This powerful and disturbing book clearly links persistent
poverty among blacks in the United States to the unparalleled
degree of deliberate segregation they experience in American
cities. American Apartheid shows how the black ghetto was
created by whites during the first half of the twentieth century
in order to isolate growing urban black populations. It goes on
to show that, despite the Fair Housing Act of 1968, segregation
is perpetuated today through an interlocking set of individual
actions, institutional practices, and governmental policies. In
some urban areas the degree of black segregation is so intense
and occurs in so many dimensions simultaneously that it amounts
to "hypersegregation." The authors demonstrate that this
systematic segregation of African Americans leads inexorably to
the creation of underclass communities during periods of
economic downturn. Under conditions of extreme segregation, any
increase in the overall rate of black poverty yields a marked
increase in the geographic concen