The Process of Racial Resegregation in Housing and Schools: The Sociology of Reputation
Title
The Process of Racial Resegregation in Housing and Schools: The Sociology of Reputation
Author
Wells, Amy Stuart
Research Area
Class, Status and Power
Topic
Race and Ethnicity
Abstract
The United States has a long history of racial and ethnic segregation in housing patterns and public school enrollment as well as efforts to dismantle this segregation. This essay discusses what we have learned in the United States about how difficult it is to halt the patterns of housing and school segregation even as our nation becomes more diverse, racial attitudes are reportedly improving, and the twentieth century urban‐suburban racial distinctions disappear. To explain the process of resegregation that occurs repeatedly, the author developed a new interdisciplinary framework to foster a deeper understanding of how racialized perceptions of places or neighborhoods and the schools embedded within them perpetuates segregation despite changing demographics, attitudes and metro migrations across urban‐suburban lines. The sociology of reputation, the bias of crowds, and the choices of home buyers with the most capital amid the existing separate and unequal structures are the bodies of research the author draws upon to help us see familiar segregation patterns anew.