Continued Segregation

One thing we have touched on this semester in our discussions on the post-Jim Crow South is whether or not the movements themselves were successful in racially equalizing society. While the general consensus is that the movements were not totally successful because of the prevalent racism and continued disparity in opportunities offered to people of color, the evidence of this failure is fairly subjective, as evidenced by the interviews and accounts provided in Zandria Robinson’s book This Ain’t Chicago. Those accounts are absolutely vital to understanding the shortcomings in the fight for racial equality, but proponents of the effectiveness of the Civil Rights movement could argue that these are isolated opinions taken specifically for the purpose of that book. However, one piece of statistical evidence proving the continuation of racial inequality is the segregation still very prevalent in large Southern cities.

If you have ever been to the National Civil Rights Museum downtown, you have probably seen the diagram of black and white populations as they are distributed across Memphis. The interesting part about this diagram is not the side displaying the pre-Civil Rights Movement era of segregation, which shows a severe distinction between white areas of residence and black areas of residence in the city. The surprising part is that the diagram of the current racial distribution in Memphis is nearly identical to that of the Jim Crow era of legal segregation. When looking at the shortcomings of the Civil Rights Movement and Southern race relations in general, this comparison is striking. There is often an illusion of progress, especially in the white community, that veils any possibility of systematic racism or white privilege to relieve white people of continued shame and guilt over the racial discrimination that is still pervasive today.

Growing up in the Deep South, I was taught in school to believe that the Civil Rights Movement relieved society of racism in general. But on observing the differences between my middle-class suburb outside Birmingham and the often poverty-stricken suburbs downtown that contained mostly poor people of color, I formed a different view of what racism really was and how it manifested itself in the current moment. That diagram of discrimination and continued segregation represents white fear of being equal and truly racially integrated with people of color, and a continued attempt to morally justify racial inequality with removal from integrated settings. It is incredibly difficult to comprehend solutions to systematic racism when it is fundamentally ingrained in societal values.