flacaltenn
Diamond Member
THere's been discussion in this forum about Govt policies that CONDONED and REQUIRED segregation and discrimination against Black Americans. But it's nowhere as simple as pointing to "redlining" of mortgages. Indeed it far nastier and sinister than all that.
Interview with a guy who KNOWS this history, is an NAACP fellow --- and (shocker) -- he's white and Jewish..
Best 45 minutes on Race you'll spend this week. You'll be appalled at how YOUR GOVT contributed to racial segregation up until the 70s or so... Excepts below -- the interview is at the link given..
How the Government Created Housing Segregation [Reason Podcast]
Nick Gillespie: The first part of your argument is that, and I'm quoting from you, "African-Americans were unconstitutionally denied the means and rights to integration in middle class neighborhoods." That this was in large part due to local, state, and federal policies, that really weren't outlawed or banned in full by the federal government until 1968. Describe some of the early policies coming out of The Depression and World War II that enforced ... I mean, they didn't create housing segregation, but they really exacerbated it and made de facto, or I guess de jure segregation, de facto segregation.
Richard Rothstein: Well, yes. In some cases, in many cases actually, the federal government did create it. Created segregation in metropolitan areas and in cities that have never known segregation before. In other cases, as you say, it did reinforce segregation that was already in existence, but the country was much, much more segregated as a result of these federal policies than it was before, or would be today without them. The new deal and as you say was the main force in creating residential segregation across the north, the west, the midwest, and the south as well. There were two chief policies that I think were the most powerful, although there were many others. One was the public housing program. We typically think today of public housing as being a place where low income families, particularly African-Americans, Hispanics as well, unemployed's, single parents, single mothers live. That's not how public housing began, and it's quite the opposite of how public housing began.
Public housing began for civilians during the New Deal, at the very beginning of the New Deal. It was an attempt to house white, lower-middle class families who lost housing during the depression. There were some African-Americans who were accommodated, but mostly it was a program for white middle class families, and it was segregated everywhere. There were separate projects for African-Americans, and separate projects for whites. I'll give you an example of how the government actually created segregation, not merely reinforced it. Langston Hughes, in his autobiography, called The Big Sea talks about how he grew up in Cleveland in an integrated neighborhood. Many neighborhoods in many cities were integrated at that time, much more than they are today, simply because workers didn't have automobiles, and the only way they could get to work was by walking or taking very short rides on buses.
You had neighborhoods that were comprised of Irish immigrants and Italian immigrants and Jewish immigrants and African-Americans and white workers who had come from rural areas, all living in the same general neighborhoods and walking to work. This is not to say that every other house was occupied by an African-American, but broadly these neighborhoods were integrated. Well, in 1933, the Public Works Administration of the New Deal began building public housing, and in Cleveland, it demolished. It razed the neighborhood where Langston Hughes lived, and instead built two separate public housing projects. One for whites, one for blacks, creating segregation where it had never been known before.
This became much more forceful during World War II. When workers, both blacks and whites, flocked to cities to take jobs in the defense industry. In some cases, they took jobs in defense industries in cities where there had been no African-American population previously. One of the examples I focus on in my book is Richmond, California, which later became a black ghetto. One of the poorest and most segregated communities in California. Before World War II, there were virtually no African-Americans living in Richmond. About 250, mostly domestics working for white families, but Richmond became a center of ship-building. It had a deep water port across the bay from San Francisco, and tens of thousands of workers came to work in those shipyards. 100,000 actually. Beginning of World War II, there were, as they say, a handful of African-Americans in Richmond. By the end of World War II, there were 15,000. The population as a whole of Richmond grew from 10 to 15,000 to over 100,000 during the war.
SNIP>>>>>
For example, perhaps the best known example of this is Levittown, just east of New York City. 17,000 homes built in the late 1940's by Levit primarily for returning war veterans. The Levit family could never have assembled the capital they needed to build 17,000 homes, for which they had no buyers on their own. It was an enormous undertaking. They did so only because the Federal Housing Administration guaranteed their bank loans for construction purposes on condition, an explicit condition, that no homes in the development be sold to African-Americans, and that every deed in Levittown has a clause in it that prohibited resale to African-Americans.
Again, this wasn't just Levittown. An equally large development south of Los Angeles, Lakewood built by Mark Taper, was similarly restricted by the federal government and in every metropolitan area in between. The Federal Housing Administration subsidized developers of large subdivisions on condition that they do not sale to African-Americans. You had these two policies ...
Nick Gillespie: What was the anxiety about selling to African-Americans that was underscoring both the construction loans, but also mortgages? Who was it in the federal government then that was like, "Okay. We've got to put that in there."?
Richard Rothstein: Well, most people are familiar with the fact that the Federal Housing Administration would not insure mortgages, individual mortgages, to African-Americans in white neighborhoods. That is something that is not a mystery to most people, but what very few people know about today, although it was well known at the time obviously, everybody in Levittown knew that they had those deeds on their homes, is that the more powerful action of the FHA was to create these all white suburbs with the bank loan guarantees that they gave the developers. Their rational was that property values would decline if African-Americans lived in white neighborhoods, but this was a pure figment of the FHA's imagination. In fact, property values increase when African-Americans moved into white neighborhoods at the time, because African-Americans had so few housing options that their supply was constricted, and they were willing to pay more for the same housing than whites were paying. There were studies that were available to the FHA that documented this.
Workers coming to Richmond had to have a place to live. Clearly, the growth of that kind of a city is really unimaginable, and the federal government had to provide housing if they wanted to keep the shipyards working. It built separate projects for African-Americans and for whites. The projects for African-Americans were built along the railroad tracks in the industrial area. The projects for whites were better constructed and built in the residential areas where whites were living, and this is another example of a place where segregation was created where it hadn't previously existed.
Interview with a guy who KNOWS this history, is an NAACP fellow --- and (shocker) -- he's white and Jewish..
Best 45 minutes on Race you'll spend this week. You'll be appalled at how YOUR GOVT contributed to racial segregation up until the 70s or so... Excepts below -- the interview is at the link given..
How the Government Created Housing Segregation [Reason Podcast]
Nick Gillespie: The first part of your argument is that, and I'm quoting from you, "African-Americans were unconstitutionally denied the means and rights to integration in middle class neighborhoods." That this was in large part due to local, state, and federal policies, that really weren't outlawed or banned in full by the federal government until 1968. Describe some of the early policies coming out of The Depression and World War II that enforced ... I mean, they didn't create housing segregation, but they really exacerbated it and made de facto, or I guess de jure segregation, de facto segregation.
Richard Rothstein: Well, yes. In some cases, in many cases actually, the federal government did create it. Created segregation in metropolitan areas and in cities that have never known segregation before. In other cases, as you say, it did reinforce segregation that was already in existence, but the country was much, much more segregated as a result of these federal policies than it was before, or would be today without them. The new deal and as you say was the main force in creating residential segregation across the north, the west, the midwest, and the south as well. There were two chief policies that I think were the most powerful, although there were many others. One was the public housing program. We typically think today of public housing as being a place where low income families, particularly African-Americans, Hispanics as well, unemployed's, single parents, single mothers live. That's not how public housing began, and it's quite the opposite of how public housing began.
Public housing began for civilians during the New Deal, at the very beginning of the New Deal. It was an attempt to house white, lower-middle class families who lost housing during the depression. There were some African-Americans who were accommodated, but mostly it was a program for white middle class families, and it was segregated everywhere. There were separate projects for African-Americans, and separate projects for whites. I'll give you an example of how the government actually created segregation, not merely reinforced it. Langston Hughes, in his autobiography, called The Big Sea talks about how he grew up in Cleveland in an integrated neighborhood. Many neighborhoods in many cities were integrated at that time, much more than they are today, simply because workers didn't have automobiles, and the only way they could get to work was by walking or taking very short rides on buses.
You had neighborhoods that were comprised of Irish immigrants and Italian immigrants and Jewish immigrants and African-Americans and white workers who had come from rural areas, all living in the same general neighborhoods and walking to work. This is not to say that every other house was occupied by an African-American, but broadly these neighborhoods were integrated. Well, in 1933, the Public Works Administration of the New Deal began building public housing, and in Cleveland, it demolished. It razed the neighborhood where Langston Hughes lived, and instead built two separate public housing projects. One for whites, one for blacks, creating segregation where it had never been known before.
This became much more forceful during World War II. When workers, both blacks and whites, flocked to cities to take jobs in the defense industry. In some cases, they took jobs in defense industries in cities where there had been no African-American population previously. One of the examples I focus on in my book is Richmond, California, which later became a black ghetto. One of the poorest and most segregated communities in California. Before World War II, there were virtually no African-Americans living in Richmond. About 250, mostly domestics working for white families, but Richmond became a center of ship-building. It had a deep water port across the bay from San Francisco, and tens of thousands of workers came to work in those shipyards. 100,000 actually. Beginning of World War II, there were, as they say, a handful of African-Americans in Richmond. By the end of World War II, there were 15,000. The population as a whole of Richmond grew from 10 to 15,000 to over 100,000 during the war.
SNIP>>>>>
For example, perhaps the best known example of this is Levittown, just east of New York City. 17,000 homes built in the late 1940's by Levit primarily for returning war veterans. The Levit family could never have assembled the capital they needed to build 17,000 homes, for which they had no buyers on their own. It was an enormous undertaking. They did so only because the Federal Housing Administration guaranteed their bank loans for construction purposes on condition, an explicit condition, that no homes in the development be sold to African-Americans, and that every deed in Levittown has a clause in it that prohibited resale to African-Americans.
Again, this wasn't just Levittown. An equally large development south of Los Angeles, Lakewood built by Mark Taper, was similarly restricted by the federal government and in every metropolitan area in between. The Federal Housing Administration subsidized developers of large subdivisions on condition that they do not sale to African-Americans. You had these two policies ...
Nick Gillespie: What was the anxiety about selling to African-Americans that was underscoring both the construction loans, but also mortgages? Who was it in the federal government then that was like, "Okay. We've got to put that in there."?
Richard Rothstein: Well, most people are familiar with the fact that the Federal Housing Administration would not insure mortgages, individual mortgages, to African-Americans in white neighborhoods. That is something that is not a mystery to most people, but what very few people know about today, although it was well known at the time obviously, everybody in Levittown knew that they had those deeds on their homes, is that the more powerful action of the FHA was to create these all white suburbs with the bank loan guarantees that they gave the developers. Their rational was that property values would decline if African-Americans lived in white neighborhoods, but this was a pure figment of the FHA's imagination. In fact, property values increase when African-Americans moved into white neighborhoods at the time, because African-Americans had so few housing options that their supply was constricted, and they were willing to pay more for the same housing than whites were paying. There were studies that were available to the FHA that documented this.
Workers coming to Richmond had to have a place to live. Clearly, the growth of that kind of a city is really unimaginable, and the federal government had to provide housing if they wanted to keep the shipyards working. It built separate projects for African-Americans and for whites. The projects for African-Americans were built along the railroad tracks in the industrial area. The projects for whites were better constructed and built in the residential areas where whites were living, and this is another example of a place where segregation was created where it hadn't previously existed.
