Stuck in Place by Patrick Sharkey

A recent book titled Waking From The Dream explains what happened after Dr. King died; the movement fractured, no strong leader came to replace him, feelings of anger became pervasive, and the new issues, like poverty, drug addiction, teen pregnancy, traumatized Black Vietnam Veterans, and healthcare were not addressed. Now comes this book by Patrick Sharkey about just that; social problems being ignored. But he concentrates on what the media calls “The Ghetto,” and by that we mean the crumbling, depressed, polluted, and neglected inner city neighborhoods, with a majority Black population and few advantages.

A running theme of Stuck in Place is the issue of inheritance. He stresses that Black children inherit the hopelessness of their lives from their parents, and you end up with several generations of poverty and poor health. I was about to criticize the author for using the term Ghetto, but then he clarifies his reasons for using it. He calls it a “special expression of social process” and in a way, it is. After decades of living in disgusting conditions, people forget that there are better places to go, and there are ways to get out. The word Ghetto comes from the Italian borghetto, meaning “borough.” They were quarters of a city designated for the Jewish residents, and that was the only part of the city where Jews could live. They were usually situated in the lowest part of the city, an area that often flooded. Unlike the Ghettos of Venice, Rome, and Prague, there’s no wall around the American ghetto. There are no gates that are locked at night to keep in the residents (or protect them from angry mobs every time a Christian child is found murdered.) You can walk in and out at any time, but why would you? Nobody wants to move into a neighborhood where they’ll be unwelcome.

Atlanta is used as an example of failure and disparity, just like it was used in the earlier The Metropolitan Revolution. Inner city areas are neglected in terms of public services and safety, while the suburbs, with private houses and backyards, are safer and better kept. Though Patrick Sharkey doesn’t use it as an example, Atlanta has massive highways lined with low income housing, and there’s zero safety. Traffic lights are miles apart, and there are few sidewalks. Trying to walk from the apartment to the grocery store is lethal. Now if you’re wondering why anybody would want to live there, think of it like this; the developer buys cheap land, builds crappy housing with cheap materials, and the only people who will live there are those who can’t afford anything else. So you end up with a building full of subsidized tenants on a dangerous road with nowhere to buy healthy food. It wouldn’t take much effort for the city to build a sidewalk, bike path, and add traffic lights, but you have a “fractured municipality” that can’t agree on anything.

Sharkey doesn’t talk much about birth control in his book, which I think he should have. Teenage pregnancy is the cause of a lot of our nation’s troubles, and I don’t see enough effort to out an end to it. All the things that can be done to improve blighted neighborhoods, be they trash collection, birth control, tearing down abandoned property, after school programs, require a strong city government to get things done. The most unsuccessful cities, like Detroit, Newark, Compton, and Youngstown, have had a weak city government. If something isn’t done soon, the future looks bleak.