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C Ch ha ap pt te er r 8 8 Austin: A City Divided EMILY SKOP Segregation means “to set apart from others or from the main mass or group; to isolate” (Webster 1983). Because segregation frequently stems from callousness, it may be a difficult subject to discuss. To acknowledge it today is an admission that despite over 150 years of laws and court decisions, behaviors and attitudes have not changed universally. Austin, Texas provides a case study of modern segregation. Social privilege and the processes of minoritization and racialization create the circumstances whereby Blacks in Austin are repeatedly marginalized and dislocated. This chapter interjects a counter narrative to Austin as an economically booming, idea city, home to young, restless, and White members of the creative class, instead describing an Austin characterized by racial and spatial division, particularly between Blacks and the White majority. Based on detailed analysis of newspapers , government, corporate, and non-governmental organization documents, this chapter charts past and present institutional and political forces that have produced a racially and spatially divided Austin. The results indicate that four public policies have been, and continue to be, especially important in creating and maintaining segregation in Austin: the 1928 City Plan, the 1956 Federal Highway Act, the 1972–1975 Urban Revitalization Program , and the 1998 Smart Growth Initiative. Each of these public policies played an active role in imposing both symbolic and ecological constraints on people’s movement, and thus effectively isolated Blacks from the rest of the community. MINORITIZATION AND RACIALIZATION Regarding social conditions that lead to the formation of segregated neighborhoods, Hayden, an urban historian, argues “one of the consistent ways to limit the economic and political rights of groups has been . . . by limiting access to space” (Hayden 1995). Indeed, numerous scholars have pointed out the key role of space in the negotiation of social identities, and in creating both spaces of inclusion and spaces of exclusion (Anderson, 1987; Jackson 1987; Dear and Wolch 1990; Duncan and Ley 1993; Bonnett 1997; Frazier and Tettey-Fio 2006). Space, they argue, serves to reify disempowerment, disadvantage, and exploitation, at the same time that it also reinforces power, privilege, and prestige. Laguerre’s concept of minoritization figures into this discussion of the identity politics of American cities (Laguerre 1999). Laguerre points out a kind of conflation between metaphorical and geographic space, noting that to be “minority” is not necessarily to belong to a numerical minority, but rather refers to a minor share of social power, which results in and reinforces a concomitant spatial marginalization (Chappell 2006). At the same time, he argues that certain spaces in the social landscape take on a “minoritized” character when they are designated as the proper place for minoritized populations. A landscape of exclusion emerges, and space serves to reinforce racial categories. Geographers have gone further to articulate how race is not only socially constructed, but spatially constituted (Dwyer and Jones 2000; Kobayashi and Peake 2000; Pulido 2000; Hoelscher 2003; Skop 2006). They provide a framework for understanding the ways in which race and ethnicity intersect with other social differ- 110 Emily Skop ences in shaping unequal geographies of mobility, belonging, exclusion, and displacement. These scholars contend that in order to fully understand identities in contemporary cities it is necessary to examine how different subject positions of residents shape their socio-spatial experiences. Particularly important are the socio-spatial relations and struggles between racial minorities and the White majority. Thus, research focuses on the ways in which minorities are “racialized” both socially and spatially to conceptualize their inclusion/exclusion. Both subtle and overt ways in which racial boundaries have been maintained and transformed through time are identified as key in the racialization process. Subtle methods are mostly symbolic constraints, like an invisible “unwelcome mat” laid out in certain areas and neighborhoods of the city, and/or discrimination and racism by outsiders that is difficult to document. Overt actions are more obvious, including physical punishment and violence against individuals when they enter particular areas of the city, various forms of mobility control that restrict access, zoning ordinances and fire and safety regulations that facilitate the production of different kinds of spaces, and highway construction projects that divide neighborhoods through concrete and material barriers. Thus, the particular social and spatial practices of racialization are connected to the wider social structure in which those practices are embedded and from which their meanings and values are derived. These new geographies outline the hierarchies, institutions, and changing ideologies of race...

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