Timely NYT article can connect students with A Raisin in the Sun and present-day inequality

Are you teaching A Raisin in the Sun this year? Are you looking for a new substantive hook to help your students understand what’s at stake in Hansberry’s play? Do your students need help thinking about why the Younger family was willing to risk so much (humiliation, violence) to move to Clybourne Park? The New York Times has a great article that can help.

Clyde Haberman begins his important piece by asking: “Should your ZIP code determine your future?” It’s a catchy but moot question. Our ZIP code does play a huge role in determining our futures. This is what Hansberry and the Younger family understood and what underscores the continuing importance of Hansberry’s brilliant A Raisin in the Sun. (If you have been using our volume Using Informational Text to Teach A Raisin in the Sun, you will immediately see how this new article fits in with the units on housing discrimination past and present and socioeconomic mobility and inequality featured in the book.)

Haberman’s “Housing Bias and the Roots of Segregation” is a companion to a 15-minute video, part of the Retro Report, a video documentary series examining major news stories of the past. (The video, or a short part of it, can be a great way to hook your students into thinking about this weighty topic before reading the article.) In particular, The Times’ article and video focus on Dorothy Gautreaux and her lawsuit, some fifty years ago, against the Chicago Housing Authority. The lawsuit resulted in the Gautreaux Assisted Housing Program, giving a small number of families vouchers to resettle in white, affluent suburbs. The children in these families thrived, despite racism and setbacks. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration created a similar program, Moving to Opportunity. Read the article to see the complex analysis of the results of the Clinton administration’s attempt to address housing segregation and social inequality.

The story of the Younger family and Mama’s attempt to give her grandson Travis a better future by moving him to a white, more prosperous neighborhood is no crusty, irrelevant tale from our distant past. As Haberman reports, from 2000 to 2013, the number of Americans living in “concentrated poverty rose to 13.8 million from 7.2 million, with African-Americans and Latinos disproportionately represented.” These young people, like Travis, may not be entirely trapped by their zip codes, but they are significantly, tragically disadvantaged. Hansberry’s play, sadly, reflects an enduring reality that the Obama administration, as the article details, is now making its own attempt to address. In our own way as educators, by exposing our students to such complex, important texts, we can help them develop the powerful knowledge and critical thinking skills they will need to address these issues themselves.