SEGREGATION IN THE NORTH

...The whole discussion of "solutions" now rests too largely upon moral terms...

...The wealth of the United States has historically been used to remove issues from the idealistic to a cash basis, and in the race issue, too, cash may be an effective slave for moral wounds...

...The most likely political development is the organization of Negroes for ends conceived primarily to the advantage of the Negro community...

...For example, there are a number of newly built areas in the central cities whose attractiveness, proximity to work, and recreational facilities make them highly desirable living places...

...The simple human desire for sociability is also an important concentrating factor...

...They will find greatly exacerbated what is already keenly felt in a majority of states: the conflict between the great urban center and the rural "down-state" or "upstate" areas...

...Education and community organization can extend tolerance and thus increase the proportion of Negroes in a given area before the tip point is reached...

...and F.H.A...

...And while Negroes, like other urban immigrants, can lose undesirable social attributes, they cannot lose their color...

...2) there would be fewer and smaller all-Negro neighborhoods...

...Urban renewal must be conceived in square miles...

...It means fostering a smaller discrimination in the hope of scotching a larger one...

...from block activity preparing the way for Negro neighbors to nation-wide programs that implement basic Negro civil rights...

...The general picture of the future is clear enough: large non-white concentrates (in a few cases, majorities) in the principal central cities, and large white majorities, with segregated Negro enclaves, in the surrounding areas...

...Indeed, mobilization of resources must take place over a wide range: from training police officers in problems of race relations to establishing special community programs for the improvement of interracial contacts...

...The middle-class Negro suburb would foster these attributes...

...Many of their provisions have little to do with the maintenance of standards of health and decency...

...Anything less than a massive program may have admirable local effects for a few people, but will not meet the basic problem of the division of races on urban-suburban lines...

...Whatever may be accomplished by individual home owners and real estate specialists will not be sufficient to reverse the massive population trends...

...and (3) individual Negroes would self-selectively distribute themselves, as white populations do, among neighborhoods whose social characteristics are roughly like their own...

...But it would go part way, and it would also mitigate some of the consequences of segregation for the social and economic life of the central cities...

...Of greater relevance here, if non-whites possessed genuine residential mobility it follows that (1) there would be less overcrowding in Negro areas...

...The very fact that the tip point phenomenon is so universal constitutes strong evidence in favor of control...

...The investment in almost any city of, say, a million dollars in a revolving fund for the purchase of homes to foster interracial neighborhoods could, with careful planning and public relations, make a dent in the pattern of segregation...

...Every community facility—churches, schools, labor unions, recreational groups, economic organizations, and government—can be enlisted...

...Rebuilding on this scale would provide one opportunity to achieve inter-racial communities...

...There is no exception in the 14 cities to the pattern of the widening gap between the proportion of Negro city dwellers and Negro suburbanites...

...How will they use it if they become the majority—or at least the largest single group—in some of the great cities of the nation...

...If local police forces will not protect the property and lives of Negro purchasers of suburban homes, then procedures for training, replacing, or penalizing such officials must be adopted...

...Within the cities, the first social consequence of this racial schism is a spreading of slums...

...The effect is to make suburban housing too expensive for even the Negroes who otherwise could afford, and would prefer, suburban living...

...Even under a metropolitan government, the people in outlying areas could resist, politically and socially, the movement of what they consider "undesirable ele-ments" into their communities...

...Other actions to the same end can be expected, especially the gerrymandering of Negro populations so as to deny them equitable representation in legislative bodies of city, state, and nation...

...Non-discrimination laws are difficult to enforce...

...A good case can be made for a federal program to provide suburbs with aid for community facilities they already need and will need even more in years to come: schools, parks, libraries, swimming pools, and the like...

...The suburbs of the metropolitan areas show quite a different picture...

...This is not to argue for any particular measure, but rather to suggest the need for inventive action...

...The demand for Negro suburban housing will greatly exceed the receptivity of the established suburbs, especially if central city rebuilding is undertaken on the scale that is needed...

...There is no free market for Negro housing...

...Such a political effort might aim to destroy zoning and building restrictions for the immediate purpose of enlarging opportunities for desperately needed Negro housing against stubborn social pressures...

...It is, rather, counsel for the strategy of induced social change...

...Clearly no requirement based directly upon a racial classification would meet constitutional standards...

...The negative consideration is obvious: all Negro-suburbs would simply substitute one sort of segregated life for another...

...For this reason, as well as the need to meet short-run housing requirements, experiments with all-Negro suburban communities should be encouraged...

...The tipping phenomenon has meant that interracial communities in the United States exist only where there also exist limits on the influx of non-whites...

...His books include "Americans Betrayed," "The Loyal and the Disloyal," and, with Edward C. Ban-field, "Government and Housing in Metropolitan Areas...

...If established realtors will not sell to Negroes, others should be encouraged, and perhaps paid, to do so...

...If racial separation and segregation lead to evil consequences, the cure is obvious...

...There is, of course, the real danger that interracial living will not be the next step, but that, instead, whites will continue to resist interracial living...

...even where good will, community effort, and financing have been readily available, the psychology of tipping has operated...

...Once the proportion of non-whites exceeds the limits of the neighborhood's tolerance for interracial living (this is the "tip point"), the whites move out...

...the separation should be ended...

...But others, some willingly as a badge of liberality, some with trepidation, will not move if a relatively few Negroes move into the same neighborhood, the same block, or the same apartment building...

...Some white residents will not accept Negroes as neighbors under any conditions...

...Private organizations could similarly reward suburban communities that make it easy for Negroes to live there...

...It is widely assumed that opening suburbs to Negroes would be easy if there were a single local government whose jurisdiction covered an entire metropolitan area...

...The only significant suburban growth of Negro population has taken place in industrial fringe cities—like Gary, Indiana MORTON GRODZINS, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, was formerly Dean of the Division of Social Sciences...

...This mushrooming problem has been created by the rapid growth of the non-white population, largely Negro, in the central cities of the metropolitan areas of the United States...

...The very conditions of life in the predominantly Negro neighborhoods lead the larger population to resist their expansion...

...In other cases, control of in-migration has been consciously contrived...

...Yet the last word must emphasize the inescapable responsibility for governmental action...

...Thus the Kenwood area of Chicago is truly interracial...

...by the separation of whites and Negroes on neighborhood lines in those cities...

...A needed long-run strategy for government is one that would aid Negroes in removing barriers to their economic advancement...

...from the provision of social service for Negro in-migrants to education programs for prospective employers of Negroes...

...It might be possible to make such newly-built areas model interracial neighborhoods...

...mortgage policies which in effect foster local segregation patterns...

...In that period, the total population of the 14 largest metropolitan areas increased by 19 per cent, with the total Negro percentage gain (65.1 per cent) more than four times greater than the white increase (15.6 per cent...

...In the long run, it is highly unlikely that the white population will allow Negroes to become dominant in the cities without resistance...

...Secondly, such communities, adequately planned and constructed, would provide a great improvement in living conditions, superior to both the urban and suburban slums in which so many Negroes now reside...

...Whatever the melancholy resemblance between older segregation patterns of the rural South and newer ones of the urban North, there is one important difference: the Negroes of the North represent a powerful political force through free access to the ballot...

...On the West Coast, the non-white percentage for Los Angeles jumped from four per cent in 1900 to 14 per cent in 1956, while San Francisco-Oakland went from five to 13 per cent in the past half century...

...One root fact of segregation is that the Negro population, despite individual exceptions, constitutes the nation's lowest income group...

...Housing occupied by Negroes is more expensive, more crowded, more dilapidated, and more lacking in amenities such as private baths than housing occupied by whites with equivalent incomes...

...In considering redistribution patterns, it is also worth noting that Negroes are greatly under-represented in virtually all places outside the South and the larger urban areas of the rest of the country...

...A private foundation might bring the attractions of such developments to the attention of whites by maintaining a good, small museum at such a site, or by arranging concerts there (but at no other nearby place) of outstanding musical groups, or by providing superior park and swimming facilities, or indeed by partially subsidizing rental costs for limited periods...

...A redistribution of the Negro population should include moving Negroes to suburban areas...

...The racial attribute —skin color—is added to the social attributes of lower class behavior...

...And restrictions within the city confine Negroes to limited neighborhoods...

...Other discriminating practices—many of them extra-legal— should be ended...

...The most important general step toward a solution is to remove the restriction on where Negroes may live...

...Such suburbs would be a large factor in redressing the present imbalance in the urban-suburban population distribution...

...What needs to be done is to bring into this stream the larger numbers of young and middle-aged couples who have families and who are not wealthy...

...The consequences would be disturbing, for Negroes will resent their segregation all the more and whites will have no line except the color line on which to take a stand...

...Continued Negro migration, the comparatively greater rate of natural increase among non-whites, and the exodus of whites to the suburbs will continue to raise the proportion of non-whites in central cities...

...One counter-measure will surely present itself to the suburbanites: to annex the suburbs, with their predominantly white populations, to the cities...

...Similar unfortunate effects will follow in the national Congress, once a number of large cities are substantially represented by Negro Congressmen...

...The effects of such an effort should not be overestimated...

...The growing consequences of the racial division, plus the economic plight that many suburbs will soon find themselves in, combine to bring within reach even schemes that at first seem impossible...

...It is commonplace for federal legislation to establish conditions that must be met by local governments before they qualify for financial aid...

...The conversion of a community from white to Negro occupancy is described as "tipping a neighborhood...

...No single measure will solve the problem in any single area, and the same combination of measures will not be appropriate in any two areas...

...Between 1900 and 1950 non-whites in the 14 largest cities of the United States increased from 375,112 to 3,308,698, from 3.5 to 13.2 per cent of the total population...

...This is demanded because the stakes are high: the preservation and further development of many facets of urban American life, for whites and Negroes alike...

...The only interracial communities in the United States, with the exception of some abject slums, are those where limits exist upon the influx of non-whites...

...But the more persuasive evidence is that Negro-white tensions will decrease, not increase, as the races become socially more alike...

...This must be accomplished, however, without producing additional suburban slums...

...The total political forecast of continued racial division is a new round of political repression aimed at Negroes...

...Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the all-Negro middle class suburb could be a significant step in the direction of large-scale interracial communities...

...Negroes made up only four per cent of their population in 1940 and less than five per cent in 1950...

...The variations are numerous, but the theme is universal...

...That many would continue to reside in all-Negro areas, even under circumstances that permit dispersion, would make the dispersion process even easier...

...Lake Meadows, in Chicago, is a good example...

...Panic flights of old-resident whites at the appearance of one or a few new-resident Negro families will be discouraged if the old residents know that, no matter where they move, a similar development might take place...

...A well-staffed, resourceful office with the objective of publicizing successful interracial residential contacts would be a valuable aid to enlarging those contacts and to dissipating images of trouble and violence that widely prevail...

...Given the limited number of non-whites who would choose to take advantage of such laws, their main impact could be in preventing the kinds of concentration that frequently turn present "open occupancy" communities into crowded all-Negro slums...

...the antidote to over-stringent building restrictions is not their complete abolition...

...New areas that open up to Negro residence become grossly overcrowded by conversion of one-family houses to multiple dwellings and by squeezing two or more Negro families into apartments previously occupied by a single white...

...The effort must be aided by governmental programs on a scale far larger than any action thus far undertaken...

...Non-discrimination housing laws would go a long way in encouraging some suburbanization of Negroes...

...The more difficult objection is political, but it is by no means insurmountable...

...Present conditions of life for the majority of Negroes discourage, rather than encourage, the habits of thought and conduct deemed desirable by the larger white community...

...the city is expected to be at least one-third Negro by 1970...

...Within the central cities themselves, whites increased by 3.7 per cent, Negroes by 67.8 per cent...

...Yet it is not beyond the scope of legal creativity to find definitions that would foster racial distribution and yet remain within constitutional limits...

...This sharply raises the question of the desirability of encouraging all-Negro suburbs...

...Homes in this neighborhood are large and expensive to maintain, and municipal housing codes are rigidly enforced...

...Yet the short-run political appeal of this action cannot be denied...

...Chicago, which reported fewer than two per cent non-whites in 1900, is now reliably estimated to have reached 20 per cent...

...Large sums of public money will be required for this sort of program, but the real obstacles are political rather than economic...

...Increased income for Negroes would not end segregation...

...Nevertheless, these areas tend to become all-Negro communities because of their relatively small size, or their situation close to older Negro slums, or because of other factors...

...Beyond them there exists a wide range of more experimental possibilities for both private and public agencies...

...The developers of the Philadelphia suburbs of Concord Park and Greenbelt Knoll maintain a white-Negro ratio of 55-45...

...Yet many Negroes now live in these neighborhoods simply because they have no other place to go...

...People are infinitely facile in frustrating unpopular laws...

...In the short run the national government must end those of its V.A...

...This is certainly too optimistic a view...

...Less extravagant building and housing codes would certainly open some suburban doors to Negroes...

...This in itself is a highly desirable step...

...Payment in the form of needed community facilities should be an adjunct to other action...

...But the limits have proved not to be infinitely elastic...

...Purely economic pressures, combined with community acceptance of those Negroes who can afford to live there, have produced an upper middle class interracial neighborhood...

...The Negro population always increases faster than the living space available...

...If class, in addition to skin color, is a principal cause of segregation, then this barrier may be overcome by the middle-class suburban life...

...If the free distribution of non-white groups is not politically feasible on an inter-neighborhood basis, the creation of a metropolitan government will certainly not make it so on an inter-city one...

...They are, rather, frankly established to stabilize or to upgrade community levels, including the maintenance of their racial character...

...The disadvantages of suburban living have already started a considerable return flow to the cities, especially among older couples, the more wealthy, and the childless...

...If successful, the outcome might merely extend the Negro ghetto and cause a further departure of white populations to the suburbs...

...A program of encouraging migration to small cities would somewhat mitigate the large city, urban-suburban racial division and, at the same time, establish important new opportunities for integrated living...

...There could be a relatively complete dispersion of those so inclined, without their number becoming large in any single neighborhood...

...Here, as with almost all programs of civic change, working through established institutions and existing voluntary groups is the best avenue to success...

...These neighborhoods tend everywhere to become predominantly or completely Negro...

...But in the eyes of the suburbanite it will be justified: he will be annexing the city to the suburbs...

...They are racially blocked, whatever their social bona fides...

...The removal of restrictions would not end Negro residential concentrations...

...Effective, immediate steps to end segregation patterns require social investments of a size that only the government is capable of making...

...Whatever the difficulties of such a position, for a large number of Negroes and whites alike it seems to be preferable to the present pattern of segregated population groups...

...The cultural and economic stakes are too high...

...Experimentation with various systems of controlled migration is highly desirable...

...The moral problem of placing limits upon Negro in-migration to particular urban and suburban areas is not an easy one...

...Even allowing for some return to the cities by disillusioned suburbanites, it is highly probable that within 30 years Negroes will constitute from 25 to 50 per cent of the total population in at least 10 of the 14 largest central cities...

...If local building inspectors cannot be trained to administer laws impartially, they should be replaced by officials who can, under state or federal supervision...

...The history of urban redevelopment thus far is a history of too little, too late...

...Action programs of this sort are obvious needs...

...the white population during that period decreased by six per cent...

...Public acceptance is necessary if interracial living is to be made possible...

...Those cities that become politically dominated by Negroes will find it patently more difficult to bring about the urban-suburban cooperation so badly needed in so many fields...

...This is, first of all, an act of simple justice...

...What strikes the observer is the paucity of imagination that has been brought to bear on the issue...

...Only a limited number of non-whites can both afford and wish to move to non-white neighborhoods...

...no solution is more difficult to implement...

...In a like manner the leadership needed to bring about changes in white attitudes is one that must be aided, and in many cases provided, by governmental action...

...How can white residents be attracted to them...

...Any extensive rebuilding of central cities will displace Negroes who inhabit the urban areas most in need of rebuilding...

...Yet there is much to be said on the positive side...

...This proportionally greater increase of Negroes over whites in the largest cities has been recorded for several decades, but the really explosive non-white growth took place between 1940 and 1950, the decade of full employment and war...

...This will be a historic reversal of the traditional antipathy to annexation...

...This article is adapted from a study entitled "The Metropolitan Area As A Racial Problem," soon to be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press...

...The case for non-discrimination housing laws can best be argued in these terms...

...In Chicago and in many other places, residents of "better" neighborhoods within the central city have successfully opposed housing measures which threatened to bring Negro residents into their areas...

...If Negro-white tensions pivot exclusively on color, they may be pushed to a new point of bitterness and ferocity...

...The marginal attractions needed to bring whites into such attractive areas may in many cases be quite small...

...and especially by the growing separation of class and race on urban-suburban lines...

...and once a pattern of interracial living is successfully achieved it may be expected to continue as subsidies are diminished...

...Suburban restrictions effectively keep the vast majority of Negroes in the city...

...Non-whites in the nation's largest city increased by 41 per cent in the brief span of years from 1950 to 1957...

...Social attitudes change more slowly than laws, and only a moderate movement of Negroes into established suburbs can be expected in the near future...

...Usually, these limits are economic in nature...

...If one unrealistically assumes it were possible for non-Southern cities of from 10,000 to 250,000 population to be increased only five per cent in total population by an in-migration of Negroes, the total number so placed would be only a few more than the number of Negroes in New York City...

...This is not meant to be a cynical statement...

...They therefore do not have the mobility of other immigrant groups...

...Just as clearly, the non-economic factors causing segregation, especially, but by no means exclusively, among whites, must be recognized...

...Investments in businesses and living quarters would keep even many of those who can afford to move in all-Negro areas...

...Many white families move to the suburbs not because they have Negroes as such for neighbors but because of the neighborhood deterioration that accompanies overcrowding...

...For no problem is a solution more easily stated...

...With the occupational upgrading and increased income that Negroes are achieving in ever-growing numbers, freedom to choose residences would result in a scattering of Negro families throughout the urban area...

...In many suburban areas the extravagances of legal restrictions covering suburban building have an important effect upon maintaining Negro urban concentrations...

...Immediately needed are enlarged programs for housing, urban, and community facilities...

...or in segregated Negro dormitory communities—like Robbins, Illinois...

...The Quaker communities in the Philadel-delphia area provide a model for one kind of controlled migration that is only slowly being taken up in other places...

...Whole sections of cities will have to be made over to attract an influx of stable white population groups...

...Officials have forecast that in 1970 Negroes and Puerto Ricans will together constitute 45 per cent of the population of Manhattan and nearly one-third of the entire city...

...Low income factors alone would confine many Negroes to the least desirable residential areas for a long time to come...

...The 1900 New York percentage of non-whites, a fraction of one per cent, had grown to 13 per cent by 1957...

...The Negro population at least doubled in four central cities while whites in five cities decreased in number...