1/ #Redlining is in the news: in today's @NYTimes, columnist John McWhorter challenges what he sees as conventional wisdom on racially discriminatory housing by reporting that 82% of residents of redlined neighborhoods in ten large cities were white. nytimes.com/2021/09/28/opi…
2/To the untutored, this might be shocking, but historians have long known that ethnicity and immigration status were sometimes factors in redlining. Dig a bit for references to white “aliens” and “immigrants,” including Italians, Poles, and Jews here: dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redli…
3/ McWhorter reports accurately—in a sort of both-sides way—the far more shocking fact that “over 97 percent of Black individuals and 95 percent of Black-owned homes ended up in red-shaded HOLC zones.”
4/But his 82% figure overlooks the fact that most whites did not live in redlined neighborhoods. Even sometimes stigmatized groups, like Italians and Poles, could and did live in higher ranked neighborhoods. But almost all Blacks, except live-in household servants, were redlined.
5/McWhorter also suggests that whites who lived in redlined neighborhoods were “stuck” there. This is a problematic assertion. Many whites, including those who lived in red neighborhoods, had options to move to better neighborhoods. Here's why...
6/Most realtors didn’t turn away whites because of their skin color. Racial restrictions did not usually single out whites (Jews, in certain communities, excepted). Whites had access to loans backed by FHA and VA that excluded most Blacks.
7/To reiterate: Blacks faced systemic discrimination in housing (and in much of America still do). Whites, even those who lived in redlined neighborhoods, did not. The difference matters.
Wonkish footnote for you urbanists out there. McWhorter draws selectively from the richly detailed working paper on race and federal housing policy by Price Fishback et al. Important material here: nber.org/papers/w29244
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