Sixty years after the Brown decision, and despite federal and state anti-discrimination laws, residential segregation not only persists but is growing. Long Island, Néw York, has highly segregated communities and schools.
As this article in the Long Island Press shows, this is not accidental. Nor is it a reflection of the incomes of black and white families. Even when black families can afford to live in a middle-class or affluent district, they may be steered away by landlords or real estate agents.
Even when towns build “affordable housing,” they give preference to residents, which screens out newcomers.
As Richard Rothstein has written, school segregation is rooted in residential segregation. Society can’t reduce the former without reducing the latter.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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Residential segregation is reinforced by using politically drawn district lines and school catchment areas.
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“Steered away…” That is one of the lamest excuses ever. Why is it that so many white liberals simply cannot deal with the fact that blacks, like most other ethnic groups (but even moreso), tend to want to live in “their” communities and around “their” people, even when they can afford to live elsewhere? This has been demonstrated over and over.
Trying to tell people where they “should” live (according to you) does not and will not work. As the public schools become more dictatorial, more and more parents find alternatives. Try to arrange their neighborhoods for them, and they will make arrangements to derail your social engineering. It’s just that simple.
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I’m reminded here of Thomas Schelling’s famous computer model showing how segregation tends to occur naturally:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/04/seeing-around-corners/302471/
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I’ve also heard that if you collected all the money in a country and divided it evenly among the citizens, that in a matter of time it would, once again, be distributed unequally. Naturally, I guess.
So the key is to figure out how to handle the fallout of human nature. . .not necessarily prevent human nature from happening.
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Yes, that’s true. Money tends, generally speaking, to flow to those who make good life choices, have marketable talents, and manage their resources wisely. Case in point: Most lottery players, and therefore most lottery winners, are poor or working class. But a high percentage of them end up filing for bankruptcy after hitting the jackpot. They didn’t know how to manage money to begin with, and getting a free pile of it didn’t improve their skills any.
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Money goes to those who make good life choices and have marketable skills?
That’s a good one, and I recommend you tell it to Sam Walton’s kids; they’ll get a real hoot out of it.
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I strongly suggest that you read “American Apartheid” and other studies that show “self-selection” is largely a myth–virtually no people of color would prefer to live in a neighborhood that is >90% nonwhite, and the majority of people of color would be comfortable living in a neighborhood where they are in the minority.
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That study is the epitome of the sort of agenda-driven work produced by people who already have the answer they want before compiling the data. Self-selection is very real, as is the fact that many blacks report pressure from friends and family to not “leave the neighborhood.” I won’t pretend it is a simple issue, because it is not. But it certainly doesn’t follow the simplistic formulation that “studies” like AA want to employ.
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If blacks have such a powerful and universal desire to self-segregate, one wonders why white America has gone to such incredibly complex, enormous, and expensive lengths to build local and national systems that were expressly designed to thwart integration and whose effects still resonate today.
No, I think the simplest explanation here is the correct one, and we should trust what years of reliable surveys and the migration patterns of blacks who have attained housing purchasing power tell us: blacks do not want to live in racially isolated towns or neighborhoods, and they are far more willing to integrate than white people are. Perhaps that’s at the root of your confusion—it’s probably true that blacks don’t want to live in racially isolated WHITE areas, in no small part due to the ugly history behind how those areas became—and stayed—white.
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This needs repeating: “If blacks have such a powerful and universal desire to self-segregate, one wonders why white America has gone to such incredibly complex, enormous, and expensive lengths to build local and national systems that were expressly designed to thwart integration and whose effects still resonate today.”
Exactly.
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You want to conflate what happened 50 years ago to what is happening today. Yes, the past has an impact on the present, but the fact is that you don’t want to face the realities of life and the choices people — including minorities — are making today. In one breath you say that blacks don’t consciously choose to live around other blacks, yet in the next breath you say that of course blacks don’t want to move into an all-white neighborhood. Well SOMEBODY has to be first in order for integration to occur.
In my own neighborhood, we have several black families, two of which only recently moved in. Nobody has put their homes on the market or freaked-out, because these new families are in the same general socio-economic class as the rest of us, and they fit in just fine.
Here’s the truth about your “simplest explanation”: There is no simple explanation. People make housing choices for a variety of reasons. Trying to boil this all down to a simple morality play about white bigots and victimized blacks is not only asinine, but it does a disservice to everyone involved.
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One more point: By far the greatest cause of modern segregation is socio-economic. Generally speaking, people want to live in the nicest area they can. And to put it bluntly, “nice” equates to staying away from poor people and the social problems that tend to come with them. Yes, we have racial segregation. But you will also be hard-pressed to find neighborhoods where professional-class whites live side-by-side with working-class whites. But no one much cares about that.
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No Kindle version?!? And I was actually about to buy it.
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Order a paperback, it won’t kill you.
If you can’t, then do hit that “I want to read it on my Kindle” button; publishers do listen.
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OMG. You’re honestly saying that blacks choose to live in high-poverty, dangerous, gang-infested neighborhoods because they don’t want to live with white folks?
I hardly know where to start with that, except the very long, bleak history of things like redlining, white flight, credit freezing, etc.
BTW, if “this has been demonstrated over and over”, you’ll easily be able to provide us a source, right?
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I’m pretty sure that I never said that “blacks choose to live in high-poverty, dangerous, gang-infested neighborhoods.” I was speaking of racial segregation in general, within class groupings. There are many middle-class blacks who choose to live in middle-class black neighborhoods, not because they have antipathy toward whites, but because they feel more comfortable socially. They also have closer proximity to family, friends, and institutions such as churches.
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All I can say, Jack, is that you are profoundly ignorant of history. It’s not that blacks haven’t chosen to integrate with whites – in fact, the past 50 years and more have been the struggle for integration. It’s that whites have actively prevented them from doing so.
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Again you want to put words in my mouth that I didn’t say. The history of segregation is irrefutable. My only point is that trying to paint today’s situation as if it’s still 1964 is stupid and ignores the fact that blacks are themselves making economic choices.
Again, look at the report on Schelling’s work. It’s pretty eye-opening. Even when people don’t choose to necessarily live in a segregated area — don’t even WANT to live in a segregated area — it often works out that way.
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Real estate agents and landlords definitely have a hand in segregation in Chicago as well. I have lived in one of the few integrated areas on the North Side of Chicago for 30 years. In my neighborhood, there are homes that don’t look so spectacular on the outside but which sell for upper six figure amounts. which are owned mostly by white people, and there are small (mostly 3 flat and 6 flat) apartment buildings primarily inhabited by diverse populations. There are Hispanics, Blacks and Whites in my building, but I recall a previous landlord telling me about how he wanted to keep minorities out.
As increasing numbers of minorities moved into the neighborhood, there was a sudden rush to turn more and more apartment buildings into condominiums. Without actually saying why, this was urged by real estate companies (I received their notices in the mail.) Decreasing the number of rental units and increasing the number of condo owners was a very effective strategy for putting a limit on the number of people of color who were moving into my neighborhood.
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And you’re missing the point, Jack. The history of segregation is directly connected to the segregation that still happens today. The past is not past. All the same things that happened then happen now, albeit perhaps not so openly. Why are you refusing to listen that blacks are *still* being steered away from white areas by landlords and real estate agents?
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Chi-Town Res — You are making the common mistake here of conflating race and class. If a neighborhood is heading in the wrong direction in terms of the things that make it valuable, then yes, of course interested parties are going to attempt upgrades that will lure in more affluent residents. This does not mean these efforts are targetted toward keeping out blacks, in particular.
Some of the logic applied in these arguments is something else. Some want to talk about “bad” neighborhoods as if they just dropped from the sky and everyone there is a victim. But when better neighborhoods take actions to prevent degredation, they are accused of being bigotted and exclusionary. I just really want to know where this magical world exists in which all the social problems have disappeared and every neighborhood is a desirable one.
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Exactly, Dienne. Segregation is still being promoted, just not as blatantly as in the past.
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Don’t try to tell me about what I have personally experienced from living in my city for over 60 years. It is very much about race. I grew up on the South Side and when blacks started moving into the area, real estate agents called homeowners and scared them into selling, including by saying that the value of their homes would go down if they didn’t sell immediately. It’s called “block busting” and it was very effective.
The majority of whites in my upper middle class neighborhood moved to the suburbs within about two years, including my family. I had to spend my last year of high school at a suburban school where I knew no one because of that.
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You may not have noticed, Jack, but in this country, class often speaks in the language of race.
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Michael — For those hellbent on seeing racism around every tree, yes. But again, none of this angst is ever directed toward the plight of working-class whites, particularly those in rural areas. No one seems to care that they live in poor areas or have bad schools. In my experience, those who rend their garments the most about the plight of inner-city blacks are the very ones to make jokes about white hicks and yokels. A lot of this angst about race comes down to sanctimonious ideological piety rather than actual concern about people.
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More examples of finger pointing at others to try to conceal your own shortcomings.
As it happens, I probably know poverty better than you, since I am a poor white person who has lived in poverty for most of my life. For awhile, when I was growing up, I lived with a wealthy step parent, so I also know what poor people are missing. Most of all, I know what it’s like to constantly ache from hunger and it’s not pretty.
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Jack, your straw man just burned into ashes; you’ll have to find another.
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I think you are right, in that it needs to come from within groups of people and not from a government regulation.
It is possible, though, that when minorities have been intentionally left out of the possibility of living near whites (whether by only certain areas having low income or public housing or by blatant rules that they cannot buy property in certain areas, even if they have the means to do so), the natural progression was slowed. It works both ways—when government is used surreptitiously to prevent a mixing of races, it often goes unmentioned (and it has, even if just by HMAs having rules that would prevent people from having options). For example, the street I live on is an old street built mostly in the 1920s and has neighborhood guidelines (and these are the types of things that follow the chain of title in property and so forth, as far as stipulations and regulations) that no “negroes or other people of questionable character shall be allowed to purchase a home on _______ Street.”
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HOAs, rather
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Joanna, I hope you mean your neighborhood had race based restrictions in the past. I was under the strong impression that they are no longer legal.
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx There may be some overall general grain of truth in what you are saying– that it is human nature to want to gather with ‘your own kind’. However it does not apply here. The example given is hardly unique, it’s been going on forever in LI: an upper-middle-class black newcomer asks to be shown moderately-high-priced housing near the university where she will teach, & is instead, yes, STEERED to further-away housing which are in the wrong $ bracket but the ‘right’ race bracket. Give me a break.
LI mentality & SOP’s of the realty biz have not changed since ’50’s blockbusting, redlining, etc.
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Are you or anyone else aware of a good resource on the restrictive covenants that were built into Levittown?
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Here’s the thing: The “steering” argument implies that blacks are so dumb or gullible that they will do whatever a real estate agent tells them. Sorry, I don’t buy it.
If I move to a new city, do my research, and tell my real estate agent that I want to live in the Niceburg area of town, if the agent tries to steer me to a less-nice part of town, I’m getting me a new agent.
The steering argument also ignores the fact that there are a lot of black real estate agents out there, and at least in my experience, blacks customers represent a disproportionate percentage of their clients. So to believe in the “steering” argument, you have to believe that black real estate agents are complicit in hoodwinking black homebuyers.
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real estate agents can’t override restrictive covenants; you need a lawyer to do that, and usually a lawsuit or a bunch of signatures.
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I trust that the authors of “American Apartheid” wouldn’t mind my typing in a short excerpt to help Jack understand why black realtors are “complicit” in the process of steering blacks to segregated areas:
“Black housing demand is also geographically skewed by racial segregation within the real estate industry itself. Most real estate brokers depend on the cooperation of other agents for sales and referrals; a fact that is formalized through multiple listing services (MLS). These services provide extensive listings of properties for sale or rent throughout a metropolitan area, and when MLS transactions are completed, the commission divided between the participating agents. But these listings typically cover only white suburbs and select city neighborhoods, and are available only to agents serving those areas; brokers serving black communities generally do not have access to these services. Moreover, access is typically controlled by local real estate boards, and in some instances suburban brokers who sell to blacks have been denied membership on the board and hence prevented from using multiple listing services.”
So it operates a lot like segregation in society at large–the agents work and live in segregated areas, and there is a looming history of intimidation and bad behavior (agents of any color essentially losing their livelihoods for selling homes in white areas to black clients). I would really like for Massey and Denton to write a follow-up book and focus on whether the rise of the internet has made it easier for blacks to buy homes–it’s probably a mixed bag as so many online listings are done through MLS.
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Just to nip the argument that charters or choice have anything to do with Long Island’s brutal segregation (and, in many districts, active white flight): Nassau and Suffolk have a combined population of about 2.9 million people and land area of 803 square miles, making it comparable in size and density to the city of Houston, TX. There are a grand total of 5–five–charter schools in the two counties.
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Racially-based housing discrimination on Long Island is nothing new: Levittown, often referred to as the archetypal post-WWII suburban community, had racially restrictive covenants on its deeds for many years.
Then again, NYC has nothing to crow about, since Stuyvesant Town, constructed in the same era and then owned by Metropolitan Life Insurance, restricted apartments rentals to whites.
It’s ironic that so many of America’s suburbs were either de jure or de facto segregated racially, but now face exploding poverty as many coastal cities become hyper-gentrified, and the poor and working class are forced out of the cities. Poverty is increasing faster in the suburbs than anywhere else.
By the way, Eli Broad made his first fortune – he later started an insurance company that was bought by AIG – building white flight suburbs
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We agree that racially based housing discrimination is nothing new. We also agree that it is a terrible idea.
Around the country there are examples of low income people being “allowed” into certain suburban areas – but the exclusive suburbs remain in place.
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I’ve heard this about Levittown many times, but I’ve never read much about it myself. It occurs to me now that it couldn’t have gone on for too many years after WWII, because Shelley v. Kramer (the SCOTUS case that ruled that racial covenants in deeds were unconstitutional) happened in 1948 or 1949. Unless maybe states were drawing distinctions between deeds of sale and leases, which seems ridiculous, but states have made far more ridiculous arguments about race than that.
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FLERP – This NY Times article says it went on after the US Supreme Court case
I remember my parents in Chicago tell me that there were suburbs where Blacks, Jews and Hispanics were “not wanted.” This was in the 1950’s.
My own experience around the country is that there are still some such suburbs. We have a number of suburbs in Minneapolis/ST. Paul that are 90% or more white. However, I don’t think anyone is saying there are explicit covenants in suburbs today that are the same as in the late 1940’s
Joe
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Unfortunately, the article is vague about exactly how Levitt and communities were skirting the Supreme Court’s decision. The reporter notes that the restrictive covenants were “dropped in 1948” after Shelley v. Kramer, but then writes that “[i]gnoring the law of the land, however, Levitt continued adhering to its racial bar. Levittown quickly filled up with young white families. Minority residents trickled in during the 1950’s, but the pattern was set.”
Obviously this is something I could learn more about by reading some history. But it reminds me of of something else: the projects to collect and preserve oral histories from survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. Has a similar project been done with Jim Crow? I feel like the U.S. has a kind of collective amnesia about the decades before the civil rights movement. To use an extreme analogy, it seems not entirely unlike the cultural break in Japan between pre-WWII and post-WWII/Hiroshima/Nagasaki. The quotidian stuff, the details of Jim Crow and segregation and discrimination on a daily basis, both from the view of blacks who suffered under it and from whites enforced it or watched it and benefited from it. If you’re white and you’re my age, do you really know how your grandparents lived in that system, or how they felt about it? Your great-grandparents? This generally is not stuff that people talk about.
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It’s also a fact, though not directly related to this discussion, that former US Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist began his legal career arguing for the continuation of race-based deed restrictions in Arizona.
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It’s not directly related to the main discussion on this thread, but it’s completely related to what I was just musing about.
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I heard that from my parents then, too, Joe, and, as far as I know, it continued through the 60s. Although I can’t recall all of the suburbs involved, I do remember when riding through the North Shore hearing my parents say that Kenilworth was “restricted”, e.g., they didn’t permit Jews. I think Lake Forest might have been another one. The only North Shore suburb that I know of where blacks lived then was Evanston, and Highwood had Hispanics.
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We had family who moved from Rogers Park to Skokie in the 1960’s. They told me similar things about Kenilworth and Lake Forest. I have no evidence to verify this.
For me, the largest point is that there are a number of suburbs that have been very dis-interested in racial or even more especially economic integration. These families in exclusive suburbs have been willing to tax themselves heavily (and receive the tax benefits of doing so). h
Thishas meant in many states with a heavy reliance on local property taxes to fund public education, that there have been deep inequities in the quality of urban and suburban public schools.
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Flerp, there is a deep collective amnesia about the history–more so the de facto and “soft” de jure stuff that happened outside of the South–because acknowledging it would cut uncomfortably close to acknowledging what’s happening now. People in the wealthy white areas of Nassau, Bergen, Westchester, and Fairfield counties are about as interested in learning about the restrictive covenants, the redlining, the sundown restrictions, the cross burnings, and the preposterous zoning laws as they are in having a hole drilled into their heads. Better to just pretend it didn’t happen.
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Yeah, I have a serious problem with the common practice of funding public education through local property taxes, because it perpetuates inequity.
Biddle and Berliner wrote a good piece on the matter here: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may02/vol59/num08/Unequal-School-Funding-in-the-United-States.aspx
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Here’s an article about Kenilworth’s history of restricting Jews and minorities –except for live-in servents: http://hnn.us/article/25520
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Yes, it was real. This excerpt from “Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait” in Google Books also mentions the restrictions in Kenilworth and Lake Forest:
http://books.google.com/books?id=2JbU1d9Xil0C&pg=PA168#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Thanks for sharing Chi Town Res. I was born in Chicago and spent a lot of time there over the years.
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Joe, There were restrictive covenants in the city of our birth, too. You might be interested in seeing this map showing “Racial Restrictive Covenants on Chicago’s South Side in 1947.”
http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1761.html
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CTR – while this is off the main topic, thanks for sharing this info. There’s a lot to learn from history.
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See also, “Inside the Battle for Fair Housing in 1960s Chicago”
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/371360/the-story-of-clyde-ross-and-the-contract-buyers-league/
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Incredible. Again, thanks.
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It is similar in Chicago and I personally discovered that segregation is actually reinforced by the city itself. Most low income areas are on the South Side and the West Side and inhabited by African Americans and Hispanics. When the city tore down the majority of high rise projects and many people were displaced, the city claimed the buildings would be replaced with scattered site low income housing throughout the city. A couple years ago, when it looked like I was going to lose my apartment and become homeless, because my income sharply declined, I looked into low income housing, The city rep told me that there was “a long waiting list” and that most of the housing was on the South Side and the West Side –not, in fact, scattered throughout the city.
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Chicago probably read what happened in Memphis when that city “spread public housing around” and thought better of it.
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You and “Jim” should meet for coffee and discuss your racist ideas. Frankly, they’re not welcome here.
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So facts are racist… and in a post that didn’t even mention race. Gotcha. **Sigh**
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No, the plan was bogus. It was proffered, to appease those who were upset and very vocal about being displaced, by Daley –who was the first Democratic mayor here to turn against unions in many, many decades. Like in other gentrifying cities, Chicago is actively pushing out minorities and the working class in order to make way for the “gentry.”
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So what you’re saying is that Chicago would rather have more taxpayers, less crime, and fewer decaying neighborhoods. Gosh, why on earth would they want that? Doesn’t every city want to look like Detroit?
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So there it is. Dienne pegged you right. You most definitely are a racist, and the only way you try to defend your skewed perspective is by lashing out at others and claiming their thinking is flawed. Try growing a brain and a heart.
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Speaking of needing to grow a brain…
When someone says something not even remotely racist but with which you simply disagree, and your kneejerk reaction is to yell, “RAAAAACIST!”, then maybe you’re the problem, not them.
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Nah, the people here have your number, Dude. This is yet another example of how you project your own prejudices and inadequacies onto others.
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So I am “projecting my prejudices,” yet I have not accused anyone of prejudice. Not sure how that works, but then, not much of this racial accusitory stuff does.
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Oh, please. Your comments have oozed with racism and suggesting that it’s good for cities to push out poor people of color was one of the more obvious examples.
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The one thing I always learn from comment threads like this is that people still get real angry when they talk about race.
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Noting the value of clearing out people of color who are in poverty from cities, instead of seeing them as human beings in need of jobs with livable wages and affordable housing, is provocative, unsettling and bound to ruffle some feathers –as probably intended considering this is a troll.
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I don’t think that’s a fair reading of what Jack has been saying here.
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I think it’s a very fair assessment of someone who contends that cleaning up a city means getting rid of the riff-raff, who happen to be low income people of color, instead of addressing poverty, jobs and housing issues, and replacing them with elites.
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Victorino — Given that I have been commenting here for some time and have often found agreement on many issues with others here, your troll accusation is without merit. But it certainly allows you to be dismissive, which is what you would evidently prefer.
My point about housing is simply that a city must have a taxbase to survive. While some deride gentrification as an evil, it is actually a form of revitalization that is crucial for the poor living in urban areas. Without gentrification, you end up with a festering sore of a decaying city like Detroit. Are the poor better off in a thriving city, or in a dead one?
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Cosmic Tinker — I must say it’s pretty amazing to see the number of words some people are willing to put in my mouth. The best way to address “poverty, jobs, and housing issues” is to ensure that there is economic vitality. Please show me a city that has lost its tax base and has managed to successfully address the needs of the poor.
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You don’t know jack. Chicago is not Detroit. The city itself claims to have a “Very large tax base and high collection rates
-Diverse mix of taxes and user fees
-Property Tax collection rate above 95%”
And we have one of the highest sales tax rates in the country.
Click to access CIC2013_GO_SalesTax_MFT.pdf
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Per my real estate attorney, restrictive covenants based on race went away in 1974.
So it’s been by other forces that we have remained segregated.
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