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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 such a grave societal problem and furthering social justice. Although discrimination against minorities, such as Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans exists, residential segregation is imposed on African-Americans at a highly sustained level, more than any other racial or ethnic group in American society. “Blacks continue to live apart from whites; of all minorities, blacks are most segregated from whites. ‘They are also more segregated from whites than any other ethnic group has ever been segregated. The most well-off blacks find themselves more segregated than even the poorest Hispanics’” (Swain 214). Thus, it is evident that segregation imposed upon African-Americans subsists at a level that is not comparable to that experience by other minorities. Before World War I, the nation’s cities were primarily industrial. During and after World War I, there was a demand for workers that stimulated an influx through northward migration of hundreds of thousands of southern blacks into industrial cities. “World War I brought about the start of the ‘Great Migration’” (Forman 9). Migration resulted in the change of the racial, social, economic, and political landscape of American cities. “With the advent of industrialization and the corresponding migration of blacks from rural to urban areas (especially to northern urban areas), urban whites witnessed an influx of poor and uneducated blacks who had ventured out of the rural South in search of better opportunities. Whites, threatened by this ‘invasion,’ and convinced by Social Darwinism that blacks were inherently inferior, insisted upon a system of residential segregation” (Swain 210). Beginning after World War II, another major force – the mechanization of agriculture – also contributed to the northward migration. “Racial tension became paramount as city officials promoted and perpetuated racial division by supporting segregation and discrimination in housing, employment, and social services” (Massey & Denton 39). Various types of residential controls contributed to the problem of residential segregation. One such tool for segregation was the establishment of zoning. Zoning was introduced in New York City in 1916 and encouraged by the U.S. Department of Commerce through the publication of the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act in 1922. Zoning proponents argued: “Zoning was necessary to avoid the fate that had befallen urban ethnic neighborhoods inhabited by the new arrivals, who have crowded the city’s hospitals, have taxed its juvenile courts, and have made greater police and fire departments necessary” (McGrew 3). “Real estate zoning codes and certain marketing practices set prices so high as to exclude many members of minority groups from ‘better’ neighborhoods” (Grier 22). Under such zoning initiatives, “communities were required to provide a minimum level of low-income housing; thus low-income families and individuals would have more housing options” (Swain 231). In essence, planners saw zoning as a mechanism for preserving middle-class standards. In turn, zoning became a powerful tool for maintaining segregation. Yet another mechanism that contributed to maintaining segregation was the existence of restrictive covenants. “These documents were contractual agreements among property owners stating that they could not permit a black to own, occupy, or lease their property. Those signing the covenant bound themselves and their heirs to exclude blacks from the covered area for a specific period of time. In the event of the covenant’s violation, any party to the agreement could call upon the courts for enforcement and could sue the transgressor for damages” (Massey & Denton 36). Such types of discriminatory ordinances allowed residential segregation to become entrenched in society. These two mechanisms for segregation – zoning and racially restrictive covenants – effectively perpetuated segregation by limiting housing opportunities for African-Americans. Between 1930 and 1950, the development of suburban communities changed the demographics of American cities. New housing opportunities in the suburban communities stimulated the mass exodus of whites from cities, commonly known as “white flight.” “Whites were highly resistant to racial integration in housing, and withdrawal to the suburbs provided a more attractive alternative to the defense of threatened neighborhoods and led to a prevalence of flight over fight among whites in racially changing areas” (Massey & Denton 45). “These new, typically all-white, suburban towns lured manufacturing jobs away from the inner city with cheap land and low taxes, and then used their new political power to leave poor minority families and the increased tax burden behind. When minority families tried to pursue the housing opportunities in the suburbs, they found few affordable housing opportunities, inflated prices, and often encountered government condoned racism, which made relocation to the suburbs impossible” (McGrew 4). As whites continued to relocate to suburban communities, they found new opportunities, while African-American families suffered from overcrowding and limited mobility. Predominantly living in the inner city, African-Americans were close to central business districts. “The proliferation of black migrants from the South became a matter of concern to the downtown business interests, as their presence and proximity were perceived as a threat. public housing and ‘urban renewal’ policies, often disguised as humanitarian efforts by political offices, were devised and implemented to ameliorate social ills. The only problem addressed, however, was the black presence. Inherent in the public housing policies was the intent and desire to restrain or redirect black residential patterns to reflect the racist agenda of containing blacks in restricted sections of cities” (McGrew 5). The federal government also became a principal agent in supporting the development of residential segregation by refusing to allow minorities access to subsidized housing in white areas and “by requiring racially restrictive covenants in suburban developments as a condition for receiving Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance” (McGrew 4). During this period, the FHA financed approximately three out of every five homes purchased in the United States. However, less than two percent of FHA loans were made to non-white homebuyers. In providing mortgage insurance for properties, the FHA required properties to meet certain criteria. One primary criterion was the racial composition of a neighborhood. FHA manuals referred to “the infiltration of inharmonious racial or nationality groups as ‘adverse’ to neighborhood stability and advised appraisers to lower the rating of properties in mixed neighborhoods, often to the point of rejection” (McGrew 4). Such federally financed segregative practices also became a leading model for private mortgage lenders to enforce segregation. The FHA refused mortgage insurance to minorities in urban neighborhoods, consequently denying African-Americans mortgages for housing available to them in inner-city neighborhoods. Redlining, “the discriminatory practice developed to evaluate the risks associated with loans made to specific urban neighborhoods” (Massey & Denton 51), also prevented minority families from purchasing homes. “Redlining by mortgage lenders and insurance companies has meant either refusals to provide loans and mortgage insurance or their availability at higher rates or for shorter periods of time” (Goering 31). Other barriers of establishing racially integrated neighborhoods included the practices by real estate agents of blockbusting and racial steering. Blockbusting is “the method that realtors used to open up neighborhoods to black entry and to reap profits during the transition” (Massey & Denton 37). In the process, “blockbusting agents would select a promising area for racial turnover, most often an area adjacent to the ghetto that contained older housing, poorer families, aging households, and some apartment buildings. Agents would then quietly acquire a few homes or apartments in the area, and rent or sell them to carefully chosen black families” (Massey & Denton 37-38). Steering means “directing white households to all-white neighborhoods and referring black households either to all-black or to integrated neighborhoods” (Goering 32). “Real estate agents accelerate the pace of racial change by influencing the white households in integrated neighborhoods to sell their houses, often at a loss, but certainly at less than the loss they have been led to anticipate with the influx of more black neighbors. Real estate agents or developers buy these artificially devalued properties for resale at a markup to black Whether or not residential segregation continues to exist is a highly debatable subject. Many claim that segregation ahs decreased in American cities, whereas others point to residential patterns in large metropolises to maintain that African-Americans and whites are still segregated. “Even the optimistic authors who note decreased levels of segregation in certain areas admit that intense racial segregation in America’s largest cities, where most blacks live, still exists” (Swain 214). One method of measuring residential segregation is with the index of dissimilarity, which ranges from 0 to 100, with 100 signifying complete apartheid and 0 perfect integration. “Reynolds Farley and William Frey find a broad, though modest, degree of desegregation in which the average index score fell four points in the 1980s, from 69 to 65. Attempting to prove that racial segregation has decreased, they note that the most significant strides toward integration have been made in smaller, new metropolises” (Swain 214). Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, on the other hand, disagree, stating, “The larger declines in these metropolitan areas are generally attributable to unusual instability in housing patterns caused by a combination of gentrification, immigration, and rapid housing construction rather than to an ongoing process of neighborhood racial integration” (Massey & Denton 63). Thus, this view sees residential segregation as not having decreased and levels of segregation still remaining high. In a study reported in USA Today, conducted by the Lewis Mumford Center at the University of Albany, “of the 50 metropolitan areas with the largest percentage of blacks, here are the 10 areas where blacks and whites are most segregated: Detroit, Milwaukee – Waukesha, Wisc., New York, Chicago, Newark, N.J., Cleveland, Cincinnati, Nassau – Suffolk, N.Y., St. Louis, and Miami” (USA Today 2001). Therefore, it seems relatively evident that residential segregation does, in fact, continue to plague American cities. A number of societal ills afflicting American cities include welfare dependency, poverty, and high unemployment rates. A main cause of such problems is argued to be the systematic exclusion of African-Americans, from adequate, accessible, and affordable housing. “As typically defined, the affordable housing crisis centers on the fact that the new generation of inner-city residents are not afforded equal accessibility to adequate housing” (McGrew 2). In turn, it has been argued that this pattern of residential segregation has long-standing effects, such as limited employment opportunities, limited access to education, and persistent poverty. Bibliography: Works Cited Forman, Robert E. Black Ghettos, White Ghettos, and Slums. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1971. Goering, John M., ed. Housing Desegregation and Federal Policy. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. 1986. Grier, George W. Equality and Beyond. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, Inc. 1966. Massey, Douglas S. & Nancy A. Denton. American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1993. McGrew, Teron. The History of Residential Segregation in the United States and Title VIII. Black Scholar. Volume 27. Nasser, Haya El. USA Today. April 4, 2001. Suggs, Ernie. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. November 25, 1999. Swain, Carol M., ed. Race Versus Class. Boston: University Press of America, Inc. 1996. Reed, Veronica M. Civil Rights Legislation and the Housing Status of Black Americans. Review of Black Political Economy. Volume 19. Word Count: 1786
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