A Shout Out to the Westside of Whoville: Why Majority-Black Neighborhoods Exist

I am always a fan of the Christmas classics from the Temptations, the Whispers, Nat King Cole, and others. I also enjoy old tunes reimagined as hip new groves by singers such as Chris Brown, Mariah Carey, Fantasia, and Christine Aguilera. However, this year, I noticed a lyric from a Christmas song by Busta Rhymes and Jim Carey, Grinch 2000, that made me reflect on America's history of segregation and housing. At the end of the song, Carey gives a "shout out to the westside of Whoville." Even though this lyric made me laugh at first, I began to think seriously about what it means to be from the "westside?"

Instead of the pride that generally emanates from being raised on the Black side of towns in places such as the southside of Chicago or the westside of Detroit, Atlanta, or Las Vegas, I began thinking about the historical, oppressive policies that racialized space up until the last quarter of the century. With that being said, I would have to add Whoville to the collection of cities across America that consciously created majority-Black neighborhoods through forced segregation and housing discrimination.

These areas, also called Black enclaves, exist because they have been victimized by historical and government-sanctioned segregation, redlining, real estate steering, restrictive covenants, income inequality, disinvestment, and generational poverty. Whoville then, for me, loses its innocence and shares the history of property ownership built on the violent colonization of Indigenous People's lands, the brutal enslavement of Black people, and America's broad exploitation of laborers. To put it simply, low-income neighborhoods of color were created through federal policy, systemic racial exclusion, and ongoing efforts to restrict the resources and networks that make the American dream affordable and accessible to all. Additionally, the criminalization of Blackness reinforced segregation and legitimized disinvestment. These dynamics work together to suppress Black economic mobility.

It's okay to shout out to the westside of Whoville even though these Black enclaves were consciously designed to put "social distance" between certain ethnic groups and others. No matter how we got there, property is not only a path to accumulate wealth; it is also a state of belonging and identity. So, the pride in where we're from is warranted. However, suppressing black mobility is not okay. Here is the point where solutions are welcome.

Without our government's purposeful imposition on racial segregation, other causes such as private prejudice, white flight, and self-segregation still would have existed but with far less opportunity for expression.As citizens in this democracy, we bear a collective responsibility to enforce our constitution and rectify past violations whose effects endure today. Whatever routes we or our particular ancestors took to get us to this point, we are all in this together now.