Suburban Segregation in The North

     For instance, when the New York State Housing Commission offered the village of Freeport a loan to build new housing to eliminate the African-American slum at its center, the village board passed a referendum to reject the loan. In other words, the board actually refused to accept a grant of public money that would improve the community as a whole simply because it did not want to provide better housing options for African-Americans.  In addition, communities ensured that their populace would remain all-white by encouraging protective covenants through which home-buyers promised not to subsequently sell their property to African-Americans.   

     It took a long time for the government to actively advocate for racial integration in housing, and a sizeable African-American middle-class did not begin to emerge until the 1960s and 1970s.  Even then, however, the survival of the African-American middle-class was threatened by the phenomenon of white flight, which was aided and abetted by real estate agents acting for their own personal gain.  Realtors would engage in a campaign to convince whites that an influx of African-Americans would result in higher crime rates and lower property values.  Through this practice of “blockbusting,” realtors convinced whites to sell their homes at bargain basement prices and then turned around and sold the houses to African-Americans for more than what they were worth.  Realtors also imposed a segregation of their own devising by steering blacks and whites to racially-designated neighborhoods.  Meanwhile, the phenomenon of white flight created a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the rapid abandonment of the neighborhood by more and more families caused the community to deteriorate.

The active role that realtors played in racial segregation remains shocking.  Some went so far as to stage break-ins in targeted suburban neighborhoods in order trigger white flight so that they could profit from the rapid racial turnover of a residential area.     It is important to realize that, the election of Barack Obama notwithstanding, these types of abuses against African-Americans and other minorities, as well as whites in lower-income groups, persist even today.  The predatory lending and other abuses by banks and financial institutions that came to light during the recent subprime crisis are not without precedent.  In “white flight” communities in the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond, realtors often roped desperate African-Americans into mortgages that they could not afford, just as over-eager subprime lenders have done in recent years with minority home buyers.  We must not let the progress we have made blind us to what still must be done to rid our society of the effects of racism and oppression once and for all.