Shivani Amin
September 2, 2015
Dr. Cander
IPPH-Paper #2
Fullilove-Root Shock Analysis Mindy Fullilove reflects on the reality and negative externalities of urban renewal in the three chapters. She discusses the many aspects of how only specific races were targeted and specific socioeconomic class were targeted. Moreover, she implies on the ideas of how urban renewal mostly had negative impacts on the world. She portrays the horrifying effects through interviewing people who were impacted as a result of urban renewal. She mainly focuses her writings on the idea that urban renewal projects caused people not only to lose their houses, but also to lose their relationship with their families, togetherness with their families, and unity of the community. …show more content…
Yet, in order to do so, the government needed to clear certain areas of land. The government mostly target the lands on which low-income African Americans lived upon to create these new “beautiful city”. This is a great example of an underlying theme that the government always targets the poor African American population’s property so that they can create a new society. The government believes it is completely fine that it uses the power of eminent domain to order their citizens to vacant their homes. This brought about the idea of serial displacement. Serial displacement is the idea that forces a group of people to just leave and find a new place to live. As of all these events, there seems to a main theme which is that African Americans always got the lower end of the scale. This seems to violate the Social Contract theory in which that the government is not doing whatever it needs to protect its citizen rather it seems to not care enough for its people. It seems that the government is implying that it does not really care where the African American population as long as they give up their …show more content…
Even though many African American communities were separated, the community that was present always had each others backs and showed a promising form of unity. The African American community learned that it was better that they all stayed together rather than going against each other. Fullilove writes “Actions toward others were permitted and expected. They were extended with the consent of the community, and received in that same vein. This passage through the field of the community, with the consent of the community, meant that the sense of kindness was everywhere, at least within the community.” (Fullilove). This shows the idea that if a community stays in unity, it will fight all the demons that come towards them. Fullilove and her research mainly bring about the main ideas of how due to urban renewal, many African Americans were mistreated and how mostly the social contract theory was violated. In addition, she portrays how most of the times it was only low-income, African Americans who were targeted for this new idea of urban renewal and she indicated on the idea that the state also failed to protect its members against the injustice or oppression of other