A Political Chameleon: Class Segregation in Kingston, Ontario, 1961–1976

Marxists have made conflicting claims about the political significance of residential segregation but the merits of each viewpoint have not been evaluated. Recent evidence from Kingston, Ontario indicates that segregation has had consequences that were actually contradictory for the development of local political activity. On the one hand, segregation promoted ignorance between classes, encouraging indifference and complacency on the question of class inequality and thereby sustaining political quiescence. On the other hand, it facilitated political mobilization in the form of local residents' groups and citywide organizations of tenants and the working and welfare poor. In Kingston segregation facilitated political activity outside the workplace. Some of this activity was parochial, leading to fragmentation of the working class; some transcended neighborhood boundaries and precipitated a temporary but broad political alliance among the poor, organized labor, and many middle-class people. The internal contradictions in arguments about the political significance of segregation are rooted in the contradictory political significance of the phenomenon itself. Chameleon-like, segregation reinforces existing tendencies in class politics, whether these favor apathy or mobilization. The political significance of residential segregation does not merely arise from its context. It is made.