Laws set in motion a century earlier had created a black ghetto economy that was uniquely ruinous. Black poverty, having been created by economic exclusion and segregation, was distinct from white poverty. The urban ghettos were zones with fewer public resources such as quality schools, roads, hospitals, universities, and infrastructure. In fact, even the urban renewal programs that upgraded and revived America’s cities in the 1960s did so at the expense of the black population. James Baldwin referred to “urban renewal” programs as “negro removal,” for the effect was that highways and roads
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