Vacant lots. Historic buildings overgrown with weeds. Walls and alleyways covered with graffiti. These are sights associated with countless inner-city neighborhoods in America, and yet many viewers have trouble getting beyond the surface of such images, whether they are denigrating them as signs of a dangerous ghetto or romanticizing them as traits of a beautiful ruined landscape. The Street: A Field Guide to Inequality provides readers with the critical tools they need to go beyond such superficial interpretations of urban decay.
Using MacArthur fellow Camilo José Vergara’s intimate street photographs of Camden, New Jersey as reference points, the essays in this collection analyze these images within the context of troubled histories and misguided policies that have exacerbated racial and economic inequalities. Rather than blaming Camden’s residents for the blighted urban landscape, the multidisciplinary array of scholars contributing to this guide reveal the oppressive structures and institutional failures that have led the city to this condition. Tackling topics such as race and law enforcement, gentrification, food deserts, urban aesthetics, credit markets, health care, childcare, and schooling, the contributors challenge conventional thinking about what we should observe when looking at neighborhoods.
Author(s): Naa Oyo A. Kwate
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 192
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Foreword / Darnell L. Moore
Introduction / Naa Oyo A. Kwate
Part I. State Systems and Predatory Profit
No. 1 Racial Patterning of Travel in America / Norman W. Garrick
No. 2 Dignity in an Era of Financialization / Anthony S. Alvarez
No. 3 The Inequitable Erosion of Hospital Care / Alecia J. Mcgregor
Part II. Symbols and Sentiments
No. 4 Building Codes: Built Elements of the Housing Landscape / Zaire Z. Dinzey-Flores
No. 5 Symbols of Social Suffering / Jacqueline Olvera
No. 6 Dissonance / Naa Oyo A. Kwate
No. 7 Race, Gentrification, and the Making of Domestic Refugees / Stacey Sutton
Part III. Social Stories and Stigmatized Space
No. 8 Housing Segregation and the Forgotten Latino American Story / Jacob S. Rugh
No. 9 Stolen Narratives and Racialized Structural Inequality / Jay A. Pearson
No. 10 Disinvestment v. The People’s Persistence / Mindy Thompson Fullilove
No. 11 Racial Patterning of Fast Food / Naa Oyo A. Kwate
Part IV. Safety and Security
No. 12 Persistence of Black/White Inequities in Infant Mortality / Kellee White
No. 13 Urban Childcare Dilemmas / Janice Johnson Dias
No. 14 Disinvestment in Urban Schools / Leconté J. Dill
No. 15 Racism in Law Enforcement / Craig B. Futterman, Chaclyn Hunt, and Jamie Kalven
Acknowledgments
Notes on Contributors