Black Lives Matter ‘more important’ than coronavirus: Thousands of demonstrators hit the streets of London (VIDEOS, PHOTOS)
Thousands have descended on central London to protest the
death of George Floyd. Defying the government’s lockdown rules, the
demonstrators marched on Parliament Square.
Jun 6, 2020 15:26
The very meaning of SYSTEMIC RACISM and why BLM
Racism by design.
If
you’ve ever wondered what the term “systemic racism” means, or if
you’re encountering it for the first time in the wake of the murder of
George Floyd, allow ...
If you’ve ever wondered what the term “systemic racism” means, or if you’re encountering it for the first time in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, allow me to explain an example from the City of St. Paul. I hope this helps to explain part of what it means that there is systemic racism in this country and this state, and that the effects of things that happened decades ago still matter today. I will be putting several sources and interesting links in the comments, so please read those also.
It came to my attention that there are many people who are completely unfamiliar with the practice of redlining, racial covenants, and how freeway construction and other so-called urban renewal was used to destroy Black neighbourhoods in the 20th century, and how the effects of those actions continue today. To me, this issue is one of the most blatant and easy to understand examples of systemic racism in the United States. I only really learned about this in the last few years, when I moved to the areas of St. Paul greatly affected by these practices.
As part of the New Deal, the federal government created the “Home Owners’ Loan Corporation” (HOLC). What the HOLC is perhaps most famous for today is creating the “HOLC maps”, which assigned residential areas of cities a grade for risk to mortgage lenders. Grading criteria included property values, age of properties, depreciation, and racial/ethnic makeup as well as the economic class of the residents. Throughout the country, Black neighbourhoods were assigned D grades, meaning that they were considered hazardous for lending purposes. (In Australia Indigenous Australians were locked out of our banking systems as well. Equal Pay was never a concept Loans, & Capital Gain opportunity was a concept out of reach)
An important local example from St. Paul are zones D3 and D4 (see the attached map, but if you want to explore the HOLC maps from around the country, there is a link in the comments to a helpful interactive map). Each zone in each city had a written description to accompany the grade. Here are some quotes from the descriptions:
D3: “Italians, coloured people, Jews of the lower strata and other people of foreign descent of the lower classes reside here.”
“Very heavy racial encroachment throughout the entire district is prominent. The only redeeming feature is its accessibility to the downtown district.”
D4: “The labouring class with a large percentage of negroes live here.”
“The class of coloured people in this area are somewhat better than other districts, many of them, due to the City of St. Paul being the General Headquarters for the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railroads, are Pullman porters who do acquire ownership of their homes.”
Both of these districts were subject to extensive “urban renewal” in the subsequent decades. Rondo still exists as a neighbourhood to some extent, but the area covered by D3 is largely devoid of any residential neighbourhoods, replaced with freeways, big box stores and light industrial zones.
Now, how were these maps used to enforce racist policies? The first and most obvious way is that by labelling predominantly Black districts as dangerous from a mortgage lending standpoint, Black people who may have been able to afford a home were often not able to get a mortgage in their neighbourhoods. Why not just move to a different neighbourhood? That’s where racial covenants come in. A covenant is a provision in a home deed or title that restricts the sale of a property to anyone who isn’t white. (Indigenous Australians were segregated and managed in just so many ways as well) They were commonplace in the The 1920s-1950s in what were considered the most desirable neighbourhoods, the As and Bs on the HOLC maps. The University of Minnesota’s “Mapping Prejudice” project is working on getting a picture of their prevalence in the Twin Cities (link in the comments). They were in fact so prevalent, that I would be surprised if my house was not subject to a covenant.
So, Black Minnesotans were both prevented from acquiring mortgages in the neighbourhoods they already resided in and were boxed out of neighbourhoods they could have afforded and moved to. As a result, they were prevented from the huge boom in home equity and wealth creation that middle-class white Americans were able to take advantage of. When people refer to the 50s and 60s as the “good old days”, a huge part of that is the home equity wealth that was new to many families at that time. If you are White and your parents or grandparents were able to purchase a home in these decades, that feeling of financial security is the direct result of economic benefits that Black Americans were not permitted to enjoy. Don’t take my word for it though. I’ll put a link to an excellent video titled “Segregated by Design” about the topic in the comments.
In some places, discrimination went a step further. The HOLC maps were used to aid in the planning of the interstate highway system. The route that was chosen for I-94 through St. Paul was specifically intended to drive a literal rift through Rondo (D4). That this route was chosen can be at best described as disregarding the thousands of residents in the neighbourhood and can at worst be considered a deliberate effort to push Black people out. This didn’t have to be, however. St. Paul city planner George Herrold (who was still working on municipal projects at the age of 82 in 1945) expressed grave concern about the social impacts of the proposed freeway route. He suggested an alternate route using the railway corridor one mile to the North (see the alternative proposals map attached). Herrold’s efforts were unsuccessful. It’s worth noting that everything he predicted became true. Rondo was split with huge social consequences, and the resulting creation of a concrete moat cut downtown St. Paul off from the rest of the city. I should also add that Herrold’s plan would have required a negotiation with the railroads to place the freeway in that zone, and railroad companies don’t generally like sharing the land. But what does it say about us that it’s politically more viable to displace thousands of people in hundreds of households than it is to negotiate with a railroad?
Now, all this happened decades ago. How does it affect us today? First, people alive today saw what happened to Rondo and remember what it was like before. I-94 wasn’t completed between the twin cities until 1968. The resulting decline of Rondo led to a loss in property wealth for its residents, leading to widespread poverty. Elsewhere, as I mentioned above Black Americans were legally prevented from participating in the wealth generation that White Americans were able to take advantage of in the middle of the 20th century. That is why there is such a wealth gap between White people and Black people today. This was racism by design. The very definition of systemic racism. The government of the United States put in place a legal framework permitting the ghettoization of Black people, and in some cases going a step further and allowing those neighbourhoods to be destroyed. We see racial tension today because equality was never achieved. In fact, it was prevented by a legal and social system. The system isn’t broken. This is how it was built.
EDIT: Since shares of this post do not contain the links I put in the comments of the original, here they are in the body of the post:
If you’ve ever wondered what the term “systemic racism” means, or if you’re encountering it for the first time in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, allow me to explain an example from the City of St. Paul. I hope this helps to explain part of what it means that there is systemic racism in this country and this state, and that the effects of things that happened decades ago still matter today. I will be putting several sources and interesting links in the comments, so please read those also.
It came to my attention that there are many people who are completely unfamiliar with the practice of redlining, racial covenants, and how freeway construction and other so-called urban renewal was used to destroy Black neighbourhoods in the 20th century, and how the effects of those actions continue today. To me, this issue is one of the most blatant and easy to understand examples of systemic racism in the United States. I only really learned about this in the last few years, when I moved to the areas of St. Paul greatly affected by these practices.
As part of the New Deal, the federal government created the “Home Owners’ Loan Corporation” (HOLC). What the HOLC is perhaps most famous for today is creating the “HOLC maps”, which assigned residential areas of cities a grade for risk to mortgage lenders. Grading criteria included property values, age of properties, depreciation, and racial/ethnic makeup as well as the economic class of the residents. Throughout the country, Black neighbourhoods were assigned D grades, meaning that they were considered hazardous for lending purposes. (In Australia Indigenous Australians were locked out of our banking systems as well. Equal Pay was never a concept Loans, & Capital Gain opportunity was a concept out of reach)
An important local example from St. Paul are zones D3 and D4 (see the attached map, but if you want to explore the HOLC maps from around the country, there is a link in the comments to a helpful interactive map). Each zone in each city had a written description to accompany the grade. Here are some quotes from the descriptions:
D3: “Italians, coloured people, Jews of the lower strata and other people of foreign descent of the lower classes reside here.”
“Very heavy racial encroachment throughout the entire district is prominent. The only redeeming feature is its accessibility to the downtown district.”
D4: “The labouring class with a large percentage of negroes live here.”
“The class of coloured people in this area are somewhat better than other districts, many of them, due to the City of St. Paul being the General Headquarters for the Northern Pacific and Great Northern Railroads, are Pullman porters who do acquire ownership of their homes.”
Both of these districts were subject to extensive “urban renewal” in the subsequent decades. Rondo still exists as a neighbourhood to some extent, but the area covered by D3 is largely devoid of any residential neighbourhoods, replaced with freeways, big box stores and light industrial zones.
Now, how were these maps used to enforce racist policies? The first and most obvious way is that by labelling predominantly Black districts as dangerous from a mortgage lending standpoint, Black people who may have been able to afford a home were often not able to get a mortgage in their neighbourhoods. Why not just move to a different neighbourhood? That’s where racial covenants come in. A covenant is a provision in a home deed or title that restricts the sale of a property to anyone who isn’t white. (Indigenous Australians were segregated and managed in just so many ways as well) They were commonplace in the The 1920s-1950s in what were considered the most desirable neighbourhoods, the As and Bs on the HOLC maps. The University of Minnesota’s “Mapping Prejudice” project is working on getting a picture of their prevalence in the Twin Cities (link in the comments). They were in fact so prevalent, that I would be surprised if my house was not subject to a covenant.
So, Black Minnesotans were both prevented from acquiring mortgages in the neighbourhoods they already resided in and were boxed out of neighbourhoods they could have afforded and moved to. As a result, they were prevented from the huge boom in home equity and wealth creation that middle-class white Americans were able to take advantage of. When people refer to the 50s and 60s as the “good old days”, a huge part of that is the home equity wealth that was new to many families at that time. If you are White and your parents or grandparents were able to purchase a home in these decades, that feeling of financial security is the direct result of economic benefits that Black Americans were not permitted to enjoy. Don’t take my word for it though. I’ll put a link to an excellent video titled “Segregated by Design” about the topic in the comments.
In some places, discrimination went a step further. The HOLC maps were used to aid in the planning of the interstate highway system. The route that was chosen for I-94 through St. Paul was specifically intended to drive a literal rift through Rondo (D4). That this route was chosen can be at best described as disregarding the thousands of residents in the neighbourhood and can at worst be considered a deliberate effort to push Black people out. This didn’t have to be, however. St. Paul city planner George Herrold (who was still working on municipal projects at the age of 82 in 1945) expressed grave concern about the social impacts of the proposed freeway route. He suggested an alternate route using the railway corridor one mile to the North (see the alternative proposals map attached). Herrold’s efforts were unsuccessful. It’s worth noting that everything he predicted became true. Rondo was split with huge social consequences, and the resulting creation of a concrete moat cut downtown St. Paul off from the rest of the city. I should also add that Herrold’s plan would have required a negotiation with the railroads to place the freeway in that zone, and railroad companies don’t generally like sharing the land. But what does it say about us that it’s politically more viable to displace thousands of people in hundreds of households than it is to negotiate with a railroad?
Now, all this happened decades ago. How does it affect us today? First, people alive today saw what happened to Rondo and remember what it was like before. I-94 wasn’t completed between the twin cities until 1968. The resulting decline of Rondo led to a loss in property wealth for its residents, leading to widespread poverty. Elsewhere, as I mentioned above Black Americans were legally prevented from participating in the wealth generation that White Americans were able to take advantage of in the middle of the 20th century. That is why there is such a wealth gap between White people and Black people today. This was racism by design. The very definition of systemic racism. The government of the United States put in place a legal framework permitting the ghettoization of Black people, and in some cases going a step further and allowing those neighbourhoods to be destroyed. We see racial tension today because equality was never achieved. In fact, it was prevented by a legal and social system. The system isn’t broken. This is how it was built.
EDIT: Since shares of this post do not contain the links I put in the comments of the original, here they are in the body of the post:
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