Malcolm X
stated that segregation and separation had one key difference, “It’s only segregated
when it’s controlled by someone from the outside (Dalmage, 2006:303).” The
United States has a long history of using law and public policy to maintain the
dominant power structure and aggregate power in the hands of whites. Much of
this has played out in housing; making race and housing intrinsically tied to
privilege. In this post I will discuss how social structures and individual
actions were influential in shaping racial conflict, perpetuating and
challenging inequality and establishing boundaries. I will also explore how
this influenced our ideas about race, inequality and social justice.
In order
to discuss the issues of race and housing I think it must first be established
that race is, as Baldwin stated, not a biological reality, but a political one
(Maly, 2011). Skin color, eye shape and hair texture vary across the globe, but
these physical attributes have no meaning in and of themselves, only what we
assign to it. We choose which physical attributes are important, organize
people according these boundaries and then behave in a way which gives these
categories meaning, thus creating races (Maly, 2011). Proof of social construction can be found in
the fluidity of the meaning we assign to these categories, changing them when
it is in the best interest of those in power.
The
construction of race as we know it, the hierarchy of white over black, began
with expansion of European colonialism. As Europeans arrived they brought with
them ethnocentric ideals and a hunger for resources which provided the
reasoning behind and the motive for deeming native peoples as different and
inferior. The European entrance into the Atlantic world, including the U.S.,
brought slavery. Although slavery had existed in various forms prior to the
chattel slavery that came with the Atlantic slave trade, it was chattel
slavery’s permanent and transgenerational nature which lead to Africans being identified
with slavery. To be black was to be a slave and to be white was to be free,
thus began the myth of white superiority.
Although the idea of slavery seems far removed from
the contemporary issue of housing, it is important to note how slavery and the
notion of white superiority have influenced our ideas about race and in turn our
public policy. First we must look at the creation and maintenance of racial
borders. According to Heather Dalmage, racial boarders are created to protect
goods and power and are maintained by “laws, language, cultural norms, images
and individual action, as well as by interlocking with other borders, including
the nation, religion, politics, sex, gender, race and age (Dalmage, 2006:302).”
Racial borders are insidious because they are products of our history and seep
into our socialization. They appear to be natural and normal, simply the way
things have always been (Dalmage, 2006; Maly, 2011). Various borders between
whiteness and blackness have been established to protect resources and power
for whites, such as the legislation of blackness through the one-drop rule,
anti-miscegenation laws and the perpetuation of racialized space (established
in slavery) through Jim Crow. Other ways
in which the black/white border is maintained is through ideas about success
and citizenship.
In the U.S. homeownership is a sign of success
(Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996; Keflas, 2003; Guglielmo, 2004;
Maly, 2005). This was especially true for white ethnics in the 1930s. For these
white ethnics home ownership was an outward sign of their community,
respectability and status in a society which had labeled them as outsiders and
“questioned their ability and worth (Hirsch, 1983:188).” It was a way to become
American (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996). Here we see the
intersection of racial and national borders: to be an American was to be white
and middle-class and white middle-class families owned homes. White ethnics did
not have complete access to whiteness due to their connection to their
ethnicity, such as the language they spoke, their religion and their tight-knit
ethnic based communities. Their ability to gain high income jobs was curtailed
by language barriers, low education levels and discrimination on the part of
employers.
White ethnics were largely able to purchase homes due
to policy set in place by the government. Following the Great Depression, the
Hoover administration identified the housing industry as a way to rebuild the
badly bruised economy and went about establishing polices to encourage
homeownership (Jackson, 1985). In 1933
President Roosevelt established the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC), which
introduced the long-term, self amortizing mortgage, which had standardized payments
extended over the life of the loan and extended loan life to 20 years (Jackson,
1985). This released the stigma that had been attached to mortgages, in the
past middle-class families were expected to purchase a home out-and-out
(Jackson, 1985).
During this time the U.S. was also experiencing the
Great Migration, when African Americans arrived in northern cities in droves
seeking a new life with more opportunity away from racism in the Jim Crow south
(Hirsch, 1983). African Americans would find that segregation and racism was
still present in northern cities like Chicago and Detroit. By 1920 in Chicago 85% of blacks lived in
segregated housing in the large ghetto referred to as the South Side Black Belt
(Hirsch, 1983). Blacks also faced
barriers to gaining homeownership. In 1939 only 9% of Chicago blacks owned
their own home, this is in comparison to 21.7% of whites and 41.3% of foreign
born whites who owned homes (Hirsch, 1983). Aside from racist hiring policies
which relegated most blacks to low-end service sector positions with little
upward mobility, government policy was also largely to blame for the large
discrepancy in ownership.
Home Owner's Lown Corporation (HOLC) created a uniform system of appraising how
housing would be eligible for financing. It devised a system where there were
four quality categories, labeled with a letter and color: A/green, B/blue,
C/yellow and D/red, with A/green being the most favorable. Housing which was densely populated, racially
mixed, non-white racially segregated or aging was devalued under the HOLC system. HOLC did not start the practice of considering race and ethnicity in appraisal,
real estate agents had a long history of racism, but it did apply notions of
racial worth on national scale –influencing various financial and government
institutions (Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996; Maly, 2005).
The HOLC system was adopted by the Federal Housing
Authority (FHA), which was formed largely to spur home construction as a way to
ease unemployment. In 1944 the Veterans Administration (VA) instated the GI
Bill, a program which assisted World War
II veterans in purchasing housing after their return to the states by offering
federally backed, low interest 30 year mortgages. They also adopted FHA
appraisal standards, which included red-lining or labeling racially mixed, or
non-white segregated neighborhoods as class D, or red, housing and therefore
not eligible for financing or re-financing (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985;
Segrue, 1996; Maly, 2005).
The adoption of red-lining by the VA and FHA lead to
two primary outcomes which created an affirmative action program for whites.
First, because red-lining barred loans in black and mixed neighborhoods it was
essentially useless for black GIs. They could not buy in their current
neighborhood, but they also could not move into a white neighborhood because,
their presence alone would reclassify the neighborhood. Second, the HOLC, FHA
and VA appraisal system devalued older housing stock and only allowed small
short-term loans for existing structures, making the purchase of a new home
more affordable than the maintenance of an older home. This system resulted in
higher purchases in newly developed suburban areas, which due to red-lining,
were overwhelmingly white. As whites began to move into the suburbs, industry
moved with them, providing suburban residents with jobs, slowly turning the
inner-city into a ghetto (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996; Maly,
2005).
This coincided with the Second Great Migration, when
a new wave of southern black immigrants arrived in northern cities. The South
Side Black Belt was quickly pushed to its limits, as blacks struggled to find
housing. Conditions quickly became congested and many middle-class blacks
looked to urban white ethnic neighborhoods to purchase homes (Hirsch, 1983). Real
estate agents had realized that there was a great deal of money to be made by
purchasing houses at low costs from whites and selling them at inflated costs
to blacks. Once an African American moved onto a white block, whites would
generally flee, selling at lower and lower prices, leaving more profit for
agents and speculators. This created the dual housing market (Hirsch, 1983;
Maly, 2005).
For ethnic whites their house was generally their primary investment and core savings which is why whites felt that they had to protect their homes from blacks. They
knew that property values would drop once an African American moved onto the
block and their house would be worth less, but the need to protect their home
went beyond money. For these lower-class white ethnics it was their connection
to whiteness and “Americaness” through their home ownership that was also being
threatened (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson, 1985; Segrue, 1996; Maly, 2005; Maly, 2011).
This lead many whites to act out against blacks with violence, such as the
Chicago riots in Fernwood and Englewood (Hirsch, 1983).
This era also saw the rise of individual acts aimed
at barring blacks from home ownership. One example is restrictive
covenants—agreements made by homeowners within a certain neighborhood stating
they would not sell to non-whites. Often this included agreeing to not post for
sale signs on lawns or advertise in newspapers as an attempt to control who
would purchase in the neighborhood. Neighborhood associations often pushed
members to police each other and maintain segregation (Hirsch, 1983; Jackson,
1985; Segrue, 1996; Maly, 2005).
There also were several neighborhoods which pushed
for integration, although this does not mean that they were without prejudice. For
example, in integrated Hyde Park residents used their political clout to bar a housing
project from their community because they did not want to live near poor blacks
(Hirsch, 1983). Many communities pushed for integration not out of any desire
for equal rights, but as a way to stabilize and protect housing prices (Maly,
2005).
In 1968 congress passed the Fair Housing Act as part
of the Civil Rights bill. Unfortunately, this did not lead to the mass
integration of housing across the country. Housing remains largely segregated with
African American having the highest levels of segregation and whites the lowest
(Charles, 2003; Maly, 2005). In her 2003 article, “The Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation” Camille Charles discusses that
national and local-level studies have found housing discrimination still
exists, such as racial steering by real estate agents, and denial of financing
based on race. This information is confirmed by Judith
DeSensa’s ethnographic study of Greenpoint, where she discusses how the
residents set up and informal housing market in order to keep Latinos out of
their neighborhood (DeSenna, 1994).
While organizing this post I made the decision to
start with the construction of race so that it would be possible to see how the
idea of white superiority (and black inferiority) is the foundation of our
institutions and public policy. Throughout our history the U.S. has denied African
Americans citizenship, the ability to marry, the ability to learn to read,
voting rights and the ability to occupy the same space as whites. Some discount
our history and say we must begin our analysis of race and housing after the
Civil Rights era, which makes it easy to fall into the trap of colorblind
ideology. The problem with this is that it does not take into account the
generational accumulation of white wealth and privilege through the denial of
equal rights for blacks.
The creation of the suburbs and FHA loans fashioned
an affirmative action program for lower-class whites and white ethnics,
allowing them to gain one of the key assets responsible for creating
generational wealth: a house. These programs have also maintained segregated
black neighborhoods, which have serious restricted the ability of African
Americans to gain mobility and improve their life chances (Hirsch, 1983;
Jackson, 1985; Charles, 2003). By denying to acknowledge the white privilege
that exists because of this, we are perpetuating the myth of white superiority.
We
cannot see how our current laws and policy are racist if we refuse to look at
how race shaped the past and how a precedent has been created through past
legislation, attitudes and beliefs which continue to inform the current moment.
This includes our ideas about meritocracy, and the idea that anyone should be
able to achieve success. If anyone can achieve the same level of success that
most whites have, then for those who do not it is purely their fault—and they
alone should bear the stigma attached to failure. This allows whites to
maintain power through shaping the hegemonic discourse surround race and
success; essentially stating that blacks simply do not work hard enough to gain
the same success that whites have. To twist the quote by Baudelaire slightly:
the best trick the whiteness ever pulled was convincing the world privilege did
not exist.
REFERENCES
Charles, Camille Zubrinsky. 2003. “The
Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation.” Annual Review of Sociology.
29:167-207.
Dalmage, Heather. 2006. “Finding a
Home: Housing the Color Line,” in D. Burnsma (ed), Mixed Messages:
Multiracial Identities in the "Color-Blind" Era. Lynne Rienner
Publishers.
DeSenna, Judith. “Local Gatekeeping
Practices and Residential Segregation.” Sociological Inquiry. 64(3): 307-321.
Guglielmo, Thomas. 2004. White on
Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945. Oxford
University Press.
Hirsch, Arnold. 1983. Making the
Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960. University of Chicago
Press.
Jackson, Kenneth. 1985. Crabgrass
Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. Oxford University
Press.
Kefalas, Maria. 2003. Working-Class
Heroes: Protecting Home, Community, and Nation in a Chicago Neighborhood.
University of California Press.
Maly, Michael. 2005. Beyond
Segregation: Multiracial and Multiethnic Neighborhoods in the U.S. Temple
University Press.
Maly, Michael. 2011. Lecture notes from
Race in the City. January 13, 2011- February 3, 2011.
Sugrue,
Thomas. 1996. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in
Postwar Detroit. Princeton University Press.
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