America’s Historic Social Inequality Crisis—and Its Lack of Progress
Introduction
Established in the 1930s in response to the Great Depression’s spike in unemployment and homelessness rates, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation sought to make housing affordable by subsidizing building and lending costs [1]. Despite a facade of worthy intentions, the Corporation designed mortgage lending maps that outlined, in red, urban neighborhoods that were undeserving of bank loans, forming the basis of redlining. The crux of this issue centers around overt discrimination against Black and Brown Americans, who were the main demographic within these “red” neighborhoods [2]. Ultimately, this practice of redlining sought to strip Black and Brown Americans of federal government support, as the Corporation treated red neighborhoods as too risky for banks to lend to—simply due to the racial makeup of these areas.
While the 1968 Fair Housing Act deemed the Corporation’s redlining policy illegal, a new wave of exploitation formed. For instance, contract buyers adopted a layaway plan that withheld homeownership from Black Americans until the final set payment was sent; in turn, sellers of homes held back final payments. Given the role that homeownership plays in providing financial independence for many Americans, namely due to the ability to borrow money and fund a child’s college tuition, these discriminatory housing policies hold concerning consequences [3]. To this day, redlined communities suffer from disinvestment, reducing access to grocery stores and businesses. Exacerbating this issue, federal policies, such as highway-building, divide neighborhoods against residents’ will. Black Americans gain little from these impositions, evident in the stark racial wealth gap that leaves Black American households earning $70,000 less than families of other racial backgrounds [4]. The ongoing disadvantages marginalized communities face in urban settings highlight the greater social inequality crisis plaguing America. Redlining perpetuates a cycle of poverty that impedes upward mobility for residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods, a barrier that is compounded by the lack of remedy in current legislation and ongoing gentrification.
How Redlining Derails Upward Mobility Dreams
A near-unattainable dream of upward mobility stems from disparities in wealth and educational opportunities [5]. As public schooling is linked to the neighborhood of residence, an attendance zone boundary takes in home addresses to limit the extent of the area that can send children to a certain public school [6]. Additionally, the wealth of a zoning area is correlated to the educational quality of the school. Dartmouth economist William A. Fischel found that the “highest quality (A+) public elementary school has a 4-fold higher median home price than the average neighborhood associated with the lowest quality (D or less) public elementary schools” [7]. This A+ rating encompasses high student achievement, leadership, teaching and learning strategies, and community integration [8].
In a case study performed in Columbus, Ohio, researchers found imbalances in student outcomes that could be attributed to the discriminatory neighborhood divisions first created in the 1930s. Clinton Elementary School and Como Elementary School are separated by only one mile—and yet, 87% of children are proficient in reading at Clinton but only 44% at Como. This gap is reflected in redlining maps from the 1930s, as those who lived in the area feeding into Clinton Elementary were marked in “green” as a desirable area for banks to provide loans to, whereas the area serving Como Elementary was marked in yellow and red as “definitely declining” [9]. If simply being born west or east of the I-71 Interstate highway attendance boundary determines a child’s schooling at Clinton or Como, this is a great injustice to America’s youth. Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad of the Harvard Kennedy School further explains this disparity, contending that public schools in redlined communities often do not have the tax basis that wealthier areas do; therefore, children in redlined areas lack the resources that others are afforded, leading to decreased educational outcomes and reduced support by teachers [10]. Though redlining has been illegal since 1968, its effects are still reverberating.
Deficiencies in Legislation
The impetus to respond and rectify educational inequities created by redlining is reflected in the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act, which shifts focus onto states to be more accountable in improving education outcomes and support for disadvantaged students [11]. While some states have seen success—such as Louisiana implementing opportunity indicators on assessments and ensuring that public schools devote a maximum of 2% of the instructional time for standardizing testing—the educational field still discriminates against minority and low-income students [12]. Omaha, Nebraska, serves as a prime example of this unfair treatment; Omaha has a high minority population, dating back to the Great Migration, when the African American population surpassed 10,000 people. Omaha has also experienced redlining to the extent that it is ranked as one of “the top fifty most segregated cities in the United States,” and its wealth gap between zip codes is stark; for instance, the North Omaha zip code 68111, comprised of a 58% Black population, has a median household income of $30,046 and a 10.4% unemployment rate, whereas the zip code 68046, with a 91% White population, has an unemployment rate of 2.8%, and a median household income of $95,524 [13].
This context forms the basis of why Omaha has a “cyclical nature of poverty [that] is nearly inescapable” [14]. Students in Omaha’s low-income neighborhoods struggle to attain a college degree—without this asset, these students are stuck living in these low-income neighborhoods. Omaha residents are unable to climb the socioeconomic ladder because they lack the educational opportunities necessary to do so. As such, redlining proves to be the correlation between less educational opportunities and lower socioeconomic status.
Similarly, in New York City, the wealth disparity correlates with lower educational proficiency scores. Manhattan’s Upper East Side—whose demographic is 80% white with an average household income greater than $115,000—public schools’ average math and reading proficiency scores are 84%. For those in zip code 10035, a neighborhood of Manhattan Island with nearly half of the population’s demographic being Black and Latinx and an average household income of $26,000, the average math proficiency score lies at 24%, and the average reading proficiency score at 17%—both below New York state’s average [15]. The Every Student Succeeds Act is failing to live up to the promise of providing special support to children from vulnerable populations. It fails to implement Title I funding that would address funding specifically to school districts where there are “high proportions of children living in a family below the national poverty line” [16]. Though seemingly beneficial, the Act falls short of responding to inequities. It is imperative for children to receive equitable opportunities in schooling—a foundation that needs to be provided for students to attain financial success and improve the situation they grew up in—and this must be the focus of further policy change.
Gentrification and Lack of Equitable Health
The issue of poverty is magnified by a lack of health equity, which is tied closely to educational losses in opportunity. As a lack of quality education poorly prepares students for college, hindering their pursuit of college degrees, individuals struggle to obtain well-paying jobs. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics pinpoints this gap, displaying that those who earn at most a high-school diploma earn $678 a week while those with less than a high-school diploma earn $493 a week [17]. These small weekly wages reveal how difficult it is for families to travel out of their low socioeconomic status communities, intensifying gentrification and a lack of health equity.
While the practice of gentrification attracts high-income residents to low socioeconomic communities, thus augmenting the value of the property by driving in businesses, legacy residents of these communities face displacement. With the rise in living costs of formerly redlined areas rendered by gentrification, lower-income residents are forced to move to areas of lower socioeconomic status [18]. The latent issue of this process on health lies in the disruption of social networks and amplification of stressors; research has shown that “limited networks [the constrained social connections resulting from relocating] cause greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking, and high blood pressure….” Redlined communities have also been shown to be at higher risk for COVID-19 and are linked to severe asthma, urban heat, and late cancer stage at diagnosis [19]. The triangular correlation between how a poor education resulting from redlining gives context to gentrification and health inequity further conveys how redlining leaves reverberating effects on marginalized communities.
Conclusion
America’s social inequality crisis finds root in redlining policies of the 1930s that still leave tangible, lingering effects on American youth. For those from lower-income communities in urban settings, such social inequality proves to be a nearly insurmountable obstacle that impedes social mobility and only exacerbates generational poverty. Redlined neighborhoods have also faced inequity in healthcare, and legislation still has not come to fruition in rectifying the wrongs of the 1930s. Equitable opportunity needs to be the foundational and fundamental impetus for creating opportunities for lower-income families to escape the cyclical nature of poverty—a reality that continues to strip any hope of upward social mobility.
Bibliography
[1] “How redlining prevented Black and Brown families from becoming home owners.” 2023. Harvard Kennedy School. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/explainers/how-redlining-prevented-black-and-brown-families-becoming-home-owners.
[2] ibid
[3] ibid
[4] ibid.
[5] ibid.
[6] DeRoche, Tim. 2021. “Housing Redlining and Its Lingering Effects on Education Opportunity.” The Heritage Foundation. https://www.heritage.org/education/report/housing-redlining-and-its-lingering-effects-education-opportunity.
[7] ibid
[8] “37 Arizona Public Schools Earn Arizona Educational Foundation A+ School of Excellence® Award.” 2024. Arizona Educational Foundation. https://www.azedfoundation.org/post/37-arizona-public-schools-earn-arizona-educational-foundation-a-school-of-excellence-award.
[9] DeRoche, Tim. 2021. “Housing Redlining and Its Lingering Effects on Education Opportunity.” The Heritage Foundation. https://www.heritage.org/education/report/housing-redlining-and-its-lingering-effects-education-opportunity.
[10] “How redlining prevented Black and Brown families from becoming home owners.” 2023. Harvard Kennedy School. https://www.hks.harvard.edu/explainers/how-redlining-prevented-black-and-brown-families-becoming-home-owners.
[11] “Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) - Federal Grant Programs.” n.d. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Accessed October 5, 2024. https://www.doe.mass.edu/federalgrants/essa/.
[12] Long, Cindy. 2019. “The Every Student Succeeds Act: Four Years Later, How Much Progress? | NEA.” National Education Association. https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/every-student-succeeds-act-four-years-later-how-much-progress.
[13] Owens, Ann. 2023. “Systematic Barriers to Success: The Impact of Redlining on Modern Educational Outcomes in Omaha Public Schools.” DigitalCommons@UNO. https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1217&context=university_honors_program.
[14] ibid
[15] ibid
[16] ibid
[17] Vilorio, Dennis. n.d. “Education matters : Career Outlook: U.S.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. Accessed October 15, 2024. https://www.bls.gov/careeroutlook/2016/data-on-display/education-matters.htm.
[18] los Santos, Hannah D., Karen Jiang, Julianna Bernardi, and Cassandra Okechukwu. 2021. “From Redlining to Gentrification: The Policy of the Past that Affects Health Outcomes Today.” Perspectives in Primary Care. https://info.primarycare.hms.harvard.edu/perspectives/articles/redlining-gentrification-health-outcomes.
[19] ibid