Desegregating the City: Ghettos, Enclaves, and Inequality

3. ETHNIC SEGREGATION IN A MULTICULTURAL CITY

Chapter 3 ETHNIC SEGREGATION IN A MULTICULTURAL CITY Mohammad A. Qadeer Introduction: The Social Context of Segregation Segregation is a word soaked in the history of racial discrimination and colonialism. The word conjures up images of African townships, black ghettos, and native reservations contrasted with colonialist estates, white suburbs, and exclusivist neighborhoods. These places represent not only residential separation by race, color, religion, and/or class, but also a fragmentation of the social order through domination and subjugation sustained by compulsion and ideology. But what if residential separation were not accompanied by enforced social inequality? Would this condition make segregation more tolerable or acceptable? These two questions are critical with regard to the phenomenon of residential segregation found in North American cities in general, and Canada in particular. This chapter examines the social implications of such ethnic concentrations in residential neighborhoods through a critical analysis of their development in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and proceeds from the distinction that Peach (see chapter 2) draws between the ghetto and the ethnic enclave. The ideology of racism was the social context within which racial residential segregation in the United States was forged in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and first half of the twentieth centuries. Although this burden of history still survives in various forms, there has been a paradigmatic shift since the 1960s. The Civil Rights movement and subsequent antidiscrimination legislation in the United States helped to break down the racial barriers that had fostered segregated urban neighborhoods. Varady: Desegregating the City page 49 Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982) and the Multicultural Act (1988) conferred equality rights on all citizens as individuals on the one hand, and recognized their entitlement to preserve their ethnic heritage as communities and groups on the other (Kymlicka 1998). As in the United States, Canada made discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion , or culture and, more recently on gender and sexual orientation illegal . No longer can a landlord or a property owner openly refuse to rent or sell to a person on the basis of race, culture, or gender. Fair housing laws and antidiscrimination provisions of civil rights legislation made it illegal to deny access to housing to persons of color or single women. This legislation has had some impact on the structure of urban residential markets in North America although there is little question that more forceful implementation of this legislation is needed (see Squires, chapter 7). Although overt forms of discrimination have declined, Americans continue to buy and rent in areas where their neighbors come from the same ethnic background. Once one ethnic group becomes predominant in a neighborhood, businesses and institutions are established to support the needs of this particular group, thereby reinforcing the neighborhood as a culturally distinct ethnic enclave (Portes and Bach 1985, 203). Little Havanas , Indian bazaars, Japanese malls, or Mexican barrios bring variety, color, and economic vibrancy to a city giving it an air of cosmopolitanism. The differences between the old and repressive versus the new and expressive forms of residential segregation have not been fully acknowledged by scholars despite the fact that ethnic enclaves are commonly observable in North America. More specifically, sociologists have not shaken themselves loose from the assimilatory perspective of the Chicago School (see Peach, chapter 2; Glazer and Moynihan 1970, and Greeley 1971). European and Canadian scholars are more attuned to differences in the various forms of segregation (Reitz 1980; Van Kempen and Özüekren 1998). Recently, a new theoretical perspective has begun to emerge from studies of ethnic economies and the contribution of immigrants to the economic revival of declining neighborhoods and cities (Portes and Rumbaut 1996; Waldinger 1990; Winnick 1990). Ethnic enclaves and economies are credited with fostering entrepreneurship primarily on the strength of the areas’ social, cultural, and economic networks. Enclaves play an important role in promoting flows of capital and labor (both professional and managerial) across national and continental borders. Varady: Desegregating the City page 50 50 Defining Segregation and Its Consequences Varady: Desegregating the City page 51 Qadeer ethnic segregation in a multicultural city 51 These new realities require that residential segregation be assessed on the basis of its role in a local social system instead of its being viewed simply as a product of racism and discrimination. Canadian Multiculturalism and Ethnic Segregation Canada has always been a country of diverse cultures, from the Inuits in the north to the mixed...