Changing the conversation from racism and police violence to hope and opportunity.

AuthorCulliton, Mark
PositionEducation

THE POLICE-RELATED deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Md., have the nation demanding answers. The avalanche of media coverage has reopened an important and necessary discussion about race in the U.S. but, by focusing on problems within police departments instead of underlying cultural and institutional attitudes towards African-Americans, we are in danger of missing an opportunity to make lasting change.

Whites and others are blaming people of color for their lack of education and lucrative employment and engagement in criminal activities that lead to the need for police involvement in the first place. We live in a culture that tells black people they are responsible for the situation they find themselves in--a situation created by an invasive yet sometimes invisible series of obstacles, in some cases set up by the government itself.

A practice known as "redlining" created some of the neighborhoods where these police confrontations are taking place. From the 1930s to 1960s, the U.S. government, through the Federal Housing Administration, backed $120,000,000,000 in home loans to white people, while simultaneously barring African-Americans from obtaining mortgages for houses in white suburban neighborhoods. African-Americans were corralled in cities, and the neighborhoods in which they resided were deemed poor credit risks by banks as a consequence of blacks living in them. The term redlining originated from the practice of drawing red lines on maps to show areas where banks would not invest.

Unable to get mortgages, African-Americans rented apartments or bought homes on installment plans, which did not allow for the building of equity. Installment plan payments were high, which led to tenants working multiple jobs or people living together to pool funds to pay the monthly toll. One missed payment meant losing the house, no matter how many months or years the residents had been paying into it. Since African-Americans were not purchasing homes, they were not amassing the wealth that comes from building home equity and selling the property. This left many with nothing for their children to inherit.

Even though redlining was outlawed in 1968, housing discrimination still exists. As recently as 2008, black borrowers in Baltimore were found to have been charged up to $16,000 dollars more than white borrowers for 30-year mortgages. This was in addition to the marketing of subprime loans to African-Americans...

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