Evelyn M. Perry
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469631387
- eISBN:
- 9781469631400
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631387.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
This chapter provides an introduction to the Riverwest neighborhood. It situates Riverwest in Milwaukee, a city that is highly segregated by race and class and characterized by deeply entrenched ...
More
This chapter provides an introduction to the Riverwest neighborhood. It situates Riverwest in Milwaukee, a city that is highly segregated by race and class and characterized by deeply entrenched social divisions. It reviews the history of Riverwest and describes how, by the early 1980s, the community became home to substantial black, white and Latino (largely Puerto Rican) populations. The chapter illustrates how Riverwest’s ongoing struggle to manage the countervailing pressures of gentrification and crime and decline is expressed in its geographic location as a buffer neighborhood. Finally, the chapter identifies the face block—the two sides of one street between intersecting streets—as central to local social organization and a key site for difference negotiation.Less
This chapter provides an introduction to the Riverwest neighborhood. It situates Riverwest in Milwaukee, a city that is highly segregated by race and class and characterized by deeply entrenched social divisions. It reviews the history of Riverwest and describes how, by the early 1980s, the community became home to substantial black, white and Latino (largely Puerto Rican) populations. The chapter illustrates how Riverwest’s ongoing struggle to manage the countervailing pressures of gentrification and crime and decline is expressed in its geographic location as a buffer neighborhood. Finally, the chapter identifies the face block—the two sides of one street between intersecting streets—as central to local social organization and a key site for difference negotiation.
Evelyn M. Perry
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469631387
- eISBN:
- 9781469631400
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631387.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Race and Ethnicity
“We are in a bind,” writes Evelyn M. Perry. While conventional wisdom asserts that residential racial and economic integration holds great promise for reducing inequality in the United States, ...
More
“We are in a bind,” writes Evelyn M. Perry. While conventional wisdom asserts that residential racial and economic integration holds great promise for reducing inequality in the United States, Americans are demonstrably not very good at living with difference. Perry’s analysis of the multiethnic, mixed-income Milwaukee community of Riverwest, where residents maintain relative stability without insisting on conformity, advances our understanding of why and how neighborhoods matter. In response to the myriad urban quantitative assessments, Perry examines the impacts of neighborhood diversity using more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews. Her in-depth examination of life “on the block” expands our understanding of the mechanisms by which neighborhoods shape the perceptions, behaviors, and opportunities of those who live in them. Perry challenges researchers’ assumptions about what “good” communities look like and what well-regulated communities want. Live and Let Live shifts the conventional scholarly focus from “What can integration do?” to “How is integration done?”Less
“We are in a bind,” writes Evelyn M. Perry. While conventional wisdom asserts that residential racial and economic integration holds great promise for reducing inequality in the United States, Americans are demonstrably not very good at living with difference. Perry’s analysis of the multiethnic, mixed-income Milwaukee community of Riverwest, where residents maintain relative stability without insisting on conformity, advances our understanding of why and how neighborhoods matter. In response to the myriad urban quantitative assessments, Perry examines the impacts of neighborhood diversity using more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews. Her in-depth examination of life “on the block” expands our understanding of the mechanisms by which neighborhoods shape the perceptions, behaviors, and opportunities of those who live in them. Perry challenges researchers’ assumptions about what “good” communities look like and what well-regulated communities want. Live and Let Live shifts the conventional scholarly focus from “What can integration do?” to “How is integration done?”
