"Why African American History?"

 On the first day of class this semester, Professor McKinney asked, “Why African American History?”

We discussed how none of our history classes had thoroughly addressed the African American experience aside from perhaps a paragraph allocated to slavery and another to the Civil Rights Movement. I have decided to share a bit about why I think this class is important, based on modern day information from the New York Times Census Maps.

http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer

If you have not explored this website before, I highly recommend analyzing the maps of Memphis and your hometown. I came across this website last year in a research course, and I have never been so disappointed and unsurprised before. Many people think that issues surrounding race are no longer issues. Looking between the various maps, you can see which areas of town have the highest incomes, the highest concentration of each race, level of education, whether more people rent or own homes between census tracts, the value of those homes, and even the sexual orientation of census residents. For many cities, resources and wealth accumulate in the same areas, forming what social researchers call the “donut” around the central city. What you will see if you look at Memphis' census maps is more of a backwards “c” because of the river, but the trend is clearly here in Memphis as well. The areas comprising the “c” are remarkably distinct from the areas comprising the inside of the “c.” Towards the river, downtown, some areas within the I-240 loop, and South Memphis can be described by the following:

1. lower median household incomes
2. over 40% population has a household income below $30,000
3. lower median home values, with rent disproportionately high with relation to those home values
4. Fewer high school graduates, and very few residents with undergraduate or graduate degrees
5. Higher concentration of African Americans than Caucasians.

The exact opposite can describe the surrounding areas:

1. higher median household incomes
2. Less than 20% population has a household income below $30,000
3. Higher median home values, with very few instances of rent at all
4. More high school, college, and graduate school graduates.
5. Higher concentration of Caucasians than African Americans.

Seeing the way our city is broken down and divided can help when explaining to others the importance of understanding African American History. These differences among areas of town are not coincidental: they are systematic. They are institutional. Interacting with our world intelligently requires that we have an understanding of our past. I hope that some of you will do some exploring of some other cities on this website to see just how generalizable this “donut” phenomenon is. Resources, wealth, public services, valuable property—these all evolve with racial migrations across cities. As urban areas develop, the people who can afford those newly developed properties are the people who get them. The people who were paid enough to afford these properties were mostly white. Throughout the history of Memphis, and from information about today's Memphis, we can see this trend. As the resources began to sprawl from the central city to the outskirts, wealthy, white Memphians moved with those resources. When white wealth was removed from areas in the central cities, their money was no longer invested in public or private services, and the areas declined. Even since this census data was collected and these maps created, there have been more events to continue this trend.

One example of this is the school system. Many areas with municipal governments surrounding the Memphis area sought and seek independence from Memphis city control. This would mean that a portion of tax money from a municipality would go directly to that municipality's schools, and not to schools within Memphis. In one fell swoop, this removes resources from schools within Memphis city and adds resources to schools in areas that already have high rates of investment and success.

There are plenty of examples and evidence of continued systematic and institutional racism. That alone explains the need for this class.