A History of Black America
In this episode of Adam Ruins Everything, “Suburbs,” with some comedy and candor, he explains state-sanctioned racism in housing and how it impacted school segregation. Adam also invites journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones to further explain housing and school segregation, as well as the ways that similar forms of discrimination and segregation impact black and brown neighborhoods presently. For Hannah-Jones’s article on current school segregation, Choosing a School for My Daughter.
“Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) come north to help Chicago’s civil rights leaders in their nonviolent struggle against segregated housing. Their efforts pit them against Chicago’s powerful mayor, Richard Daley. When a series of marches through all-white neighborhoods draws violence, King and Daley negotiate with mixed results. In Detroit, a police raid in a black neighborhood sparks an urban uprising that lasts five days, leaving 43 people dead. The Kerner Commission finds that America is becoming “two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal.” President Lyndon Johnson, who appointed the commission, ignores the report.”
Here’s Ta-Nehisi Coates’s article on the history of state-sanctioned housing discrimination,“Case for Reparations.”
Here’s a critique of Coates, “Case Against Reparations” by Kevin Williamson
After our discussion today in class and reading DR. King’s blog post about continued inequality and discrimination in the United States for black people, I was reminded of a story on the news I saw a couple of days ago. Last week two black men were arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks just for waiting for a friend. The store manager called the police on the two black men who were waiting to meet a friend saying that they were trespassing. Soon six police officers arrived and arrested the men for “not complying and trespassing.” This was absolutely discrimination, there is no doubt in my mind that if the two men were white that the store manager would have never called the police. This act has led to protests in Philadelphia and a boycott of Starbucks. The CEO of Starbucks now plans to implement training for all employees to try and eliminate discrimination in his stores.
Blacks Still Face a Red Line on Housing
By the Editorial Board
“For generations of white American families, homeownership has been a fundamental means of accumulating wealth. Their homes have grown in value over time, providing security in retirement and serving as an asset against which they can borrow for education or other purposes.
But African-Americans were essentially shut out of early federal programs that promoted homeownership and financial well-being — including the all-important New Deal mortgage insurance system that generated the mid-20th-century homeownership boom. This missed opportunity to amass wealth that white Americans took for granted is evident to this day in a yawning black-white wealth gap and in worse health, living conditions and educational opportunities for African-Americans.
The Fair Housing Act, which turned 50 years old last week, ended the most egregious forms of discrimination and brought a modest rise in black homeownership. But those gains — and the hard-won wealth they represented — were wiped out a decade ago in the Great Recession, which reduced the African-American homeownership rate to levels not seen since housing discrimination was legal in the 1960s.
These losses reflect the persistence of financial racism in America and the fact that black people who were eligible for affordable credit were victimized by predatory loans that paid off handsomely for brokers and lenders but led borrowers to foreclosure.”