Crossing the Class & Color Lines – From Public Housing to White Suburbia - Softcover

Rubinowitz, Leonard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226730905 ISBN 13: 9780226730905

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2002

Synopsis

In the United States, it is rare that people of different races and social classes live together in the same housing developments and neighbourhoods. The Gautreaux programme, one of the most innovative and extensive court-ordered desegregation efforts ever, in which thousands of low-income, African-American families voluntarily moved from Chicago's inner city to mostly white, middle-class suburbs, was specifically designed to help redress this problem. This is the story of this unique experiment in racial, social and economic integration that began in 1976 and ended only last year. The book tells of the Gautreaux families' initial discomfort and of the discrimination they felt. Yet it also relates how, against the odds, their lives changed for the better, in employment and education, exploding the notion that poor, inner-city blacks cannot escape the "culture of poverty". Today, with vouchers and certificates replacing public housing, the Gautreaux success story is the most valuable record of the possibilities and limitations of mobility programmes.

About this title

Review:

"This book's history of Chicago public housing should be required reading for anyone interested in social policy in the United States." - Jens Ludwig, Social Service Review; "[The authors"] work is rightly cited as one of the important precedents in the field.... This is a remarkable, unassailable accomplishment and this book is an important record of their scholarly contribution." - John M. Goering, Ethnic and Racial Studies

About the Author:

Leonard S. Rubinowitz is a professor at the Northwestern University School of Law. James E. Rosenbaum is a professor of sociology, education, and social policy and a faculty fellow of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0226730905
• ISBN 13: 9780226730905
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 242