{"id":13250,"date":"2020-11-13T16:23:27","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T21:23:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/?p=13250"},"modified":"2020-11-13T16:25:00","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T21:25:00","slug":"housing-discrimination-as-told-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/splice.com\/blog\/housing-discrimination-as-told-by\/","title":{"rendered":"Zoning laws and housing discrimination, as told by Grandmaster Flash, Dr. Dre, and others"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Photo illustration:<\/strong> Alicia Tatone<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Housing discrimination against Black people in the United States goes back as far as the country itself.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

However, it was the Federal Housing Administration, created in 1934 as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt\u2019s New Deal, that began the structural embedding of housing discrimination into the bedrock of the United States through their zoning laws. It set the stage for the enforcement of poverty, squalor, and second-class citizenship for Black Americans by the U.S. government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author and former The Atlantic <\/em>national correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in “The Case for Reparations,”<\/a> “The FHA had adopted a system of maps that rated neighborhoods according to their perceived stability. On the maps, green areas\u2026 indicated ‘in demand’ neighborhoods that, as one appraiser put it, lacked ‘a single foreigner or Negro.’ Neighborhoods where Black people lived were rated ‘D’ and were usually considered ineligible for FHA backing. They were colored in red. Neither the percentage of Black people living there nor their social class mattered. Black people were viewed as a contagion.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These zoning laws systematically excluded Black residents from homeownership at a crucial moment that formed foundations of generational wealth for many white families. Black neighborhoods were cut off from investment and from economic opportunities that were springing up in white-majority areas as more white residents bought their own homes with FHA backing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Message (feat. Melle Mel & Duke Bootee)” by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n