I gave a speech at Virginia Tech this weekend, and one of the professors gave me a copy the draft redlining map of Waterloo, Ia. He was a little worried that it was a depressing gift, but it’s so fitting to my personality and my work. It is the truth. It is ugly. We shld remember 
It’s the first time I had ever seen a redlining map of my hometown. My parents home, which isn’t worth even $10k more than when they bought it nearly 40 years ago, is on there, washed in red. My grandmother’s home. Most of the black people I know.
Entire swaths of the city where migrants from Mississippi had fled in hopes of leaving behind a racist kleptocracy, were washed in red to ensure they’d never get the opportunities, the access to wealth and the American Dream, that was to come with the Promised Land.
Look at the sheer breadth of the city that was labeled “bad” and therefore blocked from government-backed loans. Nearly half. The pettiness and destructiveness of racism when seen like this is almost breathtaking.
It meant that families like mine, where my grandmother and parents managed to buy a home IN SPITE OF, got no appreciation from their investment to help pay for college, or businesses or even home repairs. Their homes COST them, in taxes and repairs, more than they ever got out.
So, I’m 42 still paying student loans. The homes in my mom’s neighborhood, where homeowners with no equity could not maintain them, are falling apart. And this, my friends, is the racist wealth gap made personal. So, obvs, I intend to frame and hang on my wall.
Shouts to @HOLCRedlining. This organization is digitizing these maps.
Last, for those who aren't really sure what redlining is -- understand, it was a racist policy created by the federal government to determine which areas were worthy of government-backed loans. Private lenders and insurers then eagerly followed the government's lead.
Richard Rothstein has a great book on this: epi.org/publication/th… And I did an investigation some years back on feds role in housing seg: propublica.org/article/living…
The x marks the home my parents bought in 1981, where my mom still lives. They bought it for $25k. Now assessed at $35k.
