As we discussed in class, residential segregation, unfortunately, is a reality for most people living in the United States. While some people attempt to explain residential segregation away with arguments about the innate desires of people of a similar racial and cultural background to live together, as Robert Jensen notes in The Heart of Whiteness, we should be skeptical of any explanations that rely on "natural" human behavior (12). Jensen writes, "This argument tries to make what is a human choice appear to be outside of human control, which is a dodge to avoid moral and political responsibility for the injustice we continue to live with" (12). Thus, while the presence of a cultural community might indeed play some role in people's choices regarding where they live, it does not fully explain how various public policies and private actions have worked together to actively create segregated neighborhoods.
According to this article from The Buffalo News, http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/buffalo/article289992.ece, Buffalo-Niagara is the 6th most segregated metropolitan area in the United States. The most segregated urban area in the United States is Milwaukee followed by metro Detroit, New York, Chicago and Cleveland. If you want to get a sense of just how segregated Buffalo really is, type in Buffalo, NY in this interactive map available on the website of The New York Times: http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?ref=censusbureau
Here is Buffalo,
As is evident from the map, the majority of the Black population in Buffalo lives in the inner-city. Suburbs are predominantly white and Main Street literally serves as a racial line of division in the city. You can zoom in and manipulate the map to reflect median home values, education levels, and incomes for particular neighborhoods. In most cases, you will find that these correlate with the racial make-up of the neighborhood. For example, you can see in this map how houses a few blocks west of Main Street have a median value of $200,000 or more while on the east the houses are valued under $50,000. East of Main Street, of course, is predominantly Black. It is important to remember that much of wealth owned by people is often in the form of their houses. Lower property values and lower rates of home ownership in communities of color also means less wealth to pass onto future generations.
Same goes for rates of high school graduation:
Type in your city in the search box and see what socio-economic factors correlate with the racial make-up of your neighborhood. Feel free to post your observations in comments.
As the documentary we watched in class, Race the Power of an Illusion, explained, residential segregation in the United States is a result of a combination of interlocking federal policies concerning housing and the practices of the private real-estate industry. As noted in the documentary, a typical home loan prior to the 1930s required a 50% down payment and had to be repaid within 5-7 years at an interest rate of 6 to 8%. In 1934, with the establishment of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), mortgage terms became more favorable. The mortgage terms we are familiar with today - approximately 10% down, up to 30 years to repay the loan, and lower interest rates - were all made possible by the FHA. The GI Bill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GI_Bill) passed in 1944 made housing even more affordable for up to 16 million returning veterans.
In 1936, the FHA asked the Home Owner's Loan Corporation (HOLC) to create "residential security maps" which would provide an assessment to banks concerning the supposed risks of making investments in particular cities and neighborhoods. These maps took into account factors such as signs of decay and neglect, housing conditions, and the presence of racial minorities. These maps graded neighborhoods on a scale of one to four and colored the neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" red. Neighborhoods with predominantly African American communities were the most likely to get "red-lined." You can read more about redlining and the consequences of redlining on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining and on this website on redlining in Philadelphia: http://cml.upenn.edu/redlining/intro.html.Here is an example of the kind of maps the HOLC was producing (this is for Philadelphia):
Redlining usually had devastating impacts on neighborhoods - banks refused to make loans in these neighborhoods because they considered them risky investments, property values were lowered tremendously, and generally white flight followed. The long-term consequences of redlining have been lower rates of home ownership in communities of color, higher mortgage debts, and lack of access to resources that are generally tied to home ownership such as good public education.
White flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight, usually a result of redlining and other "urban renewal" policies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renewal) refers to the phenomenon where whites flee urban communities and neighborhoods as the local minority population increases. White flight is considered to be a major contributing factor to suburbanization.
White flight was often helped by local real estate agencies through blockbusting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting). Blockbusting was a business practice where real estate agents would encourage white homeowners to sell their properties at a reduced rate by instilling fear or implying that people of color were moving into their neighborhoods. These properties were then flipped and sold to minorities, primarily African Americans, at higher prices. Blockbusting gradually led to changes in the racial make-up of the neighborhood and eventual drop in property values as banks and federal agencies reclassified these neighborhoods as risky for investment purposes.
It is important to understand how all these housing policies and practices were interrelated and often worked in conjunction with each other to keep people of color locked out of home ownership and wealth creation. Redlining and blockbusting would result in white flight and vice versa. It is also important to keep in perspective the long-term consequences of these housing policies and practices. The fact that there are fewer home owners in communities of color and that property values are generally lower and mortgages higher, means that communities of color often are faced with poor educational choices and insufficient access to social and economic resources due to lack of wealth.
Residential segregation and the subsequent unequal division of wealth and resources among whites and non-whites illuminates another way in which race operates institutionally and systemically. While individual acts of racism might play some role in keeping people separated, it is really public policies laid down in law and then put into practice by industry that maintains residential segregation. As we move forward through the semester, hopefully, all of us will start developing a more complex understanding of how race and racism go beyond individual perceptions and actions, but are instead embedded in many of our social structures.
I know this has been a long post, but if you are interested in exploring this topic more in-depth, here are some books that might prove useful:
- Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight
- Robert Bullard, Sprawl City: Race, Politics, and Planning in Atlanta
- Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the future in Los Angeles
- Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
- Antero Pietila, Not in my neighborhood: How bigotry shaped a great American city (this is about Baltimore)
- Amanda Seligman, Block by block: Neighborhoods and Public Policies on Chicago's West Side
- Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
According to this article from The Buffalo News, http://www.buffalonews.com/city/communities/buffalo/article289992.ece, Buffalo-Niagara is the 6th most segregated metropolitan area in the United States. The most segregated urban area in the United States is Milwaukee followed by metro Detroit, New York, Chicago and Cleveland. If you want to get a sense of just how segregated Buffalo really is, type in Buffalo, NY in this interactive map available on the website of The New York Times: http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer?ref=censusbureau
Here is Buffalo,
As is evident from the map, the majority of the Black population in Buffalo lives in the inner-city. Suburbs are predominantly white and Main Street literally serves as a racial line of division in the city. You can zoom in and manipulate the map to reflect median home values, education levels, and incomes for particular neighborhoods. In most cases, you will find that these correlate with the racial make-up of the neighborhood. For example, you can see in this map how houses a few blocks west of Main Street have a median value of $200,000 or more while on the east the houses are valued under $50,000. East of Main Street, of course, is predominantly Black. It is important to remember that much of wealth owned by people is often in the form of their houses. Lower property values and lower rates of home ownership in communities of color also means less wealth to pass onto future generations.
Same goes for rates of high school graduation:
Type in your city in the search box and see what socio-economic factors correlate with the racial make-up of your neighborhood. Feel free to post your observations in comments.
As the documentary we watched in class, Race the Power of an Illusion, explained, residential segregation in the United States is a result of a combination of interlocking federal policies concerning housing and the practices of the private real-estate industry. As noted in the documentary, a typical home loan prior to the 1930s required a 50% down payment and had to be repaid within 5-7 years at an interest rate of 6 to 8%. In 1934, with the establishment of the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), mortgage terms became more favorable. The mortgage terms we are familiar with today - approximately 10% down, up to 30 years to repay the loan, and lower interest rates - were all made possible by the FHA. The GI Bill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GI_Bill) passed in 1944 made housing even more affordable for up to 16 million returning veterans.
In 1936, the FHA asked the Home Owner's Loan Corporation (HOLC) to create "residential security maps" which would provide an assessment to banks concerning the supposed risks of making investments in particular cities and neighborhoods. These maps took into account factors such as signs of decay and neglect, housing conditions, and the presence of racial minorities. These maps graded neighborhoods on a scale of one to four and colored the neighborhoods classified as "hazardous" red. Neighborhoods with predominantly African American communities were the most likely to get "red-lined." You can read more about redlining and the consequences of redlining on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining and on this website on redlining in Philadelphia: http://cml.upenn.edu/redlining/intro.html.Here is an example of the kind of maps the HOLC was producing (this is for Philadelphia):
Redlining usually had devastating impacts on neighborhoods - banks refused to make loans in these neighborhoods because they considered them risky investments, property values were lowered tremendously, and generally white flight followed. The long-term consequences of redlining have been lower rates of home ownership in communities of color, higher mortgage debts, and lack of access to resources that are generally tied to home ownership such as good public education.
White flight http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight, usually a result of redlining and other "urban renewal" policies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_renewal) refers to the phenomenon where whites flee urban communities and neighborhoods as the local minority population increases. White flight is considered to be a major contributing factor to suburbanization.
White flight was often helped by local real estate agencies through blockbusting. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting). Blockbusting was a business practice where real estate agents would encourage white homeowners to sell their properties at a reduced rate by instilling fear or implying that people of color were moving into their neighborhoods. These properties were then flipped and sold to minorities, primarily African Americans, at higher prices. Blockbusting gradually led to changes in the racial make-up of the neighborhood and eventual drop in property values as banks and federal agencies reclassified these neighborhoods as risky for investment purposes.
It is important to understand how all these housing policies and practices were interrelated and often worked in conjunction with each other to keep people of color locked out of home ownership and wealth creation. Redlining and blockbusting would result in white flight and vice versa. It is also important to keep in perspective the long-term consequences of these housing policies and practices. The fact that there are fewer home owners in communities of color and that property values are generally lower and mortgages higher, means that communities of color often are faced with poor educational choices and insufficient access to social and economic resources due to lack of wealth.
Residential segregation and the subsequent unequal division of wealth and resources among whites and non-whites illuminates another way in which race operates institutionally and systemically. While individual acts of racism might play some role in keeping people separated, it is really public policies laid down in law and then put into practice by industry that maintains residential segregation. As we move forward through the semester, hopefully, all of us will start developing a more complex understanding of how race and racism go beyond individual perceptions and actions, but are instead embedded in many of our social structures.
I know this has been a long post, but if you are interested in exploring this topic more in-depth, here are some books that might prove useful:
- Eric Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight
- Robert Bullard, Sprawl City: Race, Politics, and Planning in Atlanta
- Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the future in Los Angeles
- Kevin Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism
- Antero Pietila, Not in my neighborhood: How bigotry shaped a great American city (this is about Baltimore)
- Amanda Seligman, Block by block: Neighborhoods and Public Policies on Chicago's West Side
- Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
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