I didn’t realize until I was much older the historical context and systemic policies that have perpetuated residential segregation and marginalized Black communities for well more than 100 years.

Residential segregation by race had no legal framework immediately after the Civil War. Obviously, though, Whites had no desire to live with Blacks in the South, where well over 90% of Blacks lived until the early 20^th century—unless they were sharecropping on White farms. However, even in the North in the late 1800s, both formal and informal policies ensured that Blacks could not live near Whites. Read the history of ‘sundown’ towns throughout the nation that would ensure in many places that Blacks could not even stay within town boundaries after dark.

The 20th century brought us restrictive covenants (Whites were not allowed to sell to Blacks), housing and land-use restrictions, and redlining (the feds and the banking industry wouldn’t allow lending in Black neighborhoods); all these actions—and more—led to White city leaders across the country intentionally creating the Black ghettos we still see in small to large cities across the nation. Effectively, Blacks were not allowed to live anywhere but in these ghettos for much of the 20^th century.

Why did White leaders and communities restrict Black people in these ways? It was their collective, reactionary attempt to neutralize The Great Migration, the mass movement of Black people escaping oppression and terrorism in the South to the North, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970.

Moreover, local and federal officials created public housing projects for Blacks from the 1930s to the 1970s within these already segregated African American neighborhoods. These ‘projects’ (often concrete block, Soviet-style buildings) intensified the poverty and isolation that already existed in inner-city neighborhoods and compounded the challenges already facing Black communities. The federal government halted the construction of these projects in the 1970s, and many have been torn down since then. Still, especially in Northeastern and Midwestern cities, too many of these buildings continue to ‘warehouse’ lower-income households today.

The nation’s post-World War II economic expansion primarily benefited White communities, with federal financing for housing development in the suburbs while excluding Blacks from those neighborhoods and disinvesting in the cities from which Whites were escaping. This disinvestment caused declines in already substandard housing conditions and more severely limited economic opportunities for Black families.

For several decades (the 1950s-1970s), White federal and city leaders embarked on so-called ‘urban renewal’ (or what James Baldwin called ‘negro removal’) initiatives that disproportionately displaced Black families out of their neighborhoods and disrupted their communities without providing adequate rehousing or support to other areas of those declining cities.

I would have thought that when Congress passed the Housing Act of 1968, we would have seen a serious decline in racial residential segregation. Alas, nothing of the sort happened. Why?

Meanwhile, even after the Act became law, the Federal Housing Administration continued to pursue redlining policies that reinforced lending in White neighborhoods while often refusing to lend in Black neighborhoods.

From the late 1960s until 2000, many Black households still didn’t have the resources to buy suburban-style homes, and much of the housing produced for decades was single-family, detached housing in the suburbs. By the late 20^th century, Blacks began to move into inner suburbs that Whites quickly fled, and lending institutions and developers largely refused to invest in those neighborhoods in the same way they did when Whites fled the cities to the inner suburbs in the first place.

You may remember that the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 disproportionately affected Black homeowners, leading to significant wealth losses and foreclosures, particularly in communities of color.

As a result of this exasperating recent history, here’s where we’ve currently landed as a nation:

• The gap between White and Black homeownership has grown, believe it or not, from a gap of 27 percentage points to 30 over the past 55 years.
• Black residents are almost three times more likely to live in an area with low vehicle ownership and low transit access.
• Black Americans earning $75,000 per year typically live in poorer neighborhoods than White Americans earning $40,000 per year.
• For Blacks and Whites living in comparable homes and neighborhoods, a Black home, on average, is valued at $48,000 less than a White home. As neighborhoods become more expensive, the gap in value grows more significant still.
• Bank lenders are 80% more likely to reject similar Black and White applicants for bank loans and mortgages.
• Neighborhoods where 90% of Blacks live are taxed 50% higher than neighborhoods that are majority White … in the same county.

Thus, the enduring legacy of racial segregation in housing emphasizes the need for comprehensive structural reforms to address systemic inequalities and promote inclusive communities.

Until we move beyond the myth that segregation results solely from individual choices, we will not overcome the historical legacy of systemic racism and the ongoing disparities faced by Black Americans about where they can and do live.

Images courtesy of ChatGPT.