Reading Response

I found "The Construction of the Ghetto" article to be very informative. I never really understood ghettos very well. Such as: where it originated and when it started, but after reading this article I feel like I have a better understanding on explaining the color line and can go more in depth on the topic. I had no idea that ghettos went way back to the turn of the century. Something that I found helpful was the table,(Isolation Indices By Year). This was rather shocking to me because I had no idea how low the black neighborhood percentages were starting out with the majority living in white areas. Almost every city started out with a low black percentage and then significantly increased. Take Chicago, which once started out at 8% black in the 1890's and then boomed to well over 70% by the 1930's. Most cities were like this except Minneapolis and San Francisco both saw the black ghettos stay about the same. The author made a good point while stating that blacks started mainly out in the north, ex: like Indianapolis, Kansas City, Philadelphia, etc. However, they made there way down to the south within that forty year period.