Where RACE Lives?
by Radwan Chowdhury
1935: Social Security Created
When Congress created social security in 1935, it provided a safety net for millions of workers, guaranteeing them an income after retirement. However, the act’s provisions for agricultural workers and domestic servants, who were predominantly African American, Mexican American, and Asian American. As low-income workers, minorities had the least opportunity to save, were least likely to have pensions, and were most vulnerable to economic recession, yet they were systematically excluded from the protection and benefits granted to most Americans.
1635: Wagener Act Legalizes Collective Bargaining and Labor Organizing
Like social security, the Wagner Act helped establish an important new right – to unionize. The act’s original version prohibited racial discrimination, but the American Federation of Labor fought against it and the final version permitted the union to exclude nonwhites. As a result, nonwhites were not only locked out of higher-paying jobs, they were also denied union protection and benefits. Medical care, full employment, and job security. Moreover, they were legally barred from challenging their exclusion. Although the laws changed in the late 1950s, many craft unions remained all-white well into the 1970s.
1930s – 1940s: Federal housing Programs Supr Suburban Growth
Beginning in the 1930s and 1940s, the federal government created programs that subsidized low-cost loans, opening up home ownership to millions of average Americans for the first time. At the same time, government underwriters introduced a national appraisal system, tying property value and loan eligibility to race. Consequently, all-white communities received the highest ratings and benefited from low-cost government-backed loans, while minority and mixed neighborhoods received the lowest rating and were denied these loans. Of the $120 billion worth of new housing subsidized by the government between 1934 and 1962, less than 2 percent went to non-white families. Non-whites were locked out of home ownership just as most white Americans were finally getting in.
1948: Restrictive Covenants Outlawed in Shelly V Kraemer
Restrictive covenants, which barred homeowners from selling or leasing their homes to nonwhites, were common in many neighborhoods across the U.S. Although they were outlawed by this Supreme Court decision, exclusion continued. Private developers could still refuse to sell homes to nonwhites, and real estate agent steered nonwhite prospective homebuyers away from white neighborhoods. Following government guidelines, lenders continued to base property appraisal on race, denying loans to communities with nonwhites or insisting on higher fees and interest rate to cover their “risk”. Systematically devaluing nonwhite neighborhoods and homebuyers, federal intervention helped disguise racial discrimination and enabled many to claim that the resulting segregation was “market driven”.
1949: National Housing Act Authorizes Urban Redevelopment
The housing market available to most nonwhites was rental and later, public housing in segregated urban centers. Government-sponsored urban redevelopment programs destroyed more housing than they built. Ninety percent of all housing destroyed by urban renewal was not replaced, two-thirds of those displaced were black or Latino. As urban renewal projects destroyed taxable properties, the urban for maintaining social services was shifted onto fewer and fewer residents-encountering white flight and making the poor poorer.
1950s – 1960s: Economic and Housing Boom
During the 1950s and 1960s, more and more white homeowners moved to the suburbs. Federal and State tax dollars subsidized the construction and development of municipal services for suburbs, in turn fueling commercial investment. Freeways in major cities connected white suburbs to central business districts, but they were often built through core areas of black settlement. Many urban black areas lost their neighborhood shopping district and successful small business as result. By the 1960s, many businesses began moving jobs from cities to suburbs, further concentrating wealth and needed tax dollars away from urban areas.
1960: Fair Housing Laws Passed
In the 1960s, the government made several efforts to end housing discrimination, most notably Kennedy’s 1962 executive order and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. Although these were important, they had a little practical impact. Appraiser continued to factor race into their assessments and some practices, such as racial steering and predatory lending, continue to this day. It was not until 1988t that fair housing law was amended to expand their scope and include important enforcement provisions. In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, housing prices rose dramatically, and white homeowners who benefited from discriminatory federal policies were able to sell their homes at the great profit. Meanwhile, minority groups who had been denied federal assistance had homes worth far less or f
