Brooke …show more content…
Though assimilation is one method of creating a false sense of urban unity, certain populations are strategically barred from social climbing to prevent division among privileged groups. In his analysis, Danztler notes that Black Americans are excluded from Park and Burgess’ idea of unity in an urban landscape. They claim there is a biological factor that prevents people of African descent from becoming functioning members of American urban society. This theory, of course, has since been discredited. Danztler, however, this exclusion functionally remains, even among scholars that might consider themselves progressive. For example, the theory that African Americans’ lack of social mobility is caused by biology has largely been replaced by the inclusion of historical racism and segregation. In other words, Black people were not able to integrate into urban society because they were legally prevented from doing so. This is vastly more factual than Park and Burgess’ idea, but it still promotes the idea of Black people being unable to be integrated into a larger American society. Rather than question the reason all immigrants or those of African descent seemed to be placed at the bottom of an arbitrary socioeconomic hierarchy, the scholars Danztler quote simply look for a legal solution, or state there is none. As Danztler argues, neither of these arguments account for the fact that subjugation of people of color is the reason American society is able to exist as it is. As Neely and Samura argue, capitalism is kept afloat by the maintaining of a lower socioeconomic class. Race is the mechanism used to provide societal benefits to the upper