Redlining
“The American real-estate industry believed segregation to be a moral principle. As late as 1950, the National Association of Real Estate Boards’ code of ethics warned that ‘a Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood ... any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values.’ A 1943 brochure specified that such potential undesireables might include madams, bootleggers, gangsters - and ‘a colored man of means who was giving his children a college education and thought they were entitled to live among whites.’”
Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 13 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is Redlining. The term “redlining” was coined by sociologist John McKnight in the 1960s and derives from how the federal government and lenders would literally draw a red line on a map around the neighborhoods they would not invest in based on demographics alone. Anywhere where Black Americans lived were colored red to indicate to appraisers that these neighborhoods were too risky to insure mortgages. Let’s get into it.
Key Terms
were too risky to insure mortgages. Let’s get into it.
Key Terms
Redlining: The term “redlining” was coined by sociologist John McKnight in the 1960s and derives from how the federal government and lenders would literally draw a red line on a map around the neighborhoods they would not invest in based on demographics alone. Black inner-city neighborhoods were most likely to be redlined. Investigations found that lenders would make loans to lower-income Whites but not to middle- or upper-income African Americans. The result of this redlining in real estate could still be felt decades later. Examples of redlining can be found in a variety of financial services, including not only mortgages but also student loans, credit cards, and insurance.
The Fair Housing Act (FHA): Titles VIII through IX of the Civil Rights Act. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin or sex.
Racially Restrictive Covenants: Contracts placed in the deeds of homes by white property owners or developers that barred purchasers from selling or renting to ethnic and religious minorities.
Eminent Domain: The right of a government or its agent to expropriate private property for public use, with payment of compensation. Eminent domain ''appertains to every independent government. It requires no constitutional recognition; it is an attribute of sovereignty.”
Supermarket Redlining: Highlights how the locational decisions of food retailers are evidence of intentional disinvestment in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Historically, supermarkets grew up along with the suburbs, relying on the sprawling, car dependent landscape of these low density communities. Supermarkets were created with suburban residents in mind, and so the forces that created the suburbs also shaped our food shopping options.
Let’s Get Into It
Timeline
Most Americans acquire wealth from the equity they have in their homes or land, but up until as late as the 1960’s, Black Americans were prohibited from buying homes in the suburbs and denied loans. Let’s break down the timeline and the results of these racist policies:
1930’s: The term “redlining” was not yet in the lexicon but was actively happening. This dividing up of maps was created to tell banks where it was safe to insure mortgages. Anywhere Black people lived was considered too risky.
1940’s + 1950’s: Homes in the suburbs sold for about twice national median income. They were affordable to working-class families with a mortgage. Many Black families were equally able to afford those homes as whites but were prohibited from buying them.
1968: The Fair Housing Act is passed as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. It's an empty promise because those homes are no longer affordable to the families that could have afforded them twenty years earlier when white families were buying into those suburbs and gaining the equity and the wealth that followed from that.
Today: Those same homes sell for, on average, six to eight times the national median income.
Today: On average, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family.
Black Communities That Have Been Destroyed
Way before redlining, there were policies and tactics used to make sure Black people did not acquire wealth. All of the communities below were owned—and then destroyed—all before The Civil Rights Act of 1968 was even a thought.
Seneca Village, Modern Day Central Park (1854): In the mid 19th century, New York City decided it needed a park. By the time the decision to create a park was made, there wasn’t enough empty space left in Manhattan. So the city chose a stretch of land where the largest settlement was Seneca Village, population 264, and seized the land under the law of eminent domain. Two thirds of the population was Black; the rest Irish. 50% of the heads of households owned the land they lived on, a fact conveniently ignored by the media of the time, who described the population as “squatters” and the settlement as “n***er village”.
Black Wall Street (1921): Tulsa, Oklahoma’s Greenwood District, known as Black Wall Street, was one of the most prosperous Black communities in the United States. O.W. Gurley purchased 40 acres of land in 1906 and only sold it to Black people. There were banks, hotels, cafés, clothiers, movie theaters, contemporary homes, indoor plumbing and an advanced school system. Six Black families were even said to have owned their own airplanes. When a white women said she was raped by a Black man, an angry white mob destroyed thirty-five city blocks. 300 people died, and 800 were injured. The police disregarded due process, arresting blacks and interning them in detention camps; meanwhile, no whites were arrested.
Bruce’s Beach (1924) : In 1912, Charles and Willa Bruce bought land, between 26th and 27th streets in LA, that they would soon turn into a resort for Black people in a time when beaches were segregated. In 1924, Manhattan Beach took over the resort via eminent domain. The city tore the resort down three years later. In 2007, this travesty was finally acknowledged by the city and commemorated by renaming it Bruce's Beach.
Los Angeles Highways (1944): In 1910 approx 36% of L.A.’s Black population were homeowners in diverse communities (For context, this is during segregation, when the Jim Crow south was still in full swing and would continue for over 50 years.) To compare, in New York City, only 2.4% of Black residence were homeowners. LA’s red car system of public transportation offered easy, unsegregated access to the region’s growing economic opportunities. When the 1944 Federal-Aid Highway Act allocated funds for 1,938 miles of freeways in California, planners used the opportunity, with full federal support, to obliterate these communities. Officials justified these actions as “slum clearance.” Freeways created physical barriers that made any non-white presence on the “white” side of the road conspicuous — and thus easier to target by law enforcement. Black and Latinx families were forced to find housing in the already overcrowded, segregated areas of South and East Los Angeles, away from established and emerging job centers — and in the middle of freeway pollution corridors.
Sugar Hill (1963): The Black population of West Adams Heights started growing in the late 30s, after the Depression, when many historic mansions were for sale. Middle and upper class Black folks from L.A and other American cities began making their homes in West Adams Heights, renaming it ‘Sugar Hill’ as a tribute to Harlem. Sugar Hill became an icon of black Hollywood. Sugar Hill was bisected by the new Santa Monica Freeway, destroying dozens of mansions owned by Black Americans in the process. By 1964, almost all the old families who had called Sugar Hill home had moved away.
Redlining still affects education—with educational funding tied to property taxes, redlining contributes to the systematic denial of resources to poor and minority neighborhoods. Redlining still affects healthcare—with many communities being located in the most undesirable locations near pollution, it is more likely for these families to develop asthma and other health risks (See my newsletter on Environmental Racism). They’re also often food deserts with little access to fresh produce and healthy options. Redlining is rooted into the fabric of the American landscape, and it is far from gone.
Resources
Next week, we will be talking about Microaggressions. I can’t believe I haven’t actually written a newsletter about this topic yet! The term microaggression refers to brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults towards a marginalized group. Odds are if you’re a human being, you’ve said a few microaggressions. Let’s talk about how to spot them, how to advocate for yourself if you’ve been victimized by one, and how to DO BETTER! See you there!
