Month: June 2020

EFFECTS OF RACISM Part 2

The murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer kneeling on his neck for nine minutes (while three other officers facilitated the killing) has put the racism of U.S. society in the forefront. The attention to racism is going beyond this specific episode and is including the underlying, long-term racism of the U.S. economy, our society, and the policies, funding, and practices of federal, state, and local governments. (See my previous post here for more background.)

The effects of racism – of racial prejudice and discrimination – on black people today are broad and pervasive. They are the aggregation of current policies, practices, and characteristics of the U.S. economy and society, as well as the cumulative effects of 400 years of racism. I can’t do justice to all the effects in a couple of posts (Even long ones. My apologies.), but I will start by highlighting some of them. Some, particularly the better-known ones, I will just mention and for some I will present more detail. They are presented in no particular order, in part because they are all intertwined and the relative importance or severity of them is difficult, if not impossible, to determine. (See my previous post for effects in Education and Health and health care.)

Some of the detrimental effects of racism on black people that are evident today include:

Economic inequality

  • The median income for black households is only 60% of that of white households ($37,000 vs. $60,000).
  • Median wealth (assets minus liabilities) for black households is only 8% of that of white households ($11,000 vs. $134,000).
  • Most Blacks were excluded from many of the benefits of the New Deal legislation of the 1930s, including the minimum wage, union membership, and participation in Social Security. Much of this was corrected in the 1960s and 1970s, but the loss of 30 to 40 years of these economic benefits is a big contributor to today’s economic inequality. (See more detail in this previous post.)
  • One-third of low-income black households (incomes under $30,000) do not have a bank account (versus one-ninth of low-income white households). This means they must rely on check cashing services and payday lenders for financial transactions, which involve high fees and often usurious interest rates. This made it difficult (or expensive) for them to get their coronavirus relief checks, for example. [1]

Housing (See my previous post for an overview of government policies and practices that led to housing segregation and low levels of black home ownership.)

  • The effects of federal government and bank redlining are still discernible in the segregation patterns of our cities. Black people disproportionately live in areas with high concentrations of low-income households, poor air quality, and low social capital. These neighborhood characteristics are strongly linked to a whole range of negative life outcomes, including lower educational attainment, more unemployment and lower-wage jobs, shorter life spans, higher stress, and worse health and health care. On the other hand, the (white) suburbs created wealth for their residents and provided strong social capital and healthy, low-stress environments. [2] For example, in the post-World War II period, homes in the suburbs, which typically excluded Blacks, were purchased by whites for around $15,000. Those homes are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, a substantial increase in wealth that was denied to Blacks.
  • The home ownership rate for black households is over 30 percentage points lower than for white households. This home ownership gap has increased from just over 20% to over 30% during the last 40 years. It had been relatively stable at just over 20% for the previous 30 years. Given that equity in a home is the primary source of wealth for middle-class and working families in the U.S., the lower rate of home ownership among black households is a significant contributor to racial economic inequality, as well as other unequal outcomes. Equity in one’s home is frequently used to pay for college for children or to cover a short-term financial setback such as the loss of a job or a medical emergency. It is also a key source of retirement savings and inheritance for children. The lack of the economic security that home equity provides also is presumably linked to the higher levels of stress that black people experience.
  • Today, in 2020, interest rates on mortgage loans for black home buyers tend to be higher than for whites because the Federal Housing Finance Agency requires that mortgage interest rates be adjusted based on the borrower’s credit score, down payment, and mortgage type. These adjustments may double the interest rate on a mortgage loan and disproportionately harm black borrowers, either by pricing them out of the market or making the cost of home ownership significantly higher. These mortgage rate adjustments are a dysfunctional and discriminatory holdover from the early 2000s and could and should be changed. [3]

Criminal justice (The pervasive racism of the U.S. criminal justice system – from policing to prosecution and sentencing – that has led to mass incarceration of black males is well known, so I won’t go into it here. I have written about it previously here and here.)

  • Lynching is not a federal crime. Although bills to make it a crime have been introduced in Congress multiple times, no bill has ever been passed and become law.
  • Black people are 23% of those shot and killed by police but are only 13% of the population. Recently released statistics show that in 2019, 69% of the people subject to stop-and-frisk by police in Boston were Black, although Blacks are only 25% of the population. [4]
  • The police (and others) tend to presume that black people, particularly black men and boys, are dangerous and criminals. Being stopped for driving while black is a frequent experience for Blacks, especially if driving a nice car or in a white neighborhood. Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick experienced this while he was Governor, riding in an official car. [5] This racial profiling also occurs when shopping while black, walking down the street in a white neighborhood while black, and on and on. In May 2020, a tall, (6’ 8”) black man, a home owner in Newton, MA, an upper-middle class, largely white, Boston suburb, was walking to the supermarket with his wife when four police cruisers descended them. One of the five officers drew his gun. When asked for identification, the black man knew better than to reach into his pocket – a motion police officers in other situations claimed they found threatening and a reason to shoot. He told the officers that his wallet was in his back pocket and let them retrieve it. [6]

Voting

  • Republicans have been leading efforts for decades to make it harder or impossible for black people to vote – stealing an essential democratic right they were supposedly given after the Civil War. Multiple states have enacted laws that make it harder to register to vote and harder to vote through onerous voter ID requirements. States have also imposed what are effectively poll taxes, reduced the number of polling places in black neighborhoods, and reduced the hours for voting (including early voting that many blacks took advantage of, in part because it can be difficult for them to get to the polls on a work day). All these disproportionately harm black voters. In addition, states have purged lists of registered voters in ways that, again, disproportionately remove black voters. States have banned convicted criminals from voting, sometimes for life, which again disproportionately affects black voters. Finally, the boundaries of voting districts, especially for the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislatures, have been manipulated (i.e., gerrymandered) to reduce the impact of black voters.

The documentation of the detrimental effects of racism is not new. For example, the 1968 Kerner Commission Report on the “race riots” of the 1960s, stated that “Segregation and poverty have created in the racial ghetto a destructive environment totally unknown to most of white Americans. … White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” It noted that not only had the racism of white society created this situation, but that the (white) public and policy makers were apathetic to the issue of black poverty. The Report recommended large-scale government programs to undo segregation and build wealth for black communities. Obviously, the Report was largely ignored. [7]

As one Boston Globe columnist recently wrote of the racism in the U.S., “I’ve spent years calling the system broken, but it wasn’t. This system was designed to dehumanize and exploit Black folk and other people of color.” [8] As former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who is black noted, “For America, where freedom was the point from the start, only equality, opportunity and fair play make freedom possible.” [9] He probably should have clarified this by saying freedom for ALL or for black people.

It is long past time to address the racism that has persisted in the U.S. for the 140 years since the Civil War and indeed for the last 400 years since black slaves were first brought to America. We need to reform our police and criminal justice system, our housing policies and practices, and all the factors that lead to economic, environmental, and social injustice.

We need to have a serious discussion about reparations – remedies for the enduring harm that past and current policies and practices have caused to Blacks in the U.S. More on this in a future post.

I encourage each and every one of us to think long and hard about how we can contribute to the effort to end racism in our society and to erase its enduring scars. I’d appreciate your comments and questions on this post, including about:

  • Other policies and practices that need to be remedied,
  • Steps we should take to change policies and practices, and
  • How we should tackle the question of reparations for the enduring, cumulative harm that racism has done to Blacks in the U.S.

Thank you for your comments with reactions, suggestions, and questions. This is a discussion we need to have – and to turn into action.

[1]      Guzman, L., & Ryberg, R., 6/11/20, “The majority of low-income Hispanic and Black households have little-to-no bank access, complicating access to COVID relief funds,” National Research Center on Hispanic Children and Families (https://www.hispanicresearchcenter.org/research-resources/the-majority-of-low-income-hispanic-and-black-households-have-little-to-no-bank-access-complicating-access-to-covid-relief-funds/)

[2]      Baradaran, M., 6/17/20, “No justice. No peace. Underlying the nationwide protests for black lives is the racial wealth gap,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/civil-rights/no-justice-no-peace-fix-the-racial-wealth-gap/)

[3]      Levitin, A.J., 6/17/20, “How to start closing the racial wealth gap,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/economy/how-to-start-closing-the-racial-wealth-gap/)

[4]      Osterheldt, J., 6/17/20, “An oppression that should have been so clear,” The Boston Globe

[5]      Patrick, D., 6/16/20, “America is awakening to what it means to be Black. Will we also awaken to what it means to be American?” (https://medium.com/@DevalPatrick/america-is-awakening-to-what-it-means-to-be-black-3eb938969f7f)

[6]      Krueger, H., 6/6/20, “A walk to the grocery store, interrupted,” The Boston Globe

[7]      Baradaran, M, 6/17/20, see above

[8]      Osterheldt, J., 6/17/20, see above

[9]      Patrick, D., 6/16/20, see above

EFFECTS OF RACISM Part 1

The murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer kneeling on his neck for nine minutes (while three other officers facilitated the killing) has brought the racism of U.S. society to the forefront. The attention to racism is going beyond this specific episode and is including the underlying, long-term racism of the U.S. economy, our society, and the policies, funding, and practices of federal, state, and local governments. (See my previous post here for more background.)

The effects of racism, of racial prejudice and discrimination, on black people today are broad and pervasive. They are the aggregation of current policies, practices, and characteristics of the U.S. economy and society, as well as the cumulative effects of 400 years of racism. I can’t do justice to all the effects in a couple of posts, but I will start by highlighting some of them. Some, particularly the better-known ones, I will just mention and others I will present in more detail. They are in no particular order, in part because they are all intertwined and the relative importance or severity of them is difficult, if not impossible, to determine.

Some of the detrimental effects of racism on black people evident today include:

Education

  • Black students, on average, attend K-12 schools of lower quality (e.g., less experienced and qualified teachers, less funding, lower quality materials and facilities) than white students. Housing segregation has been widely acknowledged for decades as the driver of racially unequal access to a good K-12 education. This is a result, in large part, of the fact that funding for K-12 schools comes primarily from local property taxes. As a result:
    • Black students have less success in our K-12 school systems than white students. Notably, their graduation rates are lower.
    • After their K-12 education, black students attend and succeed at lower rates in higher education than their white peers.
  • Good, development-nurturing early care and education (aka child care) is generally less accessible for black families and children than for white ones. Except for the federal Head Start program, good quality early care and education (ECE) is unaffordable and often not conveniently located for black families. The Head Start program, which targets children in families below the federal poverty line (about $22,000 in annual income for a family of three, which could be a single parent with two young children), only receives enough funding to serve about half of the eligible 3 and 4 year olds and about one in ten of the eligible infants and toddlers.

Health and health care

  • Black people have a shorter life expectancy than whites: 75.5 years versus 79.1 years.
  • Black mothers experience higher pregnancy-related maternal mortality rates than whites: 4.1 vs. 1.3 deaths per 10,000 live births. This difference persists even after adjusting for potentially related factors such as age, education, and income.
  • Black infants experience higher mortality rates than whites: 109 versus 47 deaths per 10,000 live births.
  • The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the inequities in health and health care for black Americans. Black people in the U.S. have had somewhere between 33% and 40% of COVID-19 cases despite being only 13% of the population. Their cases tend to be more severe and the black death rate is over twice that of whites (62 vs. 26 per 100,000). (See previous posts on the disproportionate impact on Blacks and the reasons for this.)
  • Research has found that respiratory conditions (including asthma) that make one more vulnerable to COVID-19 are more common among people with long-term exposure to air pollution and that a small increase in exposure to fine particulate air pollution — tiny particles in the air — leads to a significant increase in the COVID-19 death rate. Low-income and densely populated areas (whose residents are disproportionately black) have higher levels of air pollution due to higher levels of vehicular exhaust, emissions from buildings’ heating systems, and emissions from power generation and industrial facilities.
  • Hospitals that serve primarily white people have 60% higher per patient funding ($8,325) than ones that serve the highest proportions of black people ($5,197). The primarily white-serving hospitals had nearly twice as much capital spending (e.g., for new equipment and modernization) as the hospitals with the most black patients. The white-serving hospitals had more specialty services, better nurse-to-patient ratios, fewer safety hazards, and lower readmission rates. [1]
  • Black people have less access to health care, both based on the locations of services and due to lack of insurance. In addition, they receive lower quality and biased care when they receive health services. For example, a 2003 National Academy of Sciences report, “Unequal Treatment: Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care” examined 480 studies and found that for every medical intervention black people received poorer-quality care than white people, even when income and insurance were equal. [2] Medical decisions, diagnoses, and treatments have been found to be racially biased with worse outcomes for black patients than white ones.
  • The high levels of stress that black people experience due to racism, economic insecurity, and other factors have been linked, for both children and adults, to chronic health problems (e.g., asthma, obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes) and mental / behavioral health problems (e.g., behavior and anxiety disorders and substance abuse). The stresses of what are referred to as adverse childhood experiences (e.g., child abuse or neglect, violence in the home or neighborhood, parents’ mental health problems) have been found to contribute to a higher prevalence years later of chronic adult health conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and anxiety disorders. The stresses of economic insecurity, neighborhood and household violence, and racism, collectively sometimes referred to as allostatic load, have been linked to higher rates of negative health outcomes, including shorter lifespans and more low birthweight babies. For example, the prevalence of diabetes is 66% higher among Blacks than whites and elevated blood pressure is 49% higher. Blacks have more chronic health conditions even when researchers compare them with whites with similar levels of education and income.
    • Examples of stressors that black people deal with regularly include being presumed to be dangerous or a criminal and being presumed to be in a non-professional or subservient role. For example, black people are often presumed to be staff in a hotel, restaurant, store, or golf club, rather than a customer. Or, as former Massachusetts Governor Patrick stated, “Like every other Black trial lawyer I know, I have been mistaken for a defendant awaiting trial” when arriving in a courthouse or courtroom to argue a case. [3] These types of role misidentification are commonplace. Almost every black person – if not every black person – can cite multiple times when this has happened to them. This requires them to control their anger, frustration, and sometimes their fear time after time after time. This takes a toll on one’s stress level, happiness, and well-being.
    • Black parents routinely feel anxious when their sons and daughters are not in their home because they know of the dangers that discrimination and prejudice present when they are out in public. Black parents know they must have “the talk” with their children, especially their sons, where they tell them that regardless of the situation or provocation they must stay calm, keep their hands visible, and avoid confrontation, particularly with police officers.
  • Because they are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods, black people often live in food deserts, where access to affordable, good quality food is difficult. Supermarkets are typically not located in those neighborhoods, so a long trip, often on public transportation, is required to reach them.

In my next post, I will provide an overview of the detrimental effects of racism on black people in terms of economic inequality, housing, criminal justice, and voting. I welcome your comments with reactions, thoughts, and questions relative to this post and the larger issue of racism in the U.S.

[1]      Dayen, D., 6/19/20, “Unsanitized: Structural racism and the coronavirus crisis,” The American Prospect (https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-structural-racism-and-the-coronavirus-crisis/)

[2]      Villarosa, L., 4/29/20, “ ‘A terrible price’: The deadly racial disparities of Covid-19 in America,” The New York Times Magazine (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/29/magazine/racial-disparities-covid-19.html)

[3]      Patrick, D., 6/16/20, “America is awakening to what it means to be Black. Will we also awaken to what it means to be American?” (https://medium.com/@DevalPatrick/america-is-awakening-to-what-it-means-to-be-black-3eb938969f7f)

RACISM IN HOUSING HAS BEEN EXPLICIT GOVERNMENT POLICY

The murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer kneeling on his neck for nine minutes (while three other officers facilitated the killing) has brought the racism of U.S. society to the forefront. The attention to racism has gone beyond this specific episode and has included the underlying, long-term racism of policies, practices, and funding of federal, state, and local governments. (See my previous post for more background.)

Throughout U.S. society, a powerful element of racism is discrimination in housing and the segregation that it has produced. The conventional wisdom in the U.S., including in legal circles and the courts, is that racial housing segregation is de facto, i.e., the result of private practices and personal preferences and not the result of government policies and laws. This belief has led courts to declare that governments have no responsibility to address segregation and its negative effects, other than perhaps in our public schools.

The truth is that housing segregation is clearly the result of government policies and practices throughout the last 140 years, including ones that persist to this day. The legal term for effects that are direct or intentional results of actions is de jure. Therefore, racial housing desegregation in the U.S. is de jure. If legally acknowledged as such, it is a violation of our Constitution, specifically the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and of the Bill of Rights. Acknowledgement of this would mean that our governments have an obligation to respond to housing segregation and the harm that it has caused. The definitive case for this is made by Richard Rothstein in his book The Color of Law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. [1]

The Color of Law describes in detail the government policies and practices at the local, state, and federal levels that promoted and enforced racial segregation in housing, and even forced the segregation of communities that had been integrated. Some of this dates from the late 1800s and some still exists today. Furthermore, many discriminatory private policies and practices have been supported by the action (or inaction) of government entities, such as the police, the courts, and various government agencies and regulators.

I apologize for the length of this post, but I felt it was important to give a good sense of the breadth and depth of the government policies and practices behind the racism in housing. Skim by reading the bolded portions if your time is limited. Policies and practices that contributed to housing segregation include:

  • In the late 1800s, Jim Crow laws and explicit, enforced segregation became the way of life in the South after the 1878 removal of federal troops that had been protecting blacks and implementing Reconstruction. The discrimination and segregation of the South proceeded to spread throughout the country. For example, in the early 1900s, blacks were systematically expelled from Montana, where they had previously thrived. In 1890, there were blacks in all 56 counties in Montana. By 1930, there were none in eleven counties and few left in the others. In the state capital of Helena, there were 420 blacks in 1910, but only 131 in 1930 and 45 in 1970.
  • Beginning in 1910 and continuing to today, zoning restrictions have been widely and intentionally used to segregate housing, sometimes explicitly and sometimes by banning multiple family housing or requiring large lot sizes (which make property very expensive). These latter types of zoning laws exist quite widely today. In 1910, Baltimore was the first city to adopt an explicitly segregationist zoning law. It prohibited blacks from buying homes on blocks where whites were the majority and vice versa. Implementing the zoning ordinance proved difficult because many areas of the city were quite integrated at the time. West Palm Beach adopted a racial zoning ordinance in 1929 and maintained it until 1960. Kansas City and Norfolk, VA, maintained racist zoning practices until at least 1987. Racist zoning ordinances effectively prevented blacks from moving to the suburbs and, in many cases, effectively prevented them from buying homes, forcing them to rent their homes.
  • In the 1920s, restrictions written into in home ownership deeds prohibiting the selling of a home to a black person spread throughout the country and in some cases persisted into the 1970s. Governments at the local, state, and federal levels promoted and enforced these restrictive covenants. State courts upheld them. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that these covenants were private agreements and therefore not unconstitutional. However, it ruled that they represented discrimination that was illegal for the government to be a party to. Therefore, the power and resources of the government, including law enforcement and the courts, should not be used to enforce them. Shockingly, the FHA and other federal agencies, in complicity with state and local governments, effectively ignored this Supreme Court ruling for at least another decade. It wasn’t until 1972 that a federal court ruled that these covenants were illegal as a violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
  • In the 1930s, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) was created to promote home ownership, including by insuring home mortgage loans. Mortgage loans were newly available to middle class borrowers and insurance against default by the borrower made banks much more willing to make these loans. This insurance was, for all practical purposes, required by banks for mortgage loans. However, the FHA generally refused to insure mortgage loans for blacks, and definitely would not do so if the home being purchased was in a white neighborhood. Furthermore, the FHA would not insure a mortgage for a white person if the home was in a neighborhood where blacks were present. The FHA explicitly stated in its Underwriting Manual that segregated neighborhoods were preferable because segregated schools made neighborhoods more stable and desirable. (See pages 65 – 66 in The Color of Law.)
  • Up until 1962, the FHA also supported financing for developers building whites-only subdivisions in suburbia. It wasn’t until 1962, when President Kennedy issued an executive order banning the use of federal funds to support racial discrimination in housing, that the FHA stopped supporting subdivisions by developers who refused to sell homes to blacks.
  • As mortgage loans proliferated in the 1930s, federal bank regulators allowed banks to deny mortgages to blacks, as well as to whites buying in an integrated neighborhood. State regulated insurance companies that issued mortgages had similar policies. Federal bank regulators also allowed banks to “redline” areas and refuse to make mortgage loans for the purchase of any home within those areas, which were typically neighborhoods where blacks lived. This practice continued at least into the 1980s.
  • Starting in the 1940s, public housing was built. Initially, it was primarily for working- and lower-middle-class white families and was not heavily subsidized. In the late 1940s, as whites increasingly purchased homes in the suburbs and public housing became more available to blacks, most public housing was explicitly segregated until the 1970s and developments for whites were typically better built and built in nicer areas. By the 1960s, urban public housing had mostly poor, black residents and, by government policy, was built almost exclusively in black neighborhoods.
  • In the late 1940s, black World War II veterans were denied the government-guaranteed mortgages for purchasing homes that white veterans used in great numbers to buy suburban homes.
  • Beginning in the late 1940s, violence against blacks trying to move into white neighborhoods was not uncommon. However, law enforcement at the local, state, and federal levels rarely responded to these incidents until the 1980s. The proportion of these incidents where charges were filed against perpetrators grew from only 25% in 1985-6 to 75% in 1990, when roughly 100 such incidents occurred.
  • Numerous studies in the 1960s and 1970s found that blacks paid higher effective property tax rates on their homes than whites. This was typically accomplished by assessing black-owned properties at a high value compared to market value, while white-owned properties were assessed at a low comparative value. A 1973 study of ten cities by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development found systematic under-assessment in white middle-class neighborhoods and over-assessment in black neighborhoods. In Baltimore, it found an effective property tax rate 9 times higher for blacks than for whites; in Philadelphia it was 6 times higher and in Chicago it was twice as high. A 1979 analysis of Chicago property taxes found the effective rate for blacks to be 6 times that for whites.
  • In the early 2000s, federal bank regulators failed to stop banks from providing subprime mortgages disproportionately to black customers – at two to three times the rate of white customers. Subprime mortgages were mortgage loans with onerous provisions or deceptive presentation that made it likely that the borrower would be unable to meet the terms the loan. Defaults on these subprime mortgages were a key factor in the 2008 financial collapse and the resultant foreclosures represented a huge loss of wealth for blacks in the U.S. Moreover, many of the blacks who received these predatory, subprime mortgages qualified for regular mortgages but were steered to these subprime mortgages typically because the mortgage broker made more money on them.

These policies, and others, both reinforced racially segregated housing where it existed and imposed segregation in places where it hadn’t previously existed. “In 1973, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission concluded that the ‘housing industry, aided and abetted by the Government, must bear the primary responsibility for the legacy of segregated housing. … Government and private industry came together to create a system of residential segregation.’” (page 75)

My next post will summarize effects on black people of housing and other discrimination that are evident today. I’ll also ask you to share your thoughts on how we should address racism in the U.S.

[1]      Rothstein, R., 2017, The Color of Law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., NY, NY.

RACISM IS AND HAS BEEN EXPLICIT GOVERNMENT POLICY

The murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer kneeling on his neck for nine minutes (while three other officers aided and abetted the act) has brought the racism of U.S. society to the forefront. The discussion it has spurred is going beyond this specific episode and has embraced the broader themes of racism in police personnel, training, and practices. In addition, the overall racism of U.S. society is being confronted, including the underlying, long-term racism of policies, funding, and practices of federal, state, and local governments.

For several years, the U.S. has been experiencing a simmering discussion about the racist practices and results of our criminal justice system. They typically start with police, or sometimes school disciplinary practices, and extend through prosecutors, courts, and prisons. (I’ve posted about the need for criminal justice reform, in large part because of embedded racism, here and here.)

Some of the racism in criminal justice is the result of public policies – laws defining crimes and penalties for them. Drug laws with much stiffer penalties for crack cocaine (typically used by blacks) than powdered cocaine (typically used by whites) are one clear example. Mandatory sentencing laws and three strikes laws are others. The racism of laws is exacerbated by their implementation, i.e., the practices of police, prosecutors, and courts. For example, blacks have been much more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for marijuana possession than whites, although good research has found no significant difference in use of marijuana (or other illegal drugs) between blacks and whites. Criminal justice system outcomes are different by race in part because whites can afford and have access to better legal representation.

I’ve previously posted on other topics related to racism that are embedded in laws, policies, and practices of governments at all levels, including:

  • The need for a political revolution to restore democracy and overcome economic inequality and other effects of hardcore capitalism as described in Ben Fountain’s book, Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, rebellion, and revolution. [1] The book is based on his reporting on the 2016 presidential campaign. It now looks prescient in its analysis and title. Although this argument didn’t focus on racism, race was certainly an underlying theme. (link)
  • The racism of the Supreme Court in overturning the Voting Rights Act in 2013 (as analyzed in Fountain’s book). (link)
  • The largely racially motivated voter suppression and gerrymandering that has exploded since the Supreme Court decision overturning the Voting Rights Act in 2013.
  • The disparate impact of the coronavirus pandemic on people of color. (here and here)

Underlying all of this, and a powerful element of racism throughout U.S. society, is racism in housing and the segregation that it has produced. Housing segregation has been widely acknowledged for decades as the driver of racially unequal access to education in K-12 schools, which are largely funded by local property taxes. It is also a major driver of economic inequality, the unequal impact of the coronavirus, and many disparities in health and mental health conditions and in access to health care services. Housing segregation is, of course, also linked to the racial biases in law enforcement.

The conventional wisdom in the U.S., including in legal circles and the courts, is that housing segregation is de facto, i.e., the result of private practices and personal preferences, but not the result of government policies and laws. This belief has led courts to declare that because racial housing segregation is de facto, governments have no responsibility to address it and its negative effects, other than perhaps in our public K-12 schools.

The truth is that housing segregation is clearly the result of government actions of the whole 20th century, including policies and practices that persist to this day. The legal term for effects that are intentional results of explicit policies and laws is de jure. Therefore, racial housing desegregation in the U.S. is de jure segregation. If housing segregation is legally acknowledged to be de jure, it is a violation of our Constitution, specifically the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and of the Bill of Rights. This acknowledgement would mean that our governments have an obligation to respond to the harms caused by housing segregation. The definitive case for this is made by Richard Rothstein in his book The Color of Law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. [2] I will summarize the book in my next post.

An important but less direct way that housing segregation has been created and maintained is by keeping the incomes and wealth of black households low so that they cannot afford to buy homes in white areas. Long after the end of the sharecropping system, which was indentured servitude that was barely distinguishable from slavery, many public policies have kept blacks poor.

In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt needed the votes of southern Democrats to pass New Deal legislation. To get their votes, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 and other legislation that benefited workers excluded industries in which blacks were the predominant workers, such as agriculture and domestic services. Therefore, these occupations and many blacks didn’t receive the benefits of the minimum wage, participation in labor unions, or coverage from Social Security. Furthermore, many of the New Deal’s employment programs rarely employed blacks or restricted them to lower paying jobs. The minimum wage and some, but not all, of the other protections and benefits of the FLSA were finally given to most farm and domestic workers in the 1960s and 1970s.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, blacks who worked in unionized jobs were often in segregated unions, which typically had lower pay and represented less skilled jobs. Federal agencies continued to recognize segregated unions until President Kennedy ended the practice in 1962. In 1964, the National Labor Relations Board finally refused to certify whites-only unions and it was another decade before blacks were admitted to construction trade unions. Even then, their lack of seniority in the union meant that it would be many years before their incomes were comparable to white union members’ earnings.

Although many of the racist policies and practices that were once allowed and facilitated by governments are no longer in place, their effects have never been remedied and their discriminatory results endure. Economic inequality is one of their enduring legacies. In 2017, the median income for white households was about $60,000, while it was roughly $37,000 for black households – only 60% as much. Median white household wealth (assets minus liabilities) was about $134,000 versus $11,000 for black households – only 8% as much. Given that equity in a home is the primary source of wealth for middle-class households in the U.S., housing discrimination and segregation have been big contributors to racial economic inequality.

It is long past time to address the racial discrimination that has persisted in the U.S. over the last 140 years since Reconstruction of the South was abandoned and indeed over the last 400 years since black slaves were first brought to America. We need to reform our police and criminal justice system, our housing policies and practices, and so much more.

We need to have a serious discussion about reparations – remedies for the enduring harm that past and current policies and practices have caused to blacks in the U.S. I encourage each and every one of us to think long and hard about how we can contribute to the effort to end racism in our society and to erase its enduring scars.

[1]      Fountain, B., 2018, Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, rebellion, and revolution, HarperCollins Publishers, NY, NY.

[2]      Rothstein, R., 2017, The Color of Law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America, W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., NY, NY.