Racial Zoning Research Paper

Despite increased diversity across the country, America’s neighborhoods remain highly segregated along racial and ethnic lines. Residential segregation, particularly between African-Americans and whites, persists in metropolitan areas where minorities make up a large share of the population. This paper will examine residential segregation imposed upon African-Americans and the enormous costs it bears. Furthermore, the role of government will be discussed as having an important role in carrying out efforts towards residential desegregation. By developing an understanding of residential segregation and its destructive effects, parallels may be drawn between efforts aimed at combating

Lipsitz uses practices of the housing market to illustrate how the diverse practices provide the privilege to white people in the current institutional arrangements. The capital resides in suburban houses has proven many white families’ economic mobility, although few white Americans recognize that segregation has historically been the guarantee of suburban real estate values. Housing policy and real estate practices, banking and finance, education, tax codes and subsidies, the behavior of the courts, and the norms of urban policing are all heavily inflected by a racialist logic or tend toward racialized consequences. Lipsitz delineates the weaknesses embedded in civil rights laws, the racial dimensions of economic restructuring and deindustrialization, and the effects of environmental racism, job discrimination and school segregation. Lipsitz describes the centrality of whiteness to American culture, and explains how the whites have used identity politics to forward their collective interests at the expense of racialized groups, including African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos.

In “The Complexities and Processes of Racial Housing discrimination” by Vincent J. Roscigno, Diana L. Karafin, and Griff tester, the main concept of racial disparity and inequality among neighborhoods is discussed, and how those inequalities became to be. They first highlight the wide range of potentially exclusionary practices, through qualitative and quantitative data comprised of over 750 verified housing discrimination cases (Roscigno, p. 162). Citing the U.S. Census, it is found that Blacks, compared to Hispanics and Asians, continue to experience high levels of residential segregation. This is done through discriminatory practices, whether they be by exclusionary or non-exclusionary methods. Even after the passing of the Fair Housing Act in 1988, discrimination against Blacks and Hispanics decreased somewhat, though African Americans still appeared to take part in racial steering, and Hispanics continued to have limitations in regards to opportunities and access to rental units (Roscigno, p. 163).

“Gatekeepers and Homeseekers: Institutional Patterns in Racial Steering';, is an informative article that touches upon many of the key points gone over in class. This article deals with the difference in the way blacks and whites were and are treated, past and present, by real estate agents when shopping for a new home. In the study, one can see that blacks were not treated as fairly as white people in the real estate market were. Many times the potential black homebuyers were discouraged from purchasing homes in the same areas that the agent would readily show a white homebuyer. The real estate agent played a very peculiar role in doing this. They were, in essence, the racist gatekeepers of a seemingly non-racist neighborhood.

In order to support his opinion, the author uses historical references to the enormous impact of racial inequality on African American lives. Additionally, Desmond names a set of historical data and rates of the poor African Americans in cities to enhance the reader’s understanding of this complex situation. African Americans were also more likely to get the apartment with broken furniture, windows, and other facilities that confirmed the existence of racial inequality (Desmond, 2016, p.249). To reassert his position, Desmond provides offensive statistics that millions of people are evicted from American homes, and most of them are African American (Desmond, 2016, p.293). As a matter of fact, the author proves that housing discrimination based on race is the primary cause of

The readings for this week fall under the umbrella of “Issues in Housing Policy”, more specifically race, discrimination and segregation. Looking at this topic with the naked eye may lead one to conclude that these issues are age-old, but by looking at the occurrences within the housing policy we can very much conclude that these drawbacks still remain and are salient to the present. To begin, the Schwartz piece highlights that housing policies are mandated to condemn the discriminatory practices that plague real estate and mortgage markets, where African-Americans and other minorities are at a “decided disadvantage”. However, the federal laws passed, such as the Fair Housing Act of 1968, prohibiting racial discrimination by real estate

Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States is a book by Kenneth T. Jackson on the migration of many, primarily white, Americans to the suburbs during the mid-twentieth century and how many blacks were robbed of the opportunity to move elsewhere as well. From the chapter we read, we learn about the ways blacks were suppressed to worse parts of cities and how corporations and our government kept blacks from moving into different or better neighborhoods. The author argues that the lasting effects of the government have put a seal of approval on the racial discrimination in the housing market and these actions were picked up by private interests to deny mortgages to people, as they would say, based on geographical location of the property. Over the course of the book, Jackson gives evidence to how federal housing policies affected where Americans lived and how our government used it 's power to socially control racial minorities.

Both institutionalized racial segregation and violence are themes that were discussed by Leslie McFadden at the conference that relate to the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, and urban unrest. Institutionalized racial segregation has been around since, African Americans were brought to the U.S in the eighteenth century. In the case of Michael Brown, the ghettos in Ferguson are the results of institutionalized segregation. Institutionalized segregation is formed by the unjust mistreatment and discrimination a society demonstrates to a group of people. In the United States, African Americans

This article is the testimony of Gary Orfield who in 1996 testified as a witness for the Caldwell branch of the NAACP. Back in 1980 Orfield was appointed by the Court to create a report on housing and housing policies and practices. Specifically in St. Louis, Missouri, public resources and powers were used to promote segregation. The local government used federal funding to only build subsided housing in segregated areas. The local government also denied its ability to build subsided housing in other places besides the city. For the majority of his testimony Orfield talked about how school segregation affects housing. Orfield argued that schools were being used as tools in housing marketing. As a result, White families would choose to live

According to Massey and Denton (1988), residential segregation “is the degree to which two or more groups live separately from one another, in different parts of the urban environment”(282). Now this is a pretty general definition, but it gives basic but good insight as to what residential desegregation is talking about. In this paper, I will mostly be focusing on residential segregation as it relates to the black and white populations in relation to one another, although I will be referencing some other races briefly to create a better understanding of concepts or ideas.

Sugrue Thomas describes that homeowners movement was first lunched by the organizations or ‘civil associations’ founded by 192 white neighborhoods. The “color blind manner” describes the white homeowners’ reaction after U.S. supreme count ruled on Shelley v Kraemer for the unconstitutionality of restrictive covenant. (Tomas 220-221) In Shelley v Kraemer, U.S. Supreme Count held the decision of “racially restrictive covenant is unconstitutional” and is constituted state action. Because state enforcement of restrictive convents is discriminatory and violated the 14th Amendment, private owners could voluntarily agree to restrictive convents. (bostonfairhousing.org) Homeowners could not ask judicial power to enforce the covenants that are binding

“More important, most African Americans did not benefit from the economic boom of the 1950s that allowed so many white Americans to purchase homes in the suburbs” (Hine & Harrold 569). In our history classes in almost every American school we were taught that the 1950s was a golden age due to the high consumerism, new businesses, the unparalleled prosperity, stay at home wives, and the old fashioned American barbeque on the weekends. Although this seemed like a golden age, it was much different for the people of color, especially the black community. The African Americans lost jobs, weren’t allowed to purchase homes due to the Jim Crow laws and the 1948 Shelley v. Kramer case, and their neighborhoods were deteriorating. Instances such as these

Meanwhile, white neighborhoods which were protected by restrictive covenants earned higher rating scores. To put the racial restriction and segregation of black residential areas in context, “a mere 1,500 of the 186,000 single-family houses constructed in metropolitan Detroit area in the 1940s were open to blacks. As late as 1951, only 1.15 percent of the new homes constructed were available to blacks” (Sugrue 43). These residential segregation patterns and tactics were bound to the city’s broader political efforts to combat urban renewal. More specifically, Republican Mayor Albert Cobo ran on a platform to keep black people out of white neighborhoods.

It was a way to constraint African Americans to areas that were far away from those with status, class, and power. Segregation led to discrimination in economic opportunities, housing, and education. The black culture has suffered from the barriers that were placed through segregation. However, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 tried to limit some of the discrimination associated with segregation. It was discovered that even a “rising economic status had little or no effect on the level of segregation that blacks experience” (Massey and Denton 87). The authors imply that “black segregation would remain a universal high” (Massey and Denton 88). The problem with the continuing causes in Segregation is that even though the Fair Housing act was placed, many realtors still discriminate against blacks “through a series of ruses, lies, and deceptions, makes it hard for them to learn about, inspect, rent, or purchase homes in white neighborhoods” (Massey and Denton 97). Segregation and discrimination have a cumulative effect over time. Massey and Denton argued that the “act of discrimination may be small and subtle, together they have a powerful cumulative effect in lowering the probability of black entry into white neighborhood” (98). William Julius Wilson had

In 1917 the Supreme Court ruled that cities could not zone based entirely by race, so the people of Chicago found loopholes to the rules to do just that. They used ‘restrictive covenants’ that allowed them to separate the blacks, which the supreme court actually upheld, granted they were not judicially enforced. “More than 98 percent of all the family public-housing units built in Chicago between 1950 and the mid‑1960s were built in all-black neighborhoods.” This quote exemplifies that the covenants were enforced quite strongly, such as when a federal grant was issued 1949 to start a major housing project the, which Arnold R. Hirsch calls, the ‘second