But also class. Here's that interview now.
So of course we are dealing with the the impact of race
when we talk about voting and this country the Supreme Court
has recently made a at a ruling that is going to could
potentially or has seriously debilitated that the Voting
Rights Act and particularly the disparate act elements of
Section 2. But there are other areas in which our government
over the years has been involved which has created
disparate impact and one of those of course has to deal
with the backing of mortgages and the so called redlining
that we saw in the early part of the 20th century.
And joining us now is Garrett dash Nelson is the curator of
maps and director of geographic scholarship. The Leventhal map
and education Center at the Public Library in Boston.
And Garrett has revisited that dynamic of redlining and found
some very interesting things. Garrett welcome to the program.
>> Yeah, thanks for having me say that.
>> So I let's let's just go with I think
I mean to the extent that this is common knowledge which I
frankly don't think it is
never mind that your intervention into this dynamic
our understanding of it. I don't think the dynamic in
and of itself is really widely known and so let's start with
that the sort of more conventional wisdom or
knowledge of this dynamic where the U.S. government was
basically involved in building or I guess creating a certain
stagnation within neighborhoods around the country
walk us through that.
>> Sure so Sam as I think many people still American cities
are enormously segregated by race in terms of their spatial
dynamics. People across races don't live evenly across
different neighborhoods in almost any American city.
And so historians sociologists others have
pro this question why is it that American cities are so
spatially divided and segregated this way even long
after for a formal mechanisms of segregation of ceased.
And there's a there's a what is becoming a fairly notorious and
well-known set of maps that 0.1 of the stories. We always got
red lining up because of a particular kind of red color
which appears on the and the redlining maps date back to the
1930's plant, the federal government began to involve
itself in the mortgage and let that programs
those not to become the tourists in recent years up
because of some important popularization of this history
pointing at the federal government's role in that
racial segregation, so time as the Colts article the case for
reparations is actually one of the ones that popularized a
kind of historical understanding of redlining and
the way that the federal government used its powers in
order to keep the races separate in the modern city.
>> And we should say that that wealth in this country anyways
and I would imagine in many countries but particularly in
this country
is a very often broadly speaking a function of
intergenerational wealth that is passed down and the primary
vehicle for most Americans in creating intergenerational
wealth has been housing. This is been the the key
instrument in which families build wealth and the
implications I think of of having that well permeate just
about
every single conversation you have in this. This country
about anything. Even the question of student debt is so
tied into family an intergenerational wealth that
it's impossible to sort of even assessed the program
being aware of the question of wealth rather than just looking
at income. And this is in so these redlining maps and in
1930 any put isn't a certain diet like historical
perspective here. We are in 1930 were only. The 60's some
odd years out from the end of the Civil War. You have a you
know the all of these. Cities are are filled with either
former slaves or children of former slaves. And and so let's
just start with that that that for segregation was the
segregation their explicit is that and that created this
dynamic.
>> So I'm just to back up briefly to echo your point it
for the middle class American families basically since the
middle of the 20th century
assets in primary residences so that's the value of your home
the place that you live has been by far the most important
chunk of and middle class wealth building right trillions
and trillions of dollars in the United States, an individual
savings are invested in their own homes and of course that
all of those polls is very closely tied to geography
right. We know that house in Manhattan costs a lot different
from House in Des Moines, and even 2 houses and avoid
different neighborhoods cost different amounts not
necessarily just based on that whether they have a fancy
kitchen or not because of what neighbor there right. So
there's a reciprocal relationship between the value
of the neighborhood the place, the value of the holes in that
neighborhood and then the assets that the families that
own those homes have and are able to pass down through the
generations.
Now he was back to the 1930's. The course of the 30's are most
famous for being a decade of the Great Depression. And it's
a time when the federal government was starting to
intervene in
the kind of broad scale of the American economy in a way that
it never have before.
So the red line that's actually created as a mechanism for the
federal government to step in and stabilize housing market
step we're going water during the Depression that time will
finance was in free fall, but more difficult to secure
mortgages is redlining maps were meds were neck and isn't
that the federal government had set up in order to make
mortgages easier to get that in order to allow the federal
government to ensure those mortgages. Now what most people
understand as for what has become the can that story about
the trend line that says that the federal government sound
that non-white neighborhoods it marked them in red and if
refuse to land in those neighborhoods and that is a
hugely important part of what was going on this story.
The federal government did in fact consider race in its
evaluation of neighborhoods making these maps race was one
of the factors that could Park a neighborhood as an investable
are uninsurable and so it
in doing so it took these neighborhoods which were
already segregated but other spoke formal Jim Crow
segregation by work. We're we're still in the high chair
of Jim Crow, the 1930's. But other mechanisms such as a
residential deep restrictions which actually made it illegal
to sell or transfer property to somebody who was not like.
And then just the sort of a generalized racial terror of
that persists in the American cities today of keeping people
in their places in their neighborhoods. So they've been
like that for me and I think there is that spatial
segregation of the city was already in place and the
federal government in making these that's kind of part of it
right it made that it codify those racial categories into
the colors that we see on that.
But what's interesting is that it's not just race that that is
shown on these maps and that's where this kind of popular
understanding of the red light that's from the 1930's as
simply being maps of racial segregation. Are a little bit.
It was a little bit more of a complicated understanding of of
of what was going on to make sense of what was what was
happening.
>> Yeah, and this is I mean the importance of this is not to
diminish the.
The long history of racism institutional and government
Hill racism, but to suggest there's also an interplay
between racism and class. In this country that is often
reinforcing in some ways and performs a certain dance.
And what I found interesting about this too is we speak of
Jim Crow during this year, this is at the tail end of I should
say of of at least the the innovation of of these laws to
suppress black vote what often very often also and up
suppressing the vote of poor white people. At the same time
it's not exactly the same dynamic. But there is. There is
a a a relationship between these endeavors that