In the spirit of completeness, let me look back to April of this year…
The only book I read was Massey’s classic “American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass” which looked at the scale, mechanisms, and destructive effects of racial segregation in the American context. Over the years, I’ve been shocked by how many people assume that the social & economic effects of segregation are limited (they jump to this conclusion that there’s no difference between the enforced separation created by rigid structural boundaries that have pervasive effects and the discrete choices that individuals make to associate with persons with whom they share common traits). While the idea isn’t in any way counter-intuitive to me, it is nevertheless nice to read a strong explanation of the mechanisms used to preserve segregation and how the cumulative effects have created structural problems in our society that will require significant attention long after our society overcomes its affinity for racial prejudice.
I’m going to try to read some of Massey’s later work to see how he addresses what I’d term the “reshuffling” of the segregated deck that has been brought on by gentrification, and also the remarkable escalation of the consolidation of wealth that we’ve seen in the past decade.
