Systemic Racism 101

By 1954, when the NAACP won Brown v Board of Education, the Supreme Court had decided segregation was “inherently unequal” but had not yet decided to get involved in enforcing integration at the state level. That took many more follow-up cases like Brown II and Swann v Charlotte-Mecklenburg over the next two decades. In the case of lynching and school segregation, the federal government left it up to the states to enforce the law even though southern states had openly flouted it for decades. Not every defiance of integration got as much attention as Little Rock. Some public school systems literally shut down and/or white students were given subsidies (i.e., vouchers) to attend private, often religious, schools. Other schools technically integrated their student population but kept the races separate through methods like tracking.

In the 1930-40s, FDR was sympathetic to civil rights issues but he was not willing to split the Democratic Party by pressing too hard during the Great Depression and World War II. The New Deal benefited white families more than it did non-white families. Social Security excluded agricultural and domestic workers for the first 20 years, which disproportionately affected Black workers. The federal government also allowed managers of public works programs like the WPA to discriminate in their hiring and compensation practices. Still, the Roosevelt administration gave more attention to helping the poor and recognizing civil rights problems than ever before in the White House. After 1945, Harry Truman began to address racial issues more overtly, pushing Democrats towards a major crisis. Black voters converted en masse to the Democratic Party and the most racist segregationists, referred to as Dixiecrats, began to break away.

The HOLC created real estate maps in the 1930s that color-coded neighborhoods based on their property value. Green was best, blue was still desirable, yellow was definitely declining based on location, condition, and “infiltration” of non-white families, and red areas were the “hazardous” inner cities. From then until the Fair Housing Act was enforced in the 1970s, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) used these maps to decide on home loans to prospective buyers. In yellow zones, white families who didn’t move initially would be offered cash to sell so that whole blocks could become rental properties for poor, non-white families. Redlining a neighborhood deemed it such a risk that white-owned banks either denied loans for homes and businesses in that area or used predatory lending methods to force properties into foreclosure. Since local services and schools were funded by property taxes, these areas became hazardous to the people who lived there due to lack of investment and upkeep. While white families enjoyed the cycle of wealth with the availability of credit and equity, Black families suffered the cycle of poverty caused by discrimination, predatory lending, and debt. For a while, in some places, successful Black-owned banks helped black communities to flourish, but these were often targeted with violence and were eventually dismantled by urban renewal projects. The HOLC created real estate maps in the 1930s that color-coded neighborhoods based on their property value. Green was best, blue was still desirable, yellow was definitely declining based on location, condition, and “infiltration” of non-white families, and red areas were the “hazardous” inner cities. From then until the Fair Housing Act was enforced in the 1970s, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) used these maps to decide on home loans to prospective buyers. In yellow zones, white families who didn’t move initially would be offered cash to sell so that whole blocks could become rental properties for poor, non-white families. Redlining a neighborhood deemed it such a risk that white-owned banks either denied loans for homes and businesses in that area or used predatory lending methods to force properties into foreclosure. Since local services and schools were funded by property taxes, these areas became hazardous to the people who lived there due to lack of investment and upkeep. While white families enjoyed the cycle of wealth with the availability of credit and equity, Black families suffered the cycle of poverty caused by discrimination, predatory lending, and debt. For a while, in some places, successful Black-owned banks helped black communities to flourish, but these were often targeted with violence and were eventually dismantled by urban renewal projects.

The HOLC created real estate maps in the 1930s that color-coded neighborhoods based on their property value. Green was best, blue was still desirable, yellow was definitely declining based on location, condition, and “infiltration” of non-white families, and red areas were the “hazardous” inner cities. From then until the Fair Housing Act was enforced in the 1970s, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) used these maps to decide on home loans to prospective buyers. In yellow zones, white families who didn’t move initially would be offered cash to sell so that whole blocks could become rental properties for poor, non-white families. Redlining a neighborhood deemed it such a risk that white-owned banks either denied loans for homes and businesses in that area or used predatory lending methods to force properties into foreclosure. Since local services and schools were funded by property taxes, these areas became hazardous to the people who lived there due to lack of investment and upkeep. While white families enjoyed the cycle of wealth with the availability of credit and equity, Black families suffered the cycle of poverty caused by discrimination, predatory lending, and debt. For a while, in some places, successful Black-owned banks helped black communities to flourish, but these were often targeted with violence and were eventually dismantled by urban renewal projects.

When any members of the Black community entertained ideas of Black nationalism, socialism, or Islam that appealed to the victims of inequality and colonialism, they were labeled a threat by the FBI. Some leaders were unlawfully imprisoned, targeted by police, or even exiled. Civil Rights leaders across the board were critical of the war in Vietnam on moral and political grounds. Black soldiers were less likely to get deferments and had a suspiciously high death rate compared to white soldiers. Along with growing unrest over the war, the riots that broke out nationwide after MLK’s assassination in 1968 motivated Nixon to campaign for and implement strict “law and order” policies when he took over the White House the following year. This phrase became linked to his use of the term “silent majority” to describe Americans who were not involved in protests (i.e., older, conservative, white people). Young people in the inner cities were left neglected and disillusioned with the dream of equality. Economic inequality reinforced prejudices and vice versa.