As you drive around cities you may notice how each city is structured the same based on housing and economic ability. The suburbs are the farthest from the city and most middle classes live in that area. The downtown and rich neighborhoods are in the central location of the city, and the ghettos always seem to be on the cusp of downtown. The formation of inner-city ghettos was strategically placed starting in the 60s due to racial policies.

The Great Migration was a big factor in the shift, which was when six million African Americans migrated out of the rural south to urban Northeast and Midwest for better working and living conditions from 1910 to the 1970s. Factory worker unions were formed and were mostly focused on the rights of white individuals, and the idea of racial differences was still prominent so African Americans were given work in the factories but with fewer benefits as white workers.

Racial segregation traveled down into neighborhood segregation, so black people could only afford to stay in low-income housing near the cities where the factories that they worked were. The cycle of them getting paid less and white people wanting to segregate them led to them stuck in the ghettos. Racial instructions were embedded in property deeds, allowing tenants to legally ensure their property would only be sold to white individuals. Home Loan Programs stemming from Federal D. Rosevelt's New Deal created a practice called "redlining."

Redlining was created by the Federal Home Owner's Loan Corp. during 1930 that marked certain neighborhoods red as hazardous and credit risks which included lower-income, minority groups. Loans in the green and blue neighborhoods were very expensive which made it hard for minorities to own homes in that area and setting the racial wealth gap. As of 2016 stated by Urban Institute, the wealth of white families was over $700,000 higher than the average wealth of black and Hispanic families.

Ghettos create a barrier between ideas, opportunities for wealth and trade, and a feeling of isolation from society. To start at an economic disadvantage is hard to rise out of that situation. The cost of living in inner cities rises due to gentrification and wealthy minorities able to move, while the income of the middle class and lower-class workers remain the same.

Poor people can't afford to live somewhere else. It could make it harder for the following generations to get out since their parents stayed in the ghettos. Resources in funding at schools in the inner-city districts limit children from getting the right education and then maybe the right job that could advance them to being able to make enough money to leave. Ghettos lack income and skills found in other urban neighborhoods, so therefore economic and social advantages are low. It is a constant cycle of stepping one foot forward but the circumstances pushing you five steps back. And it needs to change.