Past redlining lowers today’s black earnings and home values

Evidence

Yesterday’s racially restrictive covenants and FHA discrimination resulted in today’s residentially segregated neighborhoods. Being born into neighborhoods that were previously redlined by the federal government decreases a black child’s future annual earnings by $15,000. In addition, today’s home values are based on the percentage of black homeowners in the neighborhood. The smaller the percentage, with zero being the optimal number, the higher the home value. The high property values associated with white neighborhoods benefit their white residents today with additional net worth, equity that has been denied to black Americans. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 440

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the causal mechanism central to Brown’s saturated-system harm architecture: past federal discrimination compounds into present asset inequality.
• XREF: Connects to Brown’s own earlier book The Whiteness of Wealth — diagnosis of asset-building mechanisms now being repurposed for the remedy case.