- Are you looking for a new neighborhood to live in?
Then come on down to Redlining Realty.
Sanctioned by the U.S. government.
(bell chime)
There's depressed infrastructure,
underfunded schools,
no white people!
They're all in the suburbs.
Heck, we'll even throw in free shoes!
Now doesn't that sound nice?
Call Redlining Realty today, and we'll get you a house built
on the most American foundation of all,
racism.
Today's baggage, redlining.
Before we get into this BS policy called redlining
that created housing segregation and pretty much jacked up
the American dream for black folks,
let's take it back to the 1930s.
America is in the thick of the Great Depression,
and y'all, it was bad.
Around one fifth of the country was unemployed,
and nearly everyone was dirt poor.
Along comes FDR with his New Deal,
dude was trying to revitalize the American economy
which created what we now call the middle-class.
But not so fast-
FDR's New Deal would cement racial inequality
in America for generations to come,
and birth two programs that enforced housing segregation.
The Public Works Administration
and the Home Owner's Loan Corporation,
known today as the Federal Housing Administration.
The PWA created affordable housing
and surprise, surprise the agency created
separate public housing for black and white folks,
greatly segregating cities.
Now let's talk about the Federal Housing Administration.
The FHA created low interest mortgages
to build homes across the country.
This agency actually built the suburbs as we know it.
They basically said,
"Hey banks, if someone applies for a mortgage,
go ahead, build them a house,
even if they don't pay it back,
we'll still guarantee a loan.
Unless they're black."
The FHA's manual literally prohibited
the occupancy of properties except by the race
for which they are intended.
But before we go any further,
let me call in a friend to break down the legacy
of redlining.
The world renowned, wypipologist,
from The Root, Michael Harriot.
- What's up?
- He's a nerd IRL. He's earned a masters degree
in macroeconomics, and even taught "Race
as an Economic Construct" to some college kids.
What's good?
- Felice, what's going on?
Good to see you and these unpack that streets.
- How are these racist-ass-racist government policies
tie into what we now call redlining?
- The term came about because the federal government,
Uncle Sam 'nem, created color-coded maps
that told banks where they could give out housing loans.
The green sections, were a go,
whereas the red sections,
typically where black people lived, were deemed too risky.
Even well off black neighborhoods
like Sugar Hill in Harlem,
where black people like Zora Neale Hurston
and Duke Ellington lived, were off limits to banks.
Aside from financial barriers,
there were actual physical barriers
to prevent black people from living in white neighborhoods.
In the early 1940s there was a six foot high wall
in Detroit, because, redlining, and it's still there today.
The Fair Housing Act put an end to redlining in 1968,
but we know it ain't going down like that.
Banks across the country have been caught
using redlining maps as recently as 2015.
And get this, most redlined areas
are still low income, black and brown neighborhoods.
- So, FDR's New Deal pretty much screwed over
generations of black folks to come?
How else has redlining impacted black folks?
- There's plenty, but 3 really stick out:
Wealth, education and criminal justice.
First, let's talk about wealth.
For y'all who don't know,
home ownership is the primary driver of wealth,
and who has a harder time getting homes?
- Black people?
- Bingo.
Even when home ownership is an option,
homes in black neighborhoods
are on average, valued around 25% lower
than homes in white neighborhoods.
This is the case across the board,
even if the homes and neighborhoods are similar.
- So off the bat, homes in black neighborhoods
are less valuable?
- Yup, and the plot thickens.
People in redlined neighborhoods,
pay higher insurance premiums,
they also pay higher interest rates,
and are denied mortgages more often.
- Hold up, we get a lot of our school funding
through local property taxes.
I bet that redlining impacts education too.
How does that all work?
- Let me ask the genius who can answer that question.
- Yes Michael, I am a genius.
- No, not you. I mean Nikole Hannah-Jones.
She's the recipient of the MacArthur Genius Grant,
and knows education like the back of her hand.
See, I can get her up on our special genius hotline.
Funny how I don't see your name on the list.
(phone rings)
Nikole, tell our girl how redlining
has impacted education.
- We get most of our school funding
through local property tax.
That meant that black cities cannot produce
as much money as white suburbs
which can tax either very low rate on high property tax.
And so you see vast disparities
between how suburban schools that serve
lots of white kids are funded,
and urban schools that serve
lots of black and Latino kids are funded.
And that all goes back to the legacy of redlining.
- Wow, did the Fair Housing Act help at all?
- Once, redlining and discrimination and lending
and housing became illegal in 1968,
we didn't rejigger all of the property values
that had been directly related to redlining
which put a premium on white communities
and put a much lower property value rate
on black communities,
it's not like we started from scratch
and equalized all of these property values,
we just continued to watch white communities
accumulate more and more wealth,
and black communities be deprived.
And of course, that's gonna impact
how schools can be funded.
- Are there any places where we can really see
the effects of redlining on education?
- One place where you can really see this play out,
probably in the most oppressive way
would be the city of Detroit.
Home to the most unequal
school funding border in the country,
and that's the border between Grosse Pointe
which is very, very wealthy
and almost entirely white,
which borders right on Detroit.
The schools in Detroit are falling apart,
and the schools in Grosse Pointe,
one of them has marble floors.
- Thanks Nikole.
- That was a lot.
- The cycle doesn't end there.
Redlining, education and criminal justice
are all related.
Let me take you on a trip to one of my favorite cities.
Baltimore.
Here is the original 1937 redlining map of Baltimore.
Even though blacks and whites used illegal drugs
at about the same rates,
black people are three times more likely to be arrested.
And where do you think they go to fight this war on drugs?
- I've seen "The Wire," they go to the hood.
- See the red areas on the map?
That's the forbidden neighborhoods, remember?
Now let's look at this data of marijuana arrests
between Jan. 2013 and Oct. 2014.
Here are the heroin arrests,
and the crack arrests-
drugs arrests and poverty are almost exclusively
contained in the redlined areas.
Isn't that remarkable?
- You pronounced racist wrong.
- And getting out of jail ain't any easier.
In Maryland, 13 of the 15 zip codes
with the highest bails are in Baltimore's
redlined neighborhoods.
- Damn.
- Yeah, so, basically redlining created
poor neighborhoods, which led to underfunded schools,
more poverty and more black people in prison.
- Let me guess, and the cycle continues?
- Like a dog chasing its tail.
- So, the hood ain't the 'hood
because black people made it the 'hood,
rather it was intentionally created
by the government to oppress black people
through a federal policy that would adversely impact them
for generations to come.
- Precisely.
And there's more but that's all we have time for
in this here video.
Almost every quantifiable indicator of white supremacy
all lead back to the government
sanctioned policy of redlining.
- Michael, you just ruined my whole day.
This is the last time I invite you to this show.
Bye, Michael.
(laughs)
Maybe we could just do
- We shouldn't even look at each other
when we do it we should just go
- Okay, we could do that one
