Second Thoughts On The Second Ghetto

Abstract

A retrospective look at the origins of Making the Second Ghetto places it at a historiographical crossroads. Emerging from the first generation of “ghetto” studies, it tried to recover lost fragments of the recent past as it evolved from a narrow study of racial violence into a broader history that integrated questions of territoriality, public policy, and postwar urban development. In pushing the study of African American urban history forward chronologically and hinting at the dynamism of Chicago’s changing black communities, it hoped to provoke a fresh look at contemporary racial issues. More recent scholarship has included new attempts at periodization, the controversial emergence of “whiteness” studies, and the debate between those advocating a policy of dispersal as opposed to one that “gilds” the ghetto. Whatever scholarly legacy is left behind by the “second ghetto” owes much to the hard work of others—beginning with the generous contributors to this forum.