Description
The author was involved in planning a low- and moderate-income housing project in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York as Mayor Lindsey's administration half-heartedly responded to the urban crisis that helped spark the riots of the 1960s. He describes East New York as a case study in the racist "ghettoization" of a neighborhood that is all too typical in the United States. He explains how as formerly rural-based African American and Puerto Rican populations moved into the city, they were channeled into East New York, where they were economically exploited by landlords, real estate brokers, and many others, as well as neglected by city government which utterly failed to provide the neighborhood with schools or other essential city services. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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In response to the riots of the mid-‘60s, Walter Thabit was hired to work with the community of East New York to develop a plan for low- and moderate-income public housing. In the years that followed, he experienced first-hand the forces that had engineered East New York’s dramatic decline and that continued to work against its successful revitalization. How East New York Became a Ghetto describes the shift of East New York from a working-class immigrant neighborhood to a largely black and Puerto Rican neighborhood and shows how the resulting racially biased policies caused the deterioration of this once flourishing area.A clear-sighted, unflinching look at one ghetto community, How East New York Became a Ghetto provides insights and observations on the histories and fates of ghettos throughout the United States.
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