Important Discussions are Taking Place in Pittsburgh – Root Shock Adopted at the University of Pittsburgh

August 21, 2009 at 8:56 pm Leave a comment

By Mindy Fullilove, who is a M.D. and professor of public health at Columbia University, Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do About It is an important discussion of urban renewal and its effect on the African American community, when between 1949 and 1973 this federal program, spearheaded by business andreal estate interests, destroyed 1,600 African American neighborhoods in cities across the country.

Root Shock has been taught in several courses including the University of Pittsburgh’s course on the History of Black Pittsburgh.

“There is a sense in America that every day is morning time and that everything can be remade. In a powerful dissenting voice Mindy Fullilove says no: a society cannot knock down local worlds and tear up the roots of its people without bad things happening.  Tearing up Ebbets Field led the way to the destruction of the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and removed more than the Brooklyn Dodgers, but whole lives. Dr. Fullilove uses many such examples to illustrate ‘root shock’. Its effects have traumatized generations of Americans, and especially African Americans. This powerfully imaginative work by a leading social psychiatrist offers original ideas that sponsor not just a critique but ways to respond and prevent a major source of social and health problems in our time. A book of real importance.”–Arthur Kleinman, Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology,  Harvard University

For more information on the book and the author, click here.

To read an excerpt, click here.

Order an exam copy here.

Entry filed under: African and African American, Sociology. Tags: African American, cities, community, crime, ghetto, History, inner city, root shock, Sociology, urban renewal.