Serial Forced Displacement & Its Impact on the Social Mobility and Mental Health of African Americans

2015
<strong>Serial</strong> <strong>Forced</strong> <strong>Displacement</strong>
Rick Wallace, Ph.D.
The Odyssey Project
10/16/2015

<strong>Serial</strong> <strong>Forced</strong> <strong>Displacement</strong> & <strong>Its</strong> <strong>Impact</strong> on the Social
Mobility and Mental Health of African Americans
By
Dr. Rick Wallace, Ph.D.
2015 Copy Right © Rick Wallace

<strong>Serial</strong> <strong>Forced</strong> <strong>Displacement</strong> and the Negative Repercussions
Over the past 20 plus years I have invested a great deal of time an effort into understanding the
plight of African Americans, with the intent on devising a comprehensive strategy that can be
implemented and carried out first, on a national level, and then globally. One of the issues that I
identified early on is the fact that there were some exceptional minds that had invested a great
deal of energy and effort into coming up with solutions to specific issues within the black
collective: however, rarely were these great minds working in unison with one another, which is
actually a reflection of one of many pathologies that negatively impact the black collective.
Once I discovered this dynamic of fragmented strategic data, it became my goal to study and
evaluate the information, assess the existing strategies and to develop a comprehensive program
that takes all of the strategies and presents them in a coherent manner — allowing for easy
cohesive implementation.
As I currently work on The Black Community Empowerment Blueprint 1.0, and other active
projects, I am often compelled to share specific details concerning a certain issue that is of
immense relevance in the attempts of blacks to rise up and become an autonomous nation within
a nation.
Today, I would like to share some of my concerns as they relate to what is known in political
science and social science as serial, forced displacement — an act that has been accomplished
through a number of distinct modalities over the last 100 years.
Regardless to what modality that has been used, serial forced displacement is defined as the
repetitive, coercive upheaval of groups (Fullilove & Wallace, 2011). When mentioned here,
serial forced displacement is specifically focused on Government sanctioned methodologies and
tactics that are underwritten by federal, state and local legislation that allows the wealthy to
aggressively, and even hostilely encroach upon the rights and property ownership of the
impoverished citizens of this country, with the vast majority of these citizens being people of
color.
What I am proposing here, based on a preponderance of the evidence that is currently available,
is that serial forced displacement creates a complex dynamic that produces interpersonal and
structural violence within the social structure of those who are being displaced. The empirical
evidence that is available to support this is statistically significant, meaning that it is so great that
it cannot be considered coincidence. Additionally, serial forced displacement also results in an
inability of the affected group to efficaciously respond or react in a timely manner to either,
threat or opportunity — facilitating a cyclical fragmentation as a result the first two issues.
What must be understood here is the primary motive behind serial forced displacement. While it
might be convenient to postulate that this is solely about the opportunity to profit from the
weaknesses and ignorance of the less fortunate — something that cannot and should not be
dismissed, it is necessary to consider a more nefarious idea — planned shrinkage & benign
neglect as a form of population control. Planned shrinkage is a controversial policy in which the

government looks to shrink and manage the size of large cities based on the premise of a
hypothesis by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a man who once championed underwriting the black
economy by creating jobs specifically for black men, in lieu of social programs, such as welfare,
food stamps and Medicaid (Wallace, 2011). Moynihan had developed an ideology that suggested
that larger cities were the cause of the development of certain social pathologies, and reducing
the size of cities would reduce the occurrence of these perceived pathologies. Another part of this
process was known as benign neglect, which is when a city services are purposely withdrawn
from certain neighborhoods that are considered to be blighted.
One way that benign neglect was carried out was by using block grants to shift financial
resources from the inner city to the suburbs — subsequently dismantling existing Model Cities
programs, as well as violating the civil rights act and the civil liberties of organizations and
individuals.
When examining the history of serial forced displacement, and its relentless aggression towards
African Americans, displacing and diluting poor African Americans, it becomes apparent that it
is necessary to investigate, in great depth, the manner in which this malevolent practice has
impacted the physical health, mental health and social mobility of African Americans since this
practice started decades ago.
The term serial refers to a series of either policies and/or occurrences, and in this particular
instance, serial forced displacement refers to a series of policies and the perpetuation of a series
of occurrences in which blacks have been displaced through some form of coercion. Some of the
policies that had a direct impact on the displacement of black families in the inner city include
redlining, urban renewal, gentrification, segregation, planned shrinkage, mass criminalization,
deindustrialization (Something that completely decimated the inner city neighborhoods in
Detroit, MI), catastrophic disinvestment and more (Fullilove & Wallace, 2011).
Other processes that have worked against blacks in this strategic move to displace and
disorganize the black populace include the crack epidemic of the 1980s, and the overcriminalization
of behaviors that are considered to be highly appropriated into the black culture.
We have actually seen disaster be used as a method of forced displacement, with the most
prevalent example of this being New Orleans and the government’s handling of the Hurricane
Katrina catastrophe, which displaced hundreds of thousands of blacks. While the city is
rebuilding and its economy has definitely rebounded, blacks were not included in the rebuilding
equation. A city that has always had a dominant African American representation, no longer
does.
While I use Redlining, Urban Renewal and Gentrification synonymously in most of my prose, it
is necessary to illuminate the fact that while these different mechanisms accomplished the same
goal, the instruments that make them possible are distinctly different — representing different
eras. Basically, when one form of forced displacement would be outlawed through constitutional
amendment or statutory evolution, another method would be created to replace it.
Redlining was a mechanism that was instituted by the U.S. government, through the Home
Owners Loan Corporation in 1937. This was an act that was intended to discourage lending in

what was considered risky neighborhoods, resulting in people from certain neighborhoods being
denied financing. These neighborhoods that were classified as risky were those with older
buildings and black residents. To further elucidate the pernicious intent of this particular policy,
the existence of even one black home owner in a particular community would result in the worst
possible rating, which also created a hostile environment in which whites would fight to keep
blacks out of their community.
Urban renewal was another modality through which the government was able so successfully
displace millions of African Americans. This policy was instituted by the federal Housing Act of
1949 — providing for the seizure of property, through the power of eminent domain, in areas
that were deemed blighted. Once the property was seized, it was cleared of all structures and
property and sold at a discounted price.
Gentrification is a subtler form of serial forced displacement in which investors buy up property
in poor inner city neighborhoods for pennies on the dollar, and then they build properties and
businesses that drive up property values — placing poor families in a position in which they can
no longer afford the property taxes on their homes. In many instances, poor black families have
lost homes that they have owned for decades.
Gentrification is the practice of replacing lower income families with more economically affluent
residents, the rapidity and relentlessness of this particular practice have increased exponentially
over the last 15 to 20 years. While the dominant society views gentrification as a normal and
organic occurrence, it is anything but. The more affluent, predominantly white residents that
push out the impoverished, predominantly black residents are not simply acquiring vacant
property, they are forcibly creating those vacancies — revealing this practice for what it is
authentically — hostile and forced displacement.
In addition to the consequence of creating a de facto internal refugee population, serial forced
displacement also creates a number of significant health and behavioral characteristics that are
inextricably connected to this dynamic, including interpersonal and structural violence, substance
abuse, family disintegration, sexually transmitted diseases and more (DeGruy, 2009) (Rothstein,
2014). To help us understand the dynamics and effects of social disintegration Alexander
Leighton created what is known as the stage-state model of social disintegration, which was
designed to effectively articulate what happens to communities that are negatively affected by a
series of policies designed to forcibly displace them (Leighton, 1959).
Leighton presented two distinct polarities that were identified as integration and disintegration,
with integration existing as an internal interconnection that was underwritten by mutual support.
Conversely, disintegration was characterized by an individualistic paradigm that encouraged
individualism and disunity. The stage-state model presented a hypothesis that proposed that
disintegration was the result of a natural progression in which individualism resulted in a series
of negative events that would ultimately lead to the collapse of the community creating changes
in social results.
Beverly Watkins also contributed to the understanding of the nefarious effects of serial forced
displacement in her study of Harlem (Watkins, 2000). The studies by Watson revealed empirical

data that confirmed that individuals that experienced serial forced displacement suffered from
increasing levels of dysfunction after the occurrence of each negative event. The work conducted
by Watson confirmed the predictions of Leighton — there were consistent occurrences of social
organization decline, fragmented families and disease increased. In fact, violence emerged as a
new behavioral language that had been adopted as a form of communication within the context
of social engineering and manipulation. Basically, the forced displacement resulted in increasing
levels of dysfunction and violence.
In a significantly more complex dynamic, it was proven that planned shrinkage policies focused
on withdrawing fire services from the impoverished South Bronx literally exacerbated the AIDS
epidemic, expanding the area of infection from what was initially a small interconnection of
intravenous drug users confined to the South Bronx to a phenomenon of interconnectivity of
social networks that had become fragmented due to the forced displacement that would have
otherwise remained distinct, meaning that forced displacement connected individuals who would
not have otherwise came into contact with one another on a large scale — allowing the disease to
spread beyond its original parameters of confinement (Wallace, 1988).
Additionally, there have been several studies that reveal that the deindustrialization of black
neighborhoods and forced migration has contributed to the obesity epidemic (Wallace &
Wallace, 2010)
Empirical data produced by Barker and colleagues suggest that all of these negative effects will
persist across generations due to epigenetic influences (Barker, Forsein, Utela, Osmond, &
Eriksson, 2001)
What the aforementioned findings and other studies suggest is that the negative effects
associated with forced spatial and economic displacement will continue to be an issue that must
be addressed over the coming decades if the black collective is to prosper despite them. The
challenge is the fact that there is a proclivity to ignore these negative effects, or even to pretend
that these conditions do not exist. Additionally, what must be resisted is the attempt to ameliorate
these conditions though programs that perpetuate further displacement. What has to be
understood is the fact that the poverty that created this vulnerability in the first place is the result
of an imbalance in the power relationships between two specific groups, which is, in essence, the
reverberation of a racist caste system that has remained consistently in place sense these
relationships began between slaves and slave masters more than 400 years ago.
Additional Resource by Dr. Wallace:
The Mis-education of Black Youth in America
African American Inner-City Violence
The Invisible Father: Reversing the Curse of a Fatherless Generation
When Your House is Not a Home

Epigenetics in Psychology: The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma in African Americans
Molestation, Incest & Rape in African American Families
Racial Trauma & African Americans
African Americans & Depression: Denying the Darkness
The Feminization & Emasculation of the Black Male Image
African American Genocide in America
You can support Dr. Wallace’s work with The Odyssey Project HERE!
Bibliography
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Resilience to Effects of Poor Living Conditions in Adult Life: Longtudinal Study. New
York: BMJ.
DeGruy, J. (2009). The African American Adolescence Respect Scale: The Measure of Prosocial
Attitude. The University of Portland, 1-3.
Fullilove, M. T., & Wallace, R. (2011). <strong>Serial</strong> <strong>Forced</strong> <strong>Displacement</strong> in American Cities 19-1916-
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Leighton, A. H. (1959). My Name is Legion: Foundations for a Theory of Man in Relation to
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