honors independent study, redlining
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synthesis paper
When I began synthesizing my research, I came across an article detailing white privilege from an urban and environmental perspective—how in the past and even now it has allowed for institutionalized racism in a unique and terrible way. This is redlining, a form of racism practiced by the government that discourages lending to ethnic minorities for mortgage payments. Even after the formal end of segregation, redlining is still used to unofficially segregate entire cities by limiting who is eligible to get loans in certain neighborhoods. As you might expect, redlining is conducted entirely by a group of non-elected whites who are on government payrolls.
America touts itself as an immigrant nation, the land of opportunity. Nonetheless, our country has a long history of trying very hard to limit opportunities of any and all immigrants. The reasoning behind this is not difficult to see.
During periods following heavy immigration, the phrase “They took our jobs!” is all too commonly employed. Usually it is the fruition of male white workers’ resentment of being denied a job that instead went to a person of color or a woman, sometimes both. Some people throw strikes citing this phrase, sometimes senators cite it in an effort to rile up electors. Regardless, white people like white privilege, and don’t like it when it is taken away. These people may respond in other ways, including resorting to violence or participating in redlining to try and guarantee their socioeconomic lot in life.
The goal in redlining is precisely that: Try to cause strife for minorities by forcing them away from communities they otherwise could afford to live in.
What exactly is redlining?
In its most basic form, redlining is the coding of civic maps in various colors, in which each color stands for a level of “investiture safety.” The scale goes from green to red, green being where the most “desirable” properties are located, IE where more affluent white people move to. The actual red lines stand to encompass ethnic minorities and immigrants. During the heyday of redlining, Polish people and Jews—often war refugees—were most commonly targeted. All other ethnic minorities also were targeted regardless of actual credit rating or economic affluence.
These red lines then do a multitude of things. By telling banks exactly who is and who isn’t safe to loan to for mortgages, you limit the quality of a community that a minority is able to live in, even if they could otherwise afford it.
This has had the effect of creating most of today’s undesirable inner cities. The question is, how?
I found in my research a prime example of this effect in Los Angeles, a white tourist town that gradually became a heavily industrialized city. Los Angeles, then and now, is a dense, industrial metropolis of inner cities surrounded on most sides by areas that are much nicer to live. Privileged whites live on the fringes and the coasts. As the city’s industrial core expanded, whites moved farther and farther away and abandoned their old neighborhoods to non-whites. Then, because of redlining, money gradually stopped flowing into these industrial neighborhoods; they became the ghetto and the “hood.” In these communities, nothing nice can be developed or improved—there simply is no money for it. What few businesses and industries exist now do so barred off from the rest of the world, surrounded by infrastructure that is in dire need of modernization to even be considered safe. Redlining is responsible for that, too. When whites moved out, they took with them the voting base and people already in government. Naturally any civic project that had any money behind it was allocated by and for these people, these privileged whites. While the fancy new parkway is being built through the white community, a freeway is being built over the ghetto so whites don’t have to look at it, travel through it, or bring any money to its businesses which so badly need it. These things are the fruits of redlining, something that civil rights legislation has made entirely illegal.
Even so, we still witness redlining. In lieu of the 2008 mortgage crisis, banks became very choosy to whom they lend. Areas lacking emergency services (like previously redlined communities, still filled with trapped ethnic minorities) were intentionally or unintentionally charged higher rates due to their real or perceived risk factors. This new redlining, unlike that of the past, is actually justified from a business perspective for the aforementioned reason. The business minimizes its risk while urban poor continue to suffer. Even while redlining remains illegal, it remains questionable for the government to interfere with banks trying to make smart investments.
On some occasions, the government does step in. In my research I came across a very one-sided news article written to glorify New York’s attorney general. The situation described here is ever the modern example of redlining: Coincidentally or purposely, a firm or bank is recorded refusing loans to people living in a section of a city, typically a poorly serviced ghetto. The larger the presence that firm has in the region the more this is noticed, and if the financial institution has a monopoly, inner city minorities get no mortgage loans whatsoever. When this happens, people start complaining. When voters complain, politicians listen. In this case, the New York attorney general is conducting an investigation to file a lawsuit against the firm in question. The suit is official, but gives no details regarding why the bank invested as it did. Instead, the investigation provides statistics proving the suit’s validity. This is the most common response to modern redlining. It may help those specific families, but it does not address the greater issue of why the financial institution refused to invest in these communities.
The reason for this, as stated above, is the state of most inner cities. The lack of access to emergency services has produced too risky of an environment for many firms to consider investing in such places. While thinking on what could be done to solve this vicious circle, I came across what I feel might be a real solution. Instead of reactionary lawsuits that benefit only a few people, it is instead possible to proactively pursue a solution: By working to improve things like emergency services and parks, quality of life is enhanced and property value increases. Instead of being perceived as a liability, the inner city becomes a much more desirable environment for a firm to invest in. As quality of life improves, as investments continue, more people are attracted back into the inner city, and even more money is distributed. Eventually, “inner city” loses its negative implications. Quality of life improves for residents, firms aren’t forced to redline, the government sees development (and gets to tax it), and everybody wins. Initially, this may sound like a undue burden on taxpayers, a TED talk, Greening the Ghetto, explores this in detail. What is being proposed is very possibly through volunteer work and community service. Better yet, all this has been proven possible a Third World budget. The TED talk itself details exactly how this was, and is, possible to reproduce in American ghettos. Doing so would not only improve the quality of life for ghetto residents, it would give them newfound sources of pride, and it would put money and ideas onto circulation that could be replicated in cities across America.
I believe that this is the solution to redlining, a way to undo the harm it has wrought and a way to prevent it from happening ever again.
America touts itself as an immigrant nation, the land of opportunity. Nonetheless, our country has a long history of trying very hard to limit opportunities of any and all immigrants. The reasoning behind this is not difficult to see.
During periods following heavy immigration, the phrase “They took our jobs!” is all too commonly employed. Usually it is the fruition of male white workers’ resentment of being denied a job that instead went to a person of color or a woman, sometimes both. Some people throw strikes citing this phrase, sometimes senators cite it in an effort to rile up electors. Regardless, white people like white privilege, and don’t like it when it is taken away. These people may respond in other ways, including resorting to violence or participating in redlining to try and guarantee their socioeconomic lot in life.
The goal in redlining is precisely that: Try to cause strife for minorities by forcing them away from communities they otherwise could afford to live in.
What exactly is redlining?
In its most basic form, redlining is the coding of civic maps in various colors, in which each color stands for a level of “investiture safety.” The scale goes from green to red, green being where the most “desirable” properties are located, IE where more affluent white people move to. The actual red lines stand to encompass ethnic minorities and immigrants. During the heyday of redlining, Polish people and Jews—often war refugees—were most commonly targeted. All other ethnic minorities also were targeted regardless of actual credit rating or economic affluence.
These red lines then do a multitude of things. By telling banks exactly who is and who isn’t safe to loan to for mortgages, you limit the quality of a community that a minority is able to live in, even if they could otherwise afford it.
This has had the effect of creating most of today’s undesirable inner cities. The question is, how?
I found in my research a prime example of this effect in Los Angeles, a white tourist town that gradually became a heavily industrialized city. Los Angeles, then and now, is a dense, industrial metropolis of inner cities surrounded on most sides by areas that are much nicer to live. Privileged whites live on the fringes and the coasts. As the city’s industrial core expanded, whites moved farther and farther away and abandoned their old neighborhoods to non-whites. Then, because of redlining, money gradually stopped flowing into these industrial neighborhoods; they became the ghetto and the “hood.” In these communities, nothing nice can be developed or improved—there simply is no money for it. What few businesses and industries exist now do so barred off from the rest of the world, surrounded by infrastructure that is in dire need of modernization to even be considered safe. Redlining is responsible for that, too. When whites moved out, they took with them the voting base and people already in government. Naturally any civic project that had any money behind it was allocated by and for these people, these privileged whites. While the fancy new parkway is being built through the white community, a freeway is being built over the ghetto so whites don’t have to look at it, travel through it, or bring any money to its businesses which so badly need it. These things are the fruits of redlining, something that civil rights legislation has made entirely illegal.
Even so, we still witness redlining. In lieu of the 2008 mortgage crisis, banks became very choosy to whom they lend. Areas lacking emergency services (like previously redlined communities, still filled with trapped ethnic minorities) were intentionally or unintentionally charged higher rates due to their real or perceived risk factors. This new redlining, unlike that of the past, is actually justified from a business perspective for the aforementioned reason. The business minimizes its risk while urban poor continue to suffer. Even while redlining remains illegal, it remains questionable for the government to interfere with banks trying to make smart investments.
On some occasions, the government does step in. In my research I came across a very one-sided news article written to glorify New York’s attorney general. The situation described here is ever the modern example of redlining: Coincidentally or purposely, a firm or bank is recorded refusing loans to people living in a section of a city, typically a poorly serviced ghetto. The larger the presence that firm has in the region the more this is noticed, and if the financial institution has a monopoly, inner city minorities get no mortgage loans whatsoever. When this happens, people start complaining. When voters complain, politicians listen. In this case, the New York attorney general is conducting an investigation to file a lawsuit against the firm in question. The suit is official, but gives no details regarding why the bank invested as it did. Instead, the investigation provides statistics proving the suit’s validity. This is the most common response to modern redlining. It may help those specific families, but it does not address the greater issue of why the financial institution refused to invest in these communities.
The reason for this, as stated above, is the state of most inner cities. The lack of access to emergency services has produced too risky of an environment for many firms to consider investing in such places. While thinking on what could be done to solve this vicious circle, I came across what I feel might be a real solution. Instead of reactionary lawsuits that benefit only a few people, it is instead possible to proactively pursue a solution: By working to improve things like emergency services and parks, quality of life is enhanced and property value increases. Instead of being perceived as a liability, the inner city becomes a much more desirable environment for a firm to invest in. As quality of life improves, as investments continue, more people are attracted back into the inner city, and even more money is distributed. Eventually, “inner city” loses its negative implications. Quality of life improves for residents, firms aren’t forced to redline, the government sees development (and gets to tax it), and everybody wins. Initially, this may sound like a undue burden on taxpayers, a TED talk, Greening the Ghetto, explores this in detail. What is being proposed is very possibly through volunteer work and community service. Better yet, all this has been proven possible a Third World budget. The TED talk itself details exactly how this was, and is, possible to reproduce in American ghettos. Doing so would not only improve the quality of life for ghetto residents, it would give them newfound sources of pride, and it would put money and ideas onto circulation that could be replicated in cities across America.
I believe that this is the solution to redlining, a way to undo the harm it has wrought and a way to prevent it from happening ever again.
artists statement
The goal for my art piece, was clean and simple, to provide connection and direction. While thinking on the issue of how to facilitate my views on redlining into art, I cam across the issue of having far too many connected topics to explain through visual representation. So instead of trying to create a fancy art piece for people to look at while I explained all of its features, I instead took a different goal: to make the art piece so vague that looking at it provided questions to facilitate discussion. This coupled with the wealth of redlining knowledge in my head produced an active and engaging exhibition for both myself and my audience.
The strings represent connections between the pictures. That is about it, the pictures and connections then facilitate discussion.
The strings represent connections between the pictures. That is about it, the pictures and connections then facilitate discussion.
project reflection
As far as projects go this was in interesting one. It should be acknowledged that this was in independent study. It was a series of research topics centralized around my main topic: redlining. The independent nature of this project certainly added to the challenge, this project was also completed alongside all of my other assignments this semester. As such it shouldn't come as a surprise to say that while I feel like I could have done better with my process and outcome, I most certainly learned something form the experience. independence in any assignment, while somewhat liberating is also a great challenge. You have greater freedom with your time and focus, but how you spend or waste that time is left entirely to your own discretion, when you get behind its your job not to procrastinate, not your teacher's to remind you of the assignment, as I learned many times in this process.
Source List
Website of the New York Attorney General
http://www.ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-announces-redlining-lawsuit-alleging-bank-refused-make-mortgages
Gary Worlfram- Redlining from an economic perspective
http://fee.org/freeman/detail/insurance-redlining-and-government-intervention
Laura Pulido- Rethinking Environmental Racism:
White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California
http://www.jstor.org/discover/1515377?sid=21105569137873&uid=3739928&uid=70&uid=2129&uid=4&uid=2&uid=3739256
Redlining - Sustainable Design: Ethics and Equity - Philadelphia University MSSD SDN 601
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVyGU5JD8I8
TED Talk- Majora Carter-Greening The Ghetto
http://www.ted.com/talks/majora_carter_s_tale_of_urban_renewal?language=en
http://www.ag.ny.gov/press-release/ag-schneiderman-announces-redlining-lawsuit-alleging-bank-refused-make-mortgages
Gary Worlfram- Redlining from an economic perspective
http://fee.org/freeman/detail/insurance-redlining-and-government-intervention
Laura Pulido- Rethinking Environmental Racism:
White Privilege and Urban Development in Southern California
http://www.jstor.org/discover/1515377?sid=21105569137873&uid=3739928&uid=70&uid=2129&uid=4&uid=2&uid=3739256
Redlining - Sustainable Design: Ethics and Equity - Philadelphia University MSSD SDN 601
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVyGU5JD8I8
TED Talk- Majora Carter-Greening The Ghetto
http://www.ted.com/talks/majora_carter_s_tale_of_urban_renewal?language=en