redlining

Moving To Louisville Brought Me Face to Face with the Racist History of Home Prices

by Jemar Tisby

Neither historical patterns nor contemporary socioeconomic differences can explain why Black Louisvilleans' homes are valued so much lower than whites'. 

The Tyranny of the Maps: Rethinking Redlining

by Robert Gioielli

The four-color mortgage security maps created by New Deal-era bureaucrats and bankers have become a widely-known symbol of housing discrimination and the racial wealth gap. But does the public familiarity with the maps obscure the history of housing discrimination? And what can historians do about that?

Is "Regulation from Below" Possible? Historian Rebecca Marchiel on Community Housing Activism

"Marchiel’s narrative paints the picture of a remarkably powerful national reinvestment campaign against an almost unstoppable force of ever more inventive flows of capital. Perhaps the lesson should have been that capitalism refuses to work for people."

Biden's Push for Infrastructure Can't Leave Black Communities Behind

by N.D.B. Connolly

When infrastructure programs drive growth politics, entrenched interests in banking, real estate and planning can profit from preserving and expanding racial inequality. 

The Invention of America's Most Dangerous Idea

by Gene Slater

How did a right-wing conception of "freedom" rooted in the individual's absolute property rights supersede an idea of freedom based in social equality? Blame the real estate industry. 

How to Ensure a New Redlining Initiative Succeeds

by Robert Henderson and Rebecca Marchiel

Ensuring equity in mortgage lending requires understanding why the Community Reinvestment Act failed to achieve the same goal decades ago, through a better awareness of the ongoing problems in mortgage lending. 

How Academia Laid the Groundwork for Redlining

by Todd Michney and LaDale Winling

Richard T. Ely and his student Ernest McKinley Fisher pushed the National Association of Real Estate Boards to adopt "the unsupported hypothesis that Black people's very presence inexorably lowered property values," tying the private real estate industry to racial segregation. 

Redlining Happened, but Not Exactly the Way We've Thought it Did

New economic research reinforces an argument made by historian Amy Hillier, that federal agencies didn't invent "redlining" but responded to widespread public prejudices that imagined Black residents as threats to neighborhood property value. 

The Odd Place of one Savannah Neighborhood in the History of Redlining

by Todd Michney

The history of the Cuyler-Brownville area shows that HOLC risk assessments and Federal lending practices were responsive to local banks' perception of lending risk and desire for profit, factors which resulted in the rarity of an African American community retaining a "green" rating. 

Redlining: What is It?

"Though the maps were internal documents that were never made public by the federal government, their ramifications were obvious to Black homeowners who could not get home loans that were backed by government insurance programs."

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Ties the History of Housing Discrimination to Reparations

John Oliver breaks down the long history of housing discrimination in the U.S., the damage it’s done, and, crucially, what we can do about it.

Redlining, Race, and the Color of Money

by Garrett Dash Nelson

"Redlining maps reveal how the federal government managed risk for capital—a role that has perpetuated inequality long after the end of explicit discrimination in the housing market."

New Study: 5 Ways Racist 1930s Housing Policies Still Haunt Schools

Past discriminatory housing policies have been determined to be a major factor in the black-white wealth gap. A new report has linked redlining to present-day inequalities in education. 

Why Supermarkets Are Powerful Flash Points In Racial Politics

by Tracey Deutsch and James McElroy

In addition to selling food, grocery stores have also preserved a social order that treats shoppers of different races differently, dispensing hierarchy along with food — and, in fact, creating it.

How Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering

A recent study has examined a historical connection between racist redlining practices in urban planning and heat-trapping environments in present-day urban neighborhoods. 

To Avoid Integration, Americans Built Barricades in Urban Space

Urban inequality didn’t happen by accident.

COVID-19 and the Color Line

by Colin Gordon, Walter Johnson, Jason Q. Purnell, and Jamala Rogers

The disproportionate toll COVID-19 has taken on black Americans is a product of conscious choices by actors at every level of government and private industries like banking, insurance and real estate. 

Stimulus Could Heighten Racial Economic Inequality, Historians Warn

The federal government in the 1930s established the housing policies that keep cities segregated even today, said author and historian Richard Rothstein.

Inequality by Design: How Redlining Continues to Shape our Economy

Professor of history Nathan Connolly visited the travelling exhibit "Undesign the Redline."

Washington Forced Segregation on the Nation

It's time to remedy the effects of that terrible policy.