Compton, California and Harlem, NYC

            Harlem, a neighborhood of New York City and Compton, California are two areas in the United States that have fallen victim to racial discrimination and marginalization. During the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, well-educated African-American people began producing literature that explained the horrors of racism. Rap musicians in the mid-1980s began producing aggressive music against white people for their unfair treatment of black people in the area. Although the Harlem Renaissance occurred about 60 years before the rise of "gangster rap" of Compton; both areas produced art that has been heavily censored. The racial discrimination of these predominately black areas produced art that speak negatively of white people and the terrible way they treated the black citizens. Areas that produce high volumes of censored art prove the negative effect of marginalization as described by David Sibley in Geographies of Exclusion; the art is censored to hide the acts of racial discrimination of black people.
             Throughout history, marginalization has taken place usually by the white population of the country. In Geographies of Exclusion by David Sibley, this idea is described with the intention of a dominant group of people trying to obtain more power. "Power is expressed in the monopolization of space and the relegation of weaker groups in society to less desirable environments" (ix). An example of this idea would be areas similar to Compton, Harlem, and the Black Belt of Chicago which was the neighborhood of Bigger Thomas from Richard Wright's Native Son. Bigger is forced to live in a small one-room apartment with his brother, his sister, and his mother. Every family in his neighborhood is black and all feel the same constant stress from living in such small rooms for an unfair price. "He was sick of life at home. Day in and day out there was nothing nut shouts and bickering.