Kailik Faulk

Professor Cory Schnell

CRJU 430
9/23/22

Place Matters: Concentrated Disadvantage

Have you ever heard product of your Environment? I’m sure you have, well concentrated
disadvantage dives deeply into how our circumstances, especially living in poor or high crime
communites, affect us in the most important ways.
Concentrated Disadvantage is termed coined by sociologist and criminlogist.
Concentrated Disadvantage basically emphasizes how people, mainly the african american
community, because this is the community that predominantly effects, are at a disadvantage in
certain aspects as life when it comes to income inequality, social institutions, quality of
education, and healthcare. The reason this mainly effects the Black community because most of
the time they are the ones living in these low income, high crime areas. These areas put them at
disadvantage in almost every aspect of life. For example, schools are funded from tax zones.
These tax zones are based off of the area in which you live. So if you live in a neighborhood
where the property value is high, so will the the taxes collected on the houses be high.
Consequently, with this extra money this school may be able to afford good teachers and other
necessary resources for a good education. On the contrary, the low income areas, the taxes are
much lower and not as much money goes into the school system. This negatively effects the
residents of that area, because now the youth is at a disadvantage when it comes to obtaining a
proper education to get them into college.
Also, often times these high crime areas are often over-policed. So there more interactions a
persons may have with the police.
This concentrated disadvantage that plagues the black community can be traced back to
social disorganization within neighborhoods. While this isn’t the solely contributing to
concentrated disadvantage it certainly plays a key role. From here, these communities become
structurally disadvantaged. These issues not only effected current generations, but generations
following. Creating a compound effect. These macro-issues such as starts at the governmental
level, but trickle down to communities. Poverty and crime plays a huge role in determining
where crime happens, because these people are at the biggest disadvantage. They don’t
necessarily have the foundation of wealth, good schools, good jobs, and etc. It not impossible for
people within these communities to obtain these things. Its just more of a struggle with more
obstacles to hurdles to achieve them. Someone living in poor community parents may not have
the money for their child to attend college. Even though this person made good grades, that
wasn’t enough. So now he is stuck in the same cycle that repeats for generations. People of these
communities sometimes do things they need just to get by, such as sell drugs. Within areas that
have a lot of drug trafficking, people of that community have come to normalize such actions.
This is where we get phrases such as “trap house”. On the contrary, if someone attempted to sell
drugs outside of their home in a surbaban area, it would be frowned upon and probably wouldn’t
last long. Partially, because it is illegal but also the residents of that community wouldn’t allow
it, because its not socially acceptable within that community. Therefore, we see how social
disorganization can play a key factor in determining where crime is happening.
Historical events such as “Redlining” can be pointed to as an example of concentrated
disadvantage. For many decades, in the 20th century, many minorites was discriminated against
when trying to purchase homes. This happened by de facto and de jure means. The ways this
happened is Federal Housing Authority would not give loans to Black Americans,racial zoning
enforced segregation, and racialized practices by the real estate industry. All of this made it
extremely difficult for blacks to be homeowners. Forcing them to reside in government housing
areas, sometimes known as the ghetto. Homeownership is the key to most americans wealth, so
when a specific community is denied this right, it makes it difficult to obtain wealth. Especially,
as we saw values of houses rise in the following years due to things such as inflation. This would
have a snowball effect on these communities. Denying someone the right to live in a certain area,
not only effects them in one way, because where you reside effects the schools you attend, job
availabity, etc.
There is a connection between race, poverty, and crime. The how and why, cannont be
factually identified, only theorized. It can be concluded that this puts certain communities at a
disadvantage. It is hard to push back against this overwhelming force of structural disadvantage,
this can push certain groups to committing more crimes. As the saying goes, the rich get richer
and the poorer gets poorer.