Last month, protests erupted in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray and in response to the larger issues of police brutality, racial profiling, and mass incarceration. These protests have furthered conversations surrounding police accountability but have failed to take into account one of the primary causes of the unrest in Baltimore and many cities across the nation: the perpetuation of poverty through segregation.

Following similar riots in the 1960s, the Kerner Commission, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson, informed Americans that the nation was “moving towards two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.” The Kerner Commission also stated that the “white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, further explains that it was not a vague white society that led to the creation of the ghetto but explicit, racially intentional laws and policies that were pursued at all levels of government. 

The New Deal 

The New Deal, a domestic program enacted between 1933 and 1939 by President Franklin Roosevelt federally funded public housing that led to racial segregation. Public housing could only house people of the same race as the neighborhood in which it was located. Some public housing was built in “integrated” neighborhoods but with separate buildings for whites and blacks. The policy continued when Harold Ickes, President Roosevelt’s public housing director, established the “neighborhood composition rule” to maintain the pre-existing racial composition of neighborhoods. 

Federal Housing Administration 

One of the most explicitly discriminatory housing policies was introduced by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in the 1930s and lasted until 1968. The FHA funded mass construction of buildings in metropolitan areas, specifically on the East Coast and West Coast. Builders received federal loans on the condition that the homes in those developments would not be sold to African Americans.  These explicit policies prevented African Americans from moving to suburban areas. 

Further, the FHA created maps that rated neighborhoods based on the demand and stability of the area. It assigned low grades to areas populated by African Americans – a policy called redlining, which indicated that those neighborhoods were credit risks. In “The Case for Reparations” Ta-Nehisi Coates explains that redlining went beyond FHA funded loans and spread to the entire mortgage industry. African Americans were even unable to obtain mortgages for homes that were developed without FHA loans. Redlining prevented investment, and as a result, limited employment opportunities wherever African Americans lived. 

These discriminatory housing regulations were implemented in conjunction with other discriminatory policies, such as the Serviceman's Readjustment Act of 1944, which granted low-interest loans for mortgages to white veterans and not veterans of color. Taken together, these policies prevented African Americans from accessing the most significant opportunity to build wealth in American history. 

Current Effects of Residential Segregation

Many people believe that the lack of integration today is not a result of historic policies but because most African Americans cannot afford to move to middle class neighborhoods. Richard Rothstein argues that this unaffordability is in fact a result of the mid-twentieth century policies that prevented African Americans from benefiting from equity appreciation and accessing wealth and opportunities that were disproportionately offered to whites.

Black families, who could have lived in the same neighborhoods as their white counterparts in the mid-twentieth century, can no longer afford to do so. While explicitly racist policies have ended, they continue to affect segregation and concentrate poverty in neighborhoods populated by African Americans. According to a study by Virginia Commonwealth University’s Center on Society and Health, Baltimore neighborhoods that were redlined in the 1930s have sustained lower rates of homeownership and college attainment today.

The protests in Baltimore were sparked by excessive policing in low-income black neighborhoods that were created by residential segregation. Housing segregation has not only prevented African Americans from building up wealth through equity appreciation, but has also locked them into neighborhoods with low-funded public schools and limited opportunities to escape generational poverty.  Without integration and intentional efforts to minimize the wealth gap, black communities will continue to live in impoverished neighborhoods, giving rise to protests against racists political and social systems.

For more information, please see these articles in the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, and NPR.