Answer all the questions

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For this unit, you need to complete the following readings:
1. Lipsitz: The Possessive Investment in Whiteness (Rethinking the Color Line chapter 19)
2. Vitchek: Confessions of a Blockbuster
3. Zacks: How Blockbusting and Real Estate Profiteers Cash in on Racial Tension
4. Chang: Living in a Poor Neighborhood Changes Everything about Your Life
5. Biewen: White Affirmative Action (Seeing White podcast series, part 13) (Transcript)
6. Overberg and Rust: For Apple users (with images): Chicago vs Dallas: Why the North Lags
behind the South and West in Racial Integration.
For Windows users (without images): Chicago vs Dallas: Why the North Lags behind the
South and West in Racial Integration
Type answers to the following questions and submit them via Blackboard as a Word or PDF
document. For questions 1-2, use the Racial Dot Map. There is a link to the map in the unit folder.
7. According to the Vox article by Chang, how does growing up in poverty impact children?
8. How did the Move to Opportunity program attempt to help ghetto residents? What effects did
it have?
9. Explain how the programs such as the construction of segregated public housing, slum
clearance, and highway construction were (to use Lipsitz’s term) “possessive investments in
whiteness.”
10. Explain how contract buying differs from buying a home with a mortgage loan from a bank or
other financial institution.
11. What are the advantages and disadvantages for the home buyer in buying a home on
contract?
12. Explain blockbusting. How did it work?
13. Why would home owners sell their homes to a blockbuster? How did white flight and
blockbusting impact the residents who didn’t leave their home/city.
14. According to Biewen and Kumanyika, what’s wrong with Dan Pliska’s discussion of reverse
racism?
15. Explain Kumanyika’s point here: “I don’t know if it’s worth our energy as Black and brown
people to drag folks kicking and screaming to acknowledge some, you know, some of these
basic facts” (p. 21 of transcript).
16. Explain Kumanyika’s point about “watch whiteness work” (p. 23). How do he and Biewen
apply this notion to Dan Pliska’s comments? How is whiteness working in Pliska’s comments.
17. Kumanyika states “when you have institutionalized a power arrangement that creates paths
of least resistance, that means that you’ve set up this society in a way where all everybody
has to do is go through it in the way that’s least hard, that’s convenient, everybody just has to
wake up and do what’s convenient, what’s the easiest, and they’ll be reproducing
that system. And so what it really means is that you benefit from this system and
you reproduce it just because you woke up everyday and did what was the easiest thing
to do to get through” (p. 27). Give an example situation that fits Kumanyika’s point.
18. 3-2-1 exercise: Explain three things you learned in this unit, two things you found particularly
interesting, and one question you still have.
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Opportunity Atlas
Opportunity Atlas
Related to the interview with Jesus Hernandez, try comparing predicted outcomes for various groups
in various neighborhoods using the Opportunity Atlas.
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Jesus Hernandez Racism in Fine Print
Jesus Hernandez Racism in Fine Print
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CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index Map
CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index Map
Social vulnerability refers to the potential negative effects on communities caused by external
stresses on human health. Such stresses include natural or human-caused disasters, or disease
outbreaks. Reducing social vulnerability can decrease both human suffering and economic loss.
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Where does the American dream live?
Where does the American dream live?
This is the NY Times video I mentioned in class. It talks about the histoy of the Move to Opportunity
program.