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Related: About this forumYou Probably Knew This Already - Housing Segregation, a detailed analysis
I never had it spelled out so clearly.
http://www.epi.org/blog/from-ferguson-to-baltimore-the-fruits-of-government-sponsored-segregation/
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You Probably Knew This Already - Housing Segregation, a detailed analysis (Original Post)
qwlauren35
May 2015
OP
JustAnotherGen
(31,834 posts)1. The meat of the article - and it's well worth reading
In Baltimore in 1910, a black Yale law school graduate purchased a home in a previously all-white neighborhood. The Baltimore city government reacted by adopting a residential segregation ordinance, restricting African Americans to designated blocks. Explaining the policy, Baltimores mayor proclaimed, Blacks should be quarantined in isolated slums in order to reduce the incidence of civil disturbance, to prevent the spread of communicable disease into the nearby White neighborhoods, and to protect property values among the White majority.
Thus began a century of federal, state, and local policies to quarantine Baltimores black population in isolated slumspolicies that continue to the present day, as federal housing subsidy policies still disproportionately direct low-income black families to segregated neighborhoods and away from middle class suburbs.
Whenever young black men riot in response to police brutality or murder, as they have done in Baltimore this week, were tempted to think we can address the problem by improving police qualitytraining officers not to use excessive force, implementing community policing, encouraging police to be more sensitive, prohibiting racial profiling, and so on. These are all good, necessary, and important things to do. But such proposals ignore the obvious reality that the protests are not really (or primarily) about policing.
In 1968, following hundreds of similar riots nationwide, a commission appointed by President Lyndon Johnson concluded that [o]ur nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one whiteseparate and unequal and that [s]egregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. The Kerner Commission (headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner) added that [w]hat white Americans have never fully understoodbut what the Negro can never forgetis that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.
In the last 50 years, the two societies have become even more unequal. Although a relatively small black middle class has been permitted to integrate itself into mainstream America, those left behind are more segregated now than they were in 1968.
Thus began a century of federal, state, and local policies to quarantine Baltimores black population in isolated slumspolicies that continue to the present day, as federal housing subsidy policies still disproportionately direct low-income black families to segregated neighborhoods and away from middle class suburbs.
Whenever young black men riot in response to police brutality or murder, as they have done in Baltimore this week, were tempted to think we can address the problem by improving police qualitytraining officers not to use excessive force, implementing community policing, encouraging police to be more sensitive, prohibiting racial profiling, and so on. These are all good, necessary, and important things to do. But such proposals ignore the obvious reality that the protests are not really (or primarily) about policing.
In 1968, following hundreds of similar riots nationwide, a commission appointed by President Lyndon Johnson concluded that [o]ur nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one whiteseparate and unequal and that [s]egregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most white Americans. The Kerner Commission (headed by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner) added that [w]hat white Americans have never fully understoodbut what the Negro can never forgetis that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.
In the last 50 years, the two societies have become even more unequal. Although a relatively small black middle class has been permitted to integrate itself into mainstream America, those left behind are more segregated now than they were in 1968.
JustAnotherGen
(31,834 posts)2. And this . . .
In 1925, 18 Baltimore neighborhood associations came together to form the Allied Civic and Protective Association for the purpose of urging both new and existing property owners to sign restrictive covenants, which committed owners never to sell to an African American. Where neighbors jointly signed a covenant, any one of them could enforce it by asking a court to evict an African American family who purchased property in violation. Restrictive covenants were not merely private agreements between homeowners; they frequently had government sanction. In Baltimore, the city-sponsored Committee on Segregation organized neighborhood associations throughout the city that could circulate and enforce such covenants
What we do today - impacts tomorrow.
What we do today - impacts tomorrow.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)3. I've never seen this level of detail before ... which makes it great.
Very interesting article. Pulls no punches.