Tens are placed along Skid Row is seen in Los Angles on September 23, 2015. ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
District Court Judge David O. Carter had toured Skid Row a couple of times, and that was enough for him to order LA county to house all the Skid Row homeless people in 6 months. However, on September 23rd, the 9th U.S. Court of Appeals overturned his order. The court states that Carter’s order wasn’t supported by the evidence he submitted. However, the court never denied that evidence to be true and they are not disputing his findings.
The premise of Carter’s order was that structural racism has resulted in homelessness that disproportionately affects black communities, and he’s right. According to a report done in June of 2020, 34% of Los Angeles’ homeless are black, despite making up around 8% of the American population. The report also found that black people are four times more likely to be homeless than white people. These numbers align with the racial disparities in healthcare during the pandemic.
The main problem with disproportionate homelessness is that it perpetuates the cycle of poverty within the black community. Black communities have been disproportionately less wealthy than white communities stemming back to the emancipation proclamation, and that has to do with opportunity afforded to them. Because open systemic racism was so prevalent not even 60 years ago in this country, the black community has had very little time to catch up economically to the rest of the country. To this day, that opportunity is still less than what is afforded to the average American. The Skid Row humanitarian crisis and the lack of legal support its occupants are receiving is an example of systemic racism because the system that put them there in the first place not only still exists but is choosing to not do anything about it. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence to support that black people are disproportionately more homeless than other races, but the U.S. court system has chosen to ignore it. The same system that supported slavery, Jim Crow and segregation is choosing to, once again, abandon a whole race of Americans they are supposed to protect.
The topic at hand connects very well to de Beauvior’s concept of the other. The other stands as an opposing group to the self but is often a marginalized group with limited power and resources to change the narrative about them. The homeless population at Skid Row can be grouped into two types of others: poor and black. The poor are seen as the other to the rich, and often black Americas are the other to white Americans. Both are no fault of their own, but the fault of the system that defines them as the other. Because both groups are marginalized, they often lack the resources to change the dynamic. This problem will continue unless the system that keeps black people disproportionately homeless is changed and the matter is addressed from the top.
Article on the Overturned court order: https://apnews.com/article/courts-lawsuits-los-angeles-race-and-ethnicity-racial-injustice-adebc55e26ab811c6e1b363b789f540c
I recently watched a documentary detailing skid row and the current homeless crisis going on in California. I was shocked to learn just how devastating this problem was and how many people are truly effected by homelessness and poverty. It was also apparent that skid row is an area dedicated to those that the federal government deems as “problems: or unworthy of devoting time and resources to.
I have never been to LA, but I have heard about skid row. It is surprising that we as a society have not solved the large amount of homelessness in California. There needs to be more action within the legal system to reduce the amount of people on skid row. It is unfortunate that people on it cannot get the help they need.
I agree with you that it is no one’s fault that certain groups of people have landed themselves in poverty at higher rates than others, but it just happened to be how the system was set up. I am currently writing about this topic for my English class and have also researched the disproportionate amount of African Americans that occupy the homeless population. It is undoubtedly due to systemic injustice in America that dates all the way back to the Emancipation Proclamation. It also is outrageous that the government sees this and continues to do nothing in order to fix this uneven ratio. There needs to be more done to help the African American community that is molded into the homeless society.