Resources: Racial Covenants, Housing Discrimination, and the Racial Wealth Gap
Utilize the following resources to learn more about housing injustice.
Audio
“Geography of Race and Place”
Yale School of Management podcast episode featuring Kirsten Delegard and Kevin Ehrman-Solberg of Mapping Prejudice, Minneapolis
“Miss Buchanan's Period Of Adjustment.”
Revisionist History Podcast. A reframed understanding of the Brown v Board of Education decision and it's impact on communities of color.Richard Rothstein discusses “The Color of Law” on Fresh Air
In The Color of Law Richard Rothstein argues with exacting precision and fascinating insight how segregation in America is the byproduct of explicit government policies at the local, state, and federal levels.
Film
City Rising
This multi-platform one-hour documentary follows the journey of California communities that are mobilizing against unsustainable rents and other forces that they see are pushing neighbors into homelessness.City Rising (short clip: 15 min): Gentrification and Displacement: Legacy
From the displacement of Native peoples to the enforcement of Jim Crow, the history of U.S. land policy and practice is a history of inequities.Explained: The Racial Wealth Gap In this episode: Cory Booker and others discuss how slavery, housing discrimination and centuries of inequality have compounded to create a racial wealth gap.
Home Ownership and America’s Growing Racial Wealth Gap From CNBC Make It
Jim Crow of the North
Emmy-nominated documentary about mapping racial covenants featuring our Dr. Kirsten Delegard of Mapping Prejudice, Minneapolis"U.S. History"
John Oliver, Last Week TonightThe Geography of Inequality
TEDx by Mapping Prejudice co-founder Kevin Ehrman-Solberg shows how these contemporary disparities are rooted in the spatial practices of the past."The Disturbing History of the Suburbs." Adam Ruins Everything. Six-minute history of redlining and residential segregation.
Race: The Power of an Illusion. California Newsreel, 2003. The whole documentary provides a wonderful framework for understanding racial covenants in Minneapolis. This excerpt is particularly relevant.
A Raisin in the Sun
Film based on Lorraine Hansberry play that was first released in 1961 about an African American family aspiring to move beyond segregation and disenfranchisement in 1950s Chicago.Extreme heat is worse in redlined neighborhoods
5-minute film from Grist detailing the effects of redlining and climate change in Portland, OR.
Legislation
Atascadero City Council: RESOLUTION NO. 2020-073
In October 2020, Atascadero City Council resolved to commit to Atascadero being a safe, inclusive and welcoming community for everyone, and to facilitate voluntary citizen action to redact or repudiate racist and discriminatory verbiage from their property deeds.California State AB 2204
Bill authored by Assemblymember Hector de la Torre to change racial covenants in California, vetoed legislation from 2008Tenants, know your rights- section 8 discrimination - SB 329 passed into law in 2019 bans Sec. 8 discrimination. Summary of SB 329 can be found here.
Guides
Reckoning With Racism: The Mapping Prejudice Project
A brief guide for taking meaningful actionA Path to Housing Justice in California, by Policy Link
Racial Equity and Housing Fact Sheet, by Opportunity Home
Articles, Books, and Reports
Race debate embroils Atascadero's Historical Society, San Luis Obispo Tribune, 2013
SLO County CA confronts its racist history, San Luis Obispo Tribune
Tribune article featuring Judy Hemenway and her process of removing racial covenants100th Anniversary of the founding of the Colony of Atascadero, SLO Tribune, 2013
Judy Hemenway letter to the editor, SLO Tribune, 2020
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
Racially Restrictive Covenants in the United States: A Call To Action
This paper examines the history and structure of racially restrictive covenants in the United States to better comprehend their continued existence, despite their illegality. While unenforceable, racially restrictive covenants signal tone and intent, may be psychologically damaging, and perpetuate segregation. U MichiganHow Decades of Racist Housing Policy Left Neighborhoods Sweltering, NY Times
“For People of Color, Banks Are Shutting the Door to Homeownership.” Reveal news, February 15, 2018. "Kept out" series.
The Racial Wealth Gap: How African Americans have been shortchanged out of materials to build wealth, Article from Economic Policy Institute
Can ‘Baby Bonds’ Eliminate the Racial Wealth Gap in Putative Post Racial America?, Report by Darrick Hamilton and William Darity
The Case for Housing Justice in Philadelphia, PolicyLink, 2020. White paper detailing the inequities in housing in Philadelphia, as well as suggestions for developing a housing justice policy.
Thomas Shapiro, Tatjana Meschede, Sam Osoro, “The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap: Explaining the Black-White Economic Divide,” Institute on Assets and Social Policy (2013). https://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/handle/1903/24590/racialwealthgapbrief.pdf?sequenc
Roots, Race and Place: A History of Racially Exclusionary Housing in the San Francisco Bay Area
Report from the Haas Institute of Othering and Belonging, BerkeleyHousing Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorities 2012 Study from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
How Berkeley Beat Back NIMBYs A century ago, the civic leaders of Berkeley, Calif., pioneered what would become one of America’s most enduring systems of racial inequity — a soft apartheid of zoning.
Cedric Herring and Loren Henderson, “Wealth Inequality in Black and White: Cultural and Structural Sources of the Racial Wealth Gap,” Race and Social Problems 8 (2016): 4-17. file:///Users/elizabethsine/Downloads/Herring-Henderson2016_Article_WealthInequalityInBlackAndWhit.pdf
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” The Atlantic (June 2014). https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
Trymaine Lee, “A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions and exclusion, separates black and white America,” The New York Times Magazine: The 1619 Project (August 14, 2019). https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/racial-wealth-gap.html