change Database with tract-level information on the location of riots in these cities (Collins and Margo 2004). We match these riot locations to tracts in our set of cities and compare these areas to those that did not directly experience rioting. We focus particularly on the re-sorting of residents: What were the characteristics of neighborhoods that retained high proportions of black residents? How did neighborhoods elsewhere change? We characterize population counts, racial composition, educational levels, income, poverty, and public assistance use across five decades spanning 1970 through 2010 for black and transitional neighborhoods, and then compare these outcomes across census tracts representative of America's urban core that have disproportionately higher shares of black and other minorities, census tracts outside this core, and urban core census tracts directly affected by rioting of the 1960s.

Our descriptive analysis yields several key stylized facts. Consistent with earlier research, we find that, on average, the population in tracts directly affected by riots fell dramatically between 1970 and 2010. We document that these areas initially became more nonwhite and poor in the intervening decades. By contrast, tracts in riot-affected cities that did not directly experience rioting violence had relatively stable populations. However, they have evolved to become much more diverse racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically in part as a consequence of Hispanic population growth. Moreover, we find that neighborhoods directly affected by riots in the cities we study remain among the most economically disadvantaged today. In particular, we find that black movement from the urban core to peripheral city neighborhoods and suburbs accelerated after 1970, that amenity declines consistent with neighborhood divestment coincided with urban riots and ultimately helped foster ongoing gentrification observed in many urban neighborhoods (for example, Hyra 2012), and that socioeconomic gaps persist between black neighborhoods-with and without any history of rioting-and neighborhoods without a large concentration of black residents.

We discuss several policies in the spirit of those advocated by the Kerner Commission that, adopted in recent decades, have been aimed at improving living conditions and life chances for residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods. These policies include those aimed at desegregation, those that have generally focused on promoting economic development and employment, and those geared toward improving the quality of educational choices in these neighborhoods. Echoing the existing literature that seeks to evaluate the success of these policies, it is apparent that desegregation initiatives have had only minimal effect. Likewise, those aimed at increasing economic development and employment in black neighborhoods have largely been ineffective or have engendered complaints of gentrification and displacement. By contrast, policies that have sought to improve educational quality and choice in these neighborhoods have had more, albeit mixed, success.

We expand the scope of our inquiry to provide a descriptive comparison of U.S. neighborhoods where blacks typically live as of 2010. Given that changes in attitudes and other features of American life had led to a racial resorting both within the urban areas affected by the rioting and across the nation, the types of neighborhoods where blacks typically reside in the twenty-first century have broadened. A simple comparison reveals that blacks still live in neighborhoods that lag on a number of key indicators. In concert with the comparisons presented from the riot cities analysis, it only further amplifies the fact that, fifty years on, the concerns of the Kerner Commission report remain relevant.

DATA

Our data are drawn from three sources. The Neighborhood Change Database (NCDB), the linchpin of our analysis, consists of census tracts harmonized to the 2010 boundaries spanning five census decades since 1970. Originally constructed by the Urban Institute and sold commercially by Geolytics, Inc., the NCDB helps overcome changes in the boundaries and definitions of census tracts over time that limit longitudinal analyses in which tracts are the unit of analysis. Hence, the NCDB allow us to study how specific places have changed over time.

To the NCDB data, we match tract-level information denoting the location of riots occurring in 1967 for our representative cities: Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. 1 These cities experienced particularly deadly and destructive episodes of rioting that were featured in major news outlets, providing some of the impetus for President Johnson to establish the Kerner Commission. Finally, we augment these NCDB files with additional information from the decennial census (1970 through 2010) and the American Community Survey (for 2006 through 2010) to better characterize neighborhood environments.

Table 1 presents a descriptive breakdown of the neighborhoods used in the final analysis dataset. Our data include 2,978 tracts located within our representative cities. We then separately examine tracts nationwide to assess the contemporary status of black neighborhoods. 2 We define a black neighborhood as a tract whose population was 40 percent black or higher in any census year. Admittedly, this cutoff is somewhat arbitrary, but we believe, given the size of the black population and degree of segregation in most cities, that neighborhoods near this threshold likely would have been characterized as black in past decades. In addition, before 2000 almost all neighborhood transitions are one way and complete (Card, Mas, and Rothstein 2008; Casey 2018). Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that neighborhoods with such high proportions of blacks were likely to continue to trend in that direction. Our organizing frame of characterizing a black neighborhood is motivated by well-established historical and contemporary patterns of racial and socioeconomic sorting and the range of observable inequities that arise from such sorting (Massey and Denton 1993; Cutler and Glaeser 1997).

Our riot cities generally had a high percentage of neighborhoods, on average, classified as black between 1970 and 1990: in 1970, approximately 19 percent and approximately 23 percent in 1980 and 1990. However, in the most recent census, this figure decreased to around 20 percent. This pattern is consistent with reports elsewhere suggesting that many of the former industrial cities affected by riots are losing their black population and becoming more integrated through gentrification and immigration.

For this study, we focus on the areas within four cities affected by the major riots that led to the establishment of the Kerner Commission report and remain among the most prominent examples in the late 1960s. Because the Kerner Commission was also concerned with the conditions facing black Americans nationwide and the potential for civil unrest to spread to a broader set of cities, we close by considering the twenty-first century outlook. Specifically, we compare contemporary conditions within the neighborhoods of America's one hundred largest cities to those within riot-affected cities.

HOW FAR HAVE WE COME? THE EVOLUTION OF BLACK AND RIOT-AFFECTED NEIGHBORHOODS

Figures 1 and 2 present population trends for several comparisons of neighborhoods within riot cities, those that directly experienced riots versus neighborhoods overall within riot cities, and black neighborhoods that experience rioting and those that did not.

As figure 1 shows, neighborhoods in our riot cities that experienced rioting depopulated, on average, after 1970. The most pronounced drop occurred between 1970 and 1980, from roughly 4,500 to less than 4,000, declining more gradually thereafter. This depopulation does not occur when looking over the pooled set of neighborhoods in the riot-city metro areas overall. After a relatively constant population of approximately 3,250 between 1970 and 1980, these neighborhoods grow over time to almost four thousand people per tract, on average, by 2010. Figure 2 compares the same population trends restricted to black neighborhoods that directly experienced riots and those that did not within these cities. The similarities are striking, in that the depopulation of riot-affected neighborhoods mirrors that of unaffected black neighborhoods.

In tables 2 through 5, we summarize changes in the racial and ethnic composition of neighborhoods in our riot-affected cities since 1970. Riot-affected neighborhoods transitioned from being overwhelmingly black in 1970 to later being almost evenly split across black and nonblack residents ( table 2), including a rising share of foreign-born and Hispanic residents. Neighborhoods also become increasingly racially and ethnically diverse ( table 3). This shift holds for the full set of black neighborhoods, including those affected by riots ( table 4) and those simply in riot-affected cities ( table 5).

Table 6 examines transitions among black neighborhoods since 1970. Specifically, among neighborhoods classified as black in 1970, what was their classification in 2010? The first panel presents these statistics for the riot-affected areas we study and the second for neighborhoods not directly affected. By contrast, of the areas classified as white in 1970, 64 percent transitioned to black by 2010. Nearly 60 percent of neighborhoods classified as black in 1970 remained as black neighborhoods in 2010. Among those black neighborhoods that transitioned away, almost none became a white neighborhood: 2 percent of neighborhoods classified as black became white neighborhoods whereas 40 percent became Hispanic. Among neighborhoods not directly affected by riots and those in comparison cities, racial compositions were even more stable: 67 percent of black tracts in 1970 remained black in 2010. Only 1 percent transitioned to white over the period. Compared with riot-affected neighborhoods, only 7 percent of neighborhoods initially classified as white transitioned to black over the period.

Although the differing population trends across neighborhood types are interesting, the Kerner Commission was specifically concerned with neighborhood quality experienced by blacks who lived in these neighborhoods. Figure 3 presents educational attainment levels within the neighborhoods of riot-affected cities. At baseline in 1970, levels are higher in neighborhoods overall than in riot-affected neighborhoods. College attainment in riot-affected neighborhoods rises at a rate similar to that of neighborhoods overall but fails to catch up to the higher attainment within the average neighborhood-roughly 25 percent of residents in the average neighborhood of a city that experienced rioting had a college degree by 2010, versus fewer than 15 percent in riot-affected neighborhoods. In figure 4, restricting our view to black neighborhoods within our representative cities, we see a similar pattern for college attainment. Black neighborhoods generally look slightly better than riot-affected neighborhoods with respect to the proportion of residents with college degrees, though both follow the same trend over time-mirroring individual-level shifts in educational attainment concurrent with the changing structure of the economy favoring higher level skills (see, for example, Autor 2014).

We next examine household income within neighborhoods ( figure 5). Within the four cities, riot and nonriot neighborhoods follow a similar trend in regard to income growth, but show large, persistent gaps. In 1970, the gap is roughly $20,000. By 2000, it is $25,000. By 2010, the average nonriot neighborhood residents had incomes over $70,000, versus approximately $45,000 in riot-affected neighborhoods. The riot-affected neighborhoods experience only $10,000 of real income growth over a forty-year period. When we examine differences between black and riot-affected neighborhoods, black neighborhoods overall fare only slightly better ( figure 6). A modest $3,000 to $4,000 advantage persists for black neighborhoods relative to riot-affected neighborhoods, and the trends are almost identical over time.

Unemployment is a primary driver of income statistics; therefore, we next trace unemployment trends in our neighborhoods of interest. In figure 7, we show that riot neighborhoods begin with slightly higher unemployment rates in 1970, though both riot and nonriot neighborhoods have, on average, unemployment rates below 10 percent. However, between 1970 and 1990, a sizable neighborhood unemployment gap emerges-roughly 10 percentage points-before closing somewhat thereafter. Accordingly, this pattern mirrors the income trends shown previously. Black neighborhood unemployment trends in riot cities ( figure 8) track similarly to neighborhood trends generally for riot-affected neighborhoods, which again is borne out in the previous series of income-based trends ( figures 5 and 6).

We close our discussion of neighborhood economic and amenity trends by examining poverty and public assistance receipt within these neighborhoods. As figure 9 shows, within our sample, poverty rates in riot-affected neighborhoods are roughly 15 percentage points higher than in neighborhoods overall. Riot neighborhoods see a growth trend in poverty from 1970 through 1990 and a leveling off thereafter, whereas average neighborhoods (neighborhoods overall) within these cities experience very gradual growth in poverty over time, and from a much lower baseline. A sharp decrease in public assistance use occurs between 2000 and 2010 for both riot neighborhoods and neighborhoods overall, with public assistance use between both types of neighborhoods converging to less than 10 percent.

In figure 10, among the black neighborhoods, we observe that riot-affected neighborhoods have even higher poverty rates than the already-elevated levels generally, by approximately 3 to 5 percentage points. These rates, above 30 percent after 1970, are higher than national averages. For black neighborhoods, these levels roughly mirror trends at the individual and family level for black Americans, for whom poverty has held steady at between approximately one in four for individuals and one in three for families (Semega, Fontenot, and Kolla 2017). Meanwhile, public assistance use again falls and converges between 2000 and 2010 to under 10 percent. As shown in figure 9, public assistance falls dramatically, a divergence from poverty trends between 2000 and 2010. Given that no comparable, large reduction in poverty, the divergence in contemporary poverty-welfare assistance trends shown in figures 9 and 10 is broadly consistent with major policy changes to the nation's cash welfare program for the poor in 1996 that, by many accounts, have led to poverty without welfare benefits (Blank 2009; Ziliak 2016; Shaefer, Edin, and Talbert 2015).

What Worked and Did Not Work: Neighborhood Policy Since Kerner

Aside from its ostensibly controversial assignment of blame, the Kerner report is notable for proposing a broad set investments-"enrichment" in its language-in the areas of housing, education, employment, and general welfare, coupled with "integration." The commission members believed investments in these areas would satisfy the dual aims of reducing the likelihood of additional violence and improving the life conditions and future prospects of black families and their children. The recommendations and observations of Kerner, many of which Rick Loessberg and John Koskinen summarize in this volume ( 2018), turned out to be especially prescient, given the link between neighborhood-level conditions and long-term individual-level socioeconomic outcomes. Almost none of these proposals, however, were directly implemented in the immediate aftermath of publication. Although a comprehensive review is beyond the scope of this article, we briefly discuss several of these programs that have had impacts on black (and other) neighborhoods and comment on their progress relative to the goals outlined in the Kerner Commission report.

A range of federally funded place-based policies, whether focused directly on people or indirectly by facilitating business growth to address poverty, high unemployment, and urban blight, have been implemented since the late 1960s. Though these policies were not necessarily as ambitious and targeted as those described in the report, they were similar in spirit, particularly in terms of promoting integration of neighborhoods, encouraging neighborhood economic development, and improving access to quality education in desegregated schools. In addition, though not place-based, research suggests that several key transfer programs such as SNAP (food stamps) had substantial positive impacts on economically disadvantaged communities including improved long-term outcomes for recipient children (see, for example, Hoynes, Schanzenbach, and Almond 2016).

The passage of legislation such as the Fair Housing Act (FHA) of 1968 and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 were key steps toward the comprehensive federal framework for combating discrimination in the housing market and promoting desegregation that the commission considered of paramount importance. The FHA prohibited discrimination in both rental and owner-occupied housing and, at the time, many hoped it would help promote integration of blacks into higher quality, white neighborhoods (Massey 2015). However, it included no provisions prohibiting discrimination in mortgage lending markets, an omission corrected by the ECOA. Despite the symbolic power of this and related legislation, segregation between blacks and whites has declined nationally only slightly, though with some variation across cities (Rugh and Massey 2014). Moreover, audit studies suggest that discrimination in housing markets as well as in mortgage lending continue to affect black households.

Likewise, the Housing and Urban Development Acts of 1968 that provided funding for integrated developments outside central cities, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1974 that prohibited redlining of black neighborhoods, and the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 that established a block grant program to support community development in the decade subsequent to the Kerner Commission report's publication represent important attempts to improve the quality and stability of black neighborhoods (see, for example, Massey 2015). Since this early legislation, much neighborhood development policy has come in the form of place-based economic development initiatives, some of which Jamein Cunningham and Rob Gillezeau also discuss in this volume ( 2018).

Among the most ambitious of these policies that are in the spirit, if not in the implementation, of the Kerner Commission report have been the establishment of enterprise and empowerment zones to promote economic development and private investment, primarily beginning by federal initiative in the 1980s and 1990s and later by states (Neumark and Simpson 2014). These strategies, which vary in intensity and size across jurisdictions, are often organized as tax incentives to promote hiring local workers, firm location, and investment within distressed areas (see, for example, Ladd 1994).

Evaluations of the net benefits of establishing such zones, however, are somewhat controversial (see Neumark and Simpson 2014). David Neumark and Jed Kolko, for example, argue in an evaluation of California's enterprise zones that the program was largely ineffective ( 2010). Like a number of studies published earlier, they find little evidence of an impact from designating a place as an enterprise zone on economic activity. In contrast, recent evidence on empowerment zones suggests that, in areas they were instituted, place-based policies substantially increase jobs and wages relative to places considered for status but rejected (Busso, Gregory, and Kline 2013). Even if the establishment of such zones were beneficial, additional concerns are that such policies help spur gentrification forces that raise rents and other costs in recipient neighborhoods, leading to fears of displacement of typically poorer, nonwhite incumbent residents. As a consequence, potential benefits accruing to existing black residents may be limited. This can occur when, for example, tax incentives to promote development are financed by diminished educational investments-which themselves promote economic development, and when incentives are targeted neither toward firms with a strong propensity to hire nor toward adults who wish to reenter the workforce (Bartik 2018).

Education policies implemented since Kerner include expansion of the federally funded Head Start prekindergarten program, enacted in 1965 to provide educational programming, meals, and other developmental activities to three- and four-year-old children living in poor families. The program was part of President Johnson's war on poverty and expanded in generosity throughout the 1960s and early 1970s with the goal of improving child development and subsequent outcomes during school-age years and into adulthood. Today, several states supplement Head Start with their own pre-K and early pre-K programs (Garces, Thomas, and Currie 2002; Currie 2006).

Within the domain of secondary education, policy responses to the racial stratification inherent in many cities sought to both integrate schools and improve school quality experienced by blacks. Policies adopted in this context include school district-level efforts to equalize educational opportunities across neighborhoods via the busing and transfer of students into higher quality schools and neighborhoods, often based on race and economic status. Frequently the result of court-mandated intervention to desegregate schools, such efforts have borne positive results for students yet at times met with resistance from families who fall within the school boundary (see, for example, Billings, Deming, and Rockoff 2014); many of these programs were abandoned throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

As a result of the pushback stemming, in part, from the altered racial composition of schools and removal of students from their neighborhoods, decentralized school choice mechanisms to improve educational opportunities among black students became increasingly attractive. School choice approaches to improving educational quality among low-income children in disadvantaged neighborhoods introduce competitive market principles into the K-12 educational space by providing vouchers for low- and moderate-income families to attend private or parochial schools or via the introduction of charter schools, privately run public schools. Although proponents laud competition and accountability by giving low-income students and families increased market power, the evidence on school choice and academic achievement is mixed at best and in some instances negative (Angrist, Pathak, and Walters 2013; Baude et al. 2018; Dynarski and Nichols 2017).

IMPLICATIONS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: BLACK NEIGHBORHOODS IN THE CHANGING CITY

As we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is important to recognize that the neighborhoods where blacks live are much more variable than they were when the Kerner report was issued. In addition to suburbanization in many of the larger metropolitan areas, the last two to three decades have seen many blacks return to the South as well as move to other regions of the country-the Southwest, for example (Frazier, Tettey-Fio, and Henry 2016). Thus, in this final section we highlight 2010 socioeconomic statistics for black neighborhoods from a set of comparison cities not directly affected by the riots but generally areas where blacks live. Specifically, these are defined as the one hundred largest metropolitan areas in the 2010 census. 3 A number of these cities were affected by riots-in some cases much earlier in the decade or in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

We begin by comparing black neighborhoods in these municipalities to the average neighborhood nationwide (see table 7). Similar to the riot-affected areas we focused on initially, these black neighborhoods generally lag the average U.S. neighborhood in 2010 across several socioeconomic indicators. Specifically, poverty and unemployment are generally higher, roughly 10 and 6 percentage points, respectively. Moreover, we observe a nearly $15,000 household income gap. Perhaps unsurprising as well, college attainment of those living in these neighborhoods lags that of the average national neighborhood by 7 percentage points. Overall, this fits a pattern that emerges across the indicators presented: riot-affected neighborhoods-and black neighborhoods more generally-lag the nation as a whole on a broad range of amenity and socioeconomic indicators.

RACIAL SORTING AND ACCESS TO HIGH AMENITY NEIGHBORHOODS

Central to the Kerner Commission's concerns was desegregation and improving the quality of living conditions for black citizens. Given that black neighborhoods in riot-affected cities remain largely stable and persistently segregated, it is of interest to explore the degree to which blacks have access to higher amenity neighborhoods. As noted, most neighborhood diversity outside the core black neighborhoods in 1970 has been driven by growth in the Hispanic population. Neighborhood changes involving black migration into former white neighborhoods have largely been one way and complete (Card, Mas, and Rothstein 2008). In an era of gentrification, however, there remains the possibility that desegregation will occur through the mechanism of white entry into black neighborhoods.

Table 8 explores how such access to amenities has evolved over time by exploring the joint distribution of average educational attainment and percentage black. While not a perfect proxy, the educational level of residents is usually correlated with a whole host of related components of neighborhood quality. In particular, highly educated neighborhoods typically have higher quality schools, more diversity in food and grocery options, and lower crime. Scholars have speculated that the prevalence of socioeconomically stratified neighborhoods is contributing to social inequality (see, for example, Putnam 2015). Studying how this joint distribution changes over time should provide some insight into how the neighborhoods where blacks live have changed.

We begin by exploring black neighborhoods overall, focusing on neighborhoods that are at least 20 percent or more (plus) black and those 50 percent or more black, respectively. The first panel of table 8, 20 percent or more black, reflects the rise in the number of people holding a college degree nationwide. In 1970, only 5 percent of the 683 neighborhoods that were at least 20 percent black had a population in which at least 20 percent held a college degree; roughly 1 percent of these neighborhoods featured a population in which 60 percent of the population held a college degree. By 2010, the number of neighborhoods where the population was at least 20 percent black had grown to 839. The fraction of these neighborhoods where at least 20 percent of the residents held a college degree had grown to 29 percent, the fraction in which 40 percent held a college degree was around 11 percent, while the fraction of these neighborhoods where the majority of the population held a college degree had grown to roughly 5 percent.

The lower panel of table 8 focuses on neighborhoods where blacks made up at least 60 percent of the population. Reflecting the broader trends in the United States, we observe steady growth in the share of these neighborhoods with relatively well-educated populations. In 1970, only 2 percent of neighborhoods had a population that was at least 60 percent black in which 20 percent of the population held a college degree; only 1 percent had a population where 60 percent of the population held a college degree. By contrast, in 2010 the fraction of neighborhoods with these characteristics had grown to 28 percent and 5 percent respectively. It's clear that recent concerns surrounding the societal implications of class-based segregation, driven by differences in income and education, very clearly have a racial component as well (see, for example, Putnam 2015). Tracts with large shares of highly educated residents rarely contain large shares of black residents.

Table 9 presents these statistics concentrating only on the riot-affected neighborhoods in the data. These neighborhoods generally lag behind on the share of the population that is college educated. For example, in 1970, just over 1 percent of these riot-affected neighborhoods in our data had a population that was at least 20 percent black and had a population where at least 20 percent held college degrees; almost none had populations where at least 50 percent held college degrees. By contrast, in 1970 majority black riot-affected neighborhoods where at least 20 percent of the population held a college degree were nonexistent. By 2010, however, roughly 20 percent of neighborhoods that were at least 20 percent black had a population with 20 percent of their population holding degrees; 11 percent had populations where 40 percent of the population held college degrees; 5 percent of these neighborhoods had populations where 60 percent of the population held degrees.

Turning to the riot-affected neighborhoods that were at least 60 percent black, by 2010, 24 percent had a population that was 20 percent college educated. However, very few of these heavily black riot-affected neighborhoods featured high fractions of college-educated residents: only 7 percent of these neighborhoods had 40 percent or more of their populations that held a college degree, whereas roughly 1 percent featured more than 60 percent of their populations with college degrees. In sum, despite the growth in educational attainment, residents of these neighborhoods typically continue to lag that of black neighborhoods pooled nationally.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This article studies the evolution of black neighborhoods in the decades after the publication of the Kerner Commission report. Focusing on Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark (New Jersey), and Washington, D.C., we match riot locations in these cities with tract-level census data harmonized over five censuses. We use these data to assess how neighborhoods in these areas changed over the period, focusing on a descriptive comparison of the evolution of a set of neighborhoods directly affected by rioting and others not directly affected.

We document a number of interesting stylized facts. First, in the years after the riots, in all riot neighborhoods, especially those that were heavily black, declines on a number of quality-of-life indicators were substantial. Second, the riot-affected neighborhoods in our sample remain among the most economically challenged. In our twenty-first-century look ahead, which is perhaps most pressing, black neighborhoods across cities have tended to appear comparable to riot-affected neighborhoods in these riot-affected cities despite improvements in education among people living in these neighborhoods.

A number of caveats, however, apply to the analysis. The study is descriptive and thus limited in its prescription. In addition, many of the 2010 economic measures potentially reflect the residual effects of the Great Recession and slow recovery thereafter. Because black communities are historically among the most vulnerable, they may have been disproportionately affected.

Nevertheless, the differences in socioeconomic evolution across neighborhood types are present prior to 2010 and illustrate an important conundrum. In the fifty years since the Kerner Commission issued its report, the United States has seen tremendous advancements in educational achievement, access to elite employment, income, and wealth for some blacks-it has even elected a black president. Yet, black neighborhoods, especially those directly affected by the period of rioting studied here, persistently lag the nation as a whole on a number of key dimensions. These neighborhoods typically face greater poverty and unemployment, have lower household income, and have relatively few college graduates. Perhaps more important, convergence across neighborhoods on these measures over the five decades since the Kerner report has been minimal. Within the context of current research, the importance of these findings is clear. A growing body of work shows that place matters for individual economic well-being in large part due to the amenities available in more socioeconomically elite neighborhoods (Chetty and Hendron 2018a, 2018b; Chetty et al. 2014, 2018; Andrews et al. 2017; Islam, Minier, and Ziliak 2015). Improvement of black neighborhoods therefore remains an important policy problem for the nation into the twenty-first century.

In sum, the Kerner Commission report issued a clarion call concerning the disparity in life quality experiences and life chances facing black people as a consequence of institutionalized features of American life. Although many of its fundamental suggestions were never adopted, its lasting legacy remains that it succeeded in making the forceful case that the government indeed had a responsibility and a role to play in mitigating the social and economic harm imposed on blacks by racism and discrimination. The persistent challenges that black neighborhoods face suggest that this argument remains relevant.

FOOTNOTES

↵ 1 Census tract-level information on riot events for the four cities is provided by William Collins.

↵ 2 We focus on riots within these four major cities during 1967, but acknowledge, as mentioned, that hundreds of riots occurred in cities across the nation during the late 1960s.

↵3 For a list of the comparison cities, see table A1.

Open Access Policy: RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences is an open access journal. This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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The Evolution of Black Neighborhoods Since Kerner

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This article studies the evolution of African American neighborhoods since the publication of the groundbreaking Kerner Commission report in 1968. We first examine how black and riot-affected neighborhoods evolved in four representative cities-Detroit, Newark, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C.-during this period.

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1. Black intimate relationships are shaped by structural forces, such as racism, segregation, and economic exclusion.

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3. Factors such as economic insecurity, high incarceration rates for black individuals, and gender norms contribute toward the rise in single Black unmarried females.

4. The fear of being further marginalized can create a stigma against LGBTQ communities.

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Understanding the Barriers to Coming Out for LGBTQ+ People of Color

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Even as societal attitudes and laws have shifted, many queer people from minority communities still stay in the closet. Understanding the reasons why can help health professionals better serve this group, and everyone to better understand the challenges this community faces.