Since the fall of the Confederacy, maybe the most shocking and enduring example of national policy rooted in racial discrimination is the practice of government sponsored redlining. 

I learned about redlining when I was 22, and it has forever changed the way I’ve viewed my community and our country. 

For me it was the beginning of a deeper understanding of how place and opportunity have been racialized. 

For me, it also cracked open the myth of meritocracy, and led me to see how the whole thing crumbles when we look at the evidence systems designed to serve some of us but not others.

Show Notes:

Texts on Redlining and the GI Bill:

Jackson, K. T. (1985). Crabgrass frontier: the suburbanization of the United States. Oxford University Press. 

Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright Publishing.

'Segregated By Design' examines the forgotten history of how our federal, state and local governments unconstitutionally segregated every major metropolitan area in America through law and policy. https://www.segregatedbydesign.com (apprx. 18 minute video) 

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva names, as one of the characteristics of racism, that “racism has a “rationality” (actors support or resist a racial order in various ways”. I would suggest in this instance, that this rationality applies whether or not these individual actors are aware of the system or its repercussions.  More than Prejudice: Restatement, Reflections, and New Directions in Critical Race Theory. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.  2015, Vol. 1(1) 75­ –89.  American Sociological Association 2014 DOI: 10.1177/2332649214557042 p.76.

See show notes and more at whitepeoplemakeeverythingaboutrace.com