cabell:karnythia:cabell:thestoutorialist:ethiopianbutamerican:
Forty-six million white adults today can trace the origins of their family wealth to the Homestead Act of 1862. This bill gave away valuable acres of land for free to white families, but expressly precluded participation by Blacks.
The deed to the house my father grew up in explicitly said the home could not be sold to “negroes.” Given that neither grand parents were light enough to pass, I wonder how they managed that. I can’t get an answer from my family and I’m not sure if that’s because no one knows, or because they don’t want me to know (because it was awful)
Racist restrictive covenants like this were legal in the US until 1968. In practice, they continue today.
We were just talking about this with some friends of ours who are house shopping. Right of first refusal is a big thing in smaller condo buildings & co-ops & it’s also an easy way to get around fair housing laws.
Even in getting to the point of making an offer, POC are frequently shut out (I know some people who follow me don’t know/think about this, and god knows my students often fight the idea when it’s presented). Every step of the process of acquiring real estate is weighted in favor of White people: listings, what real estate agents choose to show them, mortgages, neighbors (and right of first refusal)…
And housing discrimination has been shown to be very clearly correlated with color. That is, racial identity, class, education, etc. aside, the darker a person’s skin, the more housing discrimination they will experience. This is easier to document in the rental market than in the home buying market because of the greater transparency in the process of renting versus buying, but it’s a clear and large effect.