Houston Southard

Richard Rothstein - The Color of law

Did your butthole just pucker? If so you may be unwilling to face your privilege, uncomfortable confronting the past, or unfettered by your belief in the bootstrapping myth. Richard Rothstien will fire-hose those away by extensively exposing government policies in the past century explicitly designed to segregate black and white homeowners.

State-sponsored discriminatory practices like restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting, racial zoning, predatory real estate practices, and dubious uses of eminent domain may be a thing of the past, but their legacies persist. For proof I only need look in my backyard. St. Louis is infamous for the Pruitt-Igoe-initiated Delmar Divide. I drove through Ferguson a few months ago and it was largely shuttered.

Zero down payment low interest loans if white, high down payment high interest uninsured installment plans if black. Segregated neighborhoods nationwide were weened off public services. Less garbage pick up, neglected sewer and water service and industrialization turned these forced concentrated areas into slums which were promised to infect white neighborhoods if integration were allowed.

FHA subsidized developments like Levitttown on the condition homes only be sold to whites and deeds not resold if black while judges enforced its constitutionality on the grounds that it was a private agreement. The FHA itself upheld that integrated neighborhoods lowered property values.

Implicit private policies still exist today. Lenders compensate originators based on a percentage of the loan amount, a practice encouraging higher dollar transactions which generational wealth disparities mean come from largely white borrowers. I'm glad to work for a lender who compensates on volume, not value, because disincentivizing lower balance refinances means we're not contributing to the implicit leftovers of old federally-sanctioned segregation rules.

This isn't necessarily an argument for the complex case of reparations, but an argument against that reflexive response you feel when have to tango with housing history's fallout. Shit went down, and a reckoning would be our just desserts.