The Lasting Effects of Redlining

 “A government offering such bounty to builders and lenders could have required compliance with a nondiscrimination policy. Instead, the FHA adopted a racial policy that could well have been culled from the Nuremberg laws.” - Charles Abrams, 1955

For this post, I took a look at citylab.com’s article (link below) about the lasting effects of redlining. As we discussed in class, redlining was a program developed by the FHA to determine mortgage class levels.  The goal of the program was to make buying a home easier for white Americans and extremely difficult for black Americans/other racial groups. They did this by “redlining” areas where black people lived. The mentioned areas were labeled as unstable and high-risk, so when it came time for the banks to determine whether or not they’d grant a home loan, they would decide against it. This limited the ability to purchase a home exclusively to affluent white families.  The notion of a black family being successful and owning a home was seen as a threat, and it was best to keep them from “infiltrating” the nice white communities. This project plays an immense role in systemic racial discrimination. Though the civil rights movement made advances and the laws changed throughout the years, allowing people of every color to enjoy the same freedoms as white people, the redlining program serves as a loophole of sorts.  Even if the law says it’s illegal to deny a loan based on skin color, it’s perfectly fine to take their mortgage class level into consideration. That is why we still see the same poverty rates in the redlined areas as were in the 1930s.

You can read the rest of the article HERE