Presentation Title
Myths Created to Justify Residential Segregation
Major Field of Study
History
Location
Dominican University of California (online)
Start Date
19-6-2021 10:30 AM
End Date
19-6-2021 11:30 AM
Abstract
Why has the history of residential segregation largely been viewed not at the heart of modern American history, but at its periphery—as if it was an incidental feature, its impacts limited to those excluded from 95% of neighborhoods? In fact, residential segregation was a 20th century invention that transformed the country and required enormous efforts to maintain in America’s free markets. The first racially restricted neighborhoods were created not in the South but in Berkeley, a mile from UC’s campus. To racially divide every city in the country, the real estate industry had to police itself and enlist the support of America’s leading economists, lawyers, judges, universities, newspapers and the federal government. Organized segregation shaped the layout of every metropolitan area, where most Americans live today and who their neighbors are, and constructed many of our most intractable social, geographic, economic and ideological divides.
If this history is often overlooked, it is not for lack of attention to race, racial problems or the ghettos that resulted from segregation, but because of the widespread acceptance of the myths that realtors created to justify it. One myth was that residential segregation was traditional, historic and natural, and that “birds of a feather flock together,” that minorities prefer to live by themselves, or could not afford to live elsewhere. A second myth, that directly shaped the building of mid-20th century America, was that minorities depreciated the value of white neighborhoods. A final myth was that residential discrimination was not a matter of organized agency but individual prejudice, the “dictates of individual conscience,” and thus not subject to government action. These myths normalized and perpetuate segregation today. The realtors’ redefinition of individual freedom to oppose fair housing became the template for modern conservatism and shapes our political debates today.
By drawing for the first time on the real estate industry’s internal documents, we can see how these myths were first constructed, what made them so effective and why residential segregation, which the Civil Rights Movement viewed as the most crucial issue outside the South, was not peripheral to the creation of modern America but at its core.
Myths Created to Justify Residential Segregation
Dominican University of California (online)
Why has the history of residential segregation largely been viewed not at the heart of modern American history, but at its periphery—as if it was an incidental feature, its impacts limited to those excluded from 95% of neighborhoods? In fact, residential segregation was a 20th century invention that transformed the country and required enormous efforts to maintain in America’s free markets. The first racially restricted neighborhoods were created not in the South but in Berkeley, a mile from UC’s campus. To racially divide every city in the country, the real estate industry had to police itself and enlist the support of America’s leading economists, lawyers, judges, universities, newspapers and the federal government. Organized segregation shaped the layout of every metropolitan area, where most Americans live today and who their neighbors are, and constructed many of our most intractable social, geographic, economic and ideological divides.
If this history is often overlooked, it is not for lack of attention to race, racial problems or the ghettos that resulted from segregation, but because of the widespread acceptance of the myths that realtors created to justify it. One myth was that residential segregation was traditional, historic and natural, and that “birds of a feather flock together,” that minorities prefer to live by themselves, or could not afford to live elsewhere. A second myth, that directly shaped the building of mid-20th century America, was that minorities depreciated the value of white neighborhoods. A final myth was that residential discrimination was not a matter of organized agency but individual prejudice, the “dictates of individual conscience,” and thus not subject to government action. These myths normalized and perpetuate segregation today. The realtors’ redefinition of individual freedom to oppose fair housing became the template for modern conservatism and shapes our political debates today.
By drawing for the first time on the real estate industry’s internal documents, we can see how these myths were first constructed, what made them so effective and why residential segregation, which the Civil Rights Movement viewed as the most crucial issue outside the South, was not peripheral to the creation of modern America but at its core.
Presenter Biography
Gene Slater received his MLA from Stanford in 2018. His thesis and now book on residential segregation is being reviewed for publication by a major university press and he is conducting the American Institute of Architect’s first national webinair on the topic. For the last 40 years he co-founded and chairs the nation's leading advisor on financing affordable housing, and helped design what U.S. Treasury viewed as its most effective response to the 2008-2009 housing crisis. He has a master’s of city planning from MIT, fellowship from the London School of Economics, BA summa cum laude from Columbia, and a Loeb Fellowship from Harvard awarded to 10 urban designers from around the world each year.