Persuasive Paper: The Connection Between Law And American Culture

Persuasive Paper: The Connection Between Law and American Culture.
Profound and positive changes have occurred in race relations in the United States in the past half century. One now sees blacks working alongside whites, blacks being admitted as equals in theaters and restaurants. Legal restrictions on political and voting rights have been erased and the courts have outlawed segregation (Pascoe, 44).
Racial segregation is defined as the practice of confining people to a certain area of residence, facilities and institutions like schools and churches. Racial segregation provides a way of maintaining the economic advantages and superior social status of the politically dominant group, and in the past and present times it has been employed primarily

There is still stratified boundaries of whites/non whites in American society. Results of racism and racial segregation in the past has informed institutional cultures and practices that rest on assumptions of white superiority over people of color. Racism by consequence is then reflected in differential educational opportunities, economic differences and residential segregation. These subtle patterns of discrimination persist because they are supported by the inertia of custom (Meyer 68).
Confronted with the long history of racially discriminatory structures in the housing market, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968. The Housing Fair Act of 1968 prohibits discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin and sex. Twenty- five years after the act was passed and several legislative amendments, however, housing segregation remains rampant. To this extent, Fair Housing Act has failed, in making neighborhoods less segregated and African Americans are still discriminated against in the housing

School segregation levels are high and continue to rise. Recent data show that 72 percent of blacks, but only 11 percent of whites, attend schools where half or more of the students are not white (Massey, 134). Residential segregation also remains high. Data from the 2000 U.S. Census indicate that 62 percent of blacks would need to move to eradicate neighborhood segregation in metropolitan areas (Massey 134). Research has also found that most schools are locally funded. Therefore, the school district’s income can affect school spending and quality which in turn affects educational outcomes (Farley, 750). As neighborhood segregation continues, some school districts get richer and richer and others get poorer thereby increasing discrepancies in school funding (Massey 134). Low income children become concentrated in neighborhoods with few resources spent on schooling and the education quality is seldomly high due to lack of the school district ability to hire high quality teachers, provide important educational supplies thereby, the quality of declines. In the mean time, children that live in richer neighborhoods have more resources and their education increases and is higher