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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VII. Social Inequality - 29. Patterns of Social Segregation and Discrimination - 2. Segregation and Discrimination in Interpersonal Relations - 3. Housing Segregation
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6i8 An American Dilemma
sons seem to be important ones for demanding housing segregation in the
North and are also more freely expressed, while in the South economic
considerations are subordinated to, and all the specific segregations ration-
alized by, the closely interwoven theory of social equality.
For the most part, the etiquette of interpersonal relations between the
races does not exist in law. In the South there are laws to segregate Negroes
in institutions and to restrict interpersonal relations, but there are no laws
to govern the behavior of Negroes and whites meeting on the street or in
the house. The etiquette is enforced, however, to an extent by the police
and the courts in the South as well as by public opinion and physical
violence: policemen in the South consider the racial etiquette as an extension
of the law, and the courts recognize ^^disturbance of the peace” as having
almost unlimited scope.^ The main sanctions are those of individual or group
opinion and violence. Deprived of police and court protection, and usually
dependent economically on white opinion, the Negro cannot take the risk
of violating the etiquette.
3. Housing Segregation
If sexual segregation, or rather the concern about ^‘race purity,” is basic
to most other forms of segregation psychologically—in so far as it gives
them a main rationalization and an emotional halo which they otherwise
should not have—residential segregation is basic in a mechanical sense. It
exerts its influence in an indirect and impersonal way: because Negro people
do not live near white people, they cannot—even if they otherwise would
—associate with each other in the many activities founded on common
neighborhood. Residential segregation also often becomes reflected in uni-
racial schools, hospitals and other institutions. It is relatively more impor-
tant in the North than in the South, since laws and etiquette to isolate
whites from Negroes are prevalent in the South but practicdly absent from
the North, and therefore institutional segregation in the North often has
only residential segregation to rest upon. For this reason, we shall empha-
size the Northern situation in this section.
Housing segregation necessarily involves discrimination, if not supple-
mented by large-scale intelligent planning in the housing field of which
America has as yet seen practically nothing. Housing segregation represents
a deviation from free competition in the market for apartments and houses
and curtails the supply available for Negroes. It creates an ^^artificial scar-
city” whenever Negroes need more residences, due to raised economic
standards or increased numbers of the Negro population. It further permits
any prejudice on the part of public officials to be freely vented on Negroes
without hurting whites. This last mentioned discriminating factor is more
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