White homebuyer preference, not borrower behavior, determines black home wealth gains

Evidence

John’s experiences highlight a key difference in how homeownership affects whites and blacks: When blacks become homeowners, we get less wealth largely due to the personal choices of white homebuyers. Numerous studies show when too many of your neighbors are black, your home will not appreciate the way it would if you lived in an all-white neighborhood, and you may lose money when you sell, just as John did on his Feldwood Road property. When your neighbors are virtually all white, you are most likely to make tax-free money when you sell your home—again, just as John probably would, based on the rising value of his Candler Park home. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1264

When blacks become homeowners, we get less wealth largely due to the personal choices of white homebuyers. Numerous studies show when too many of your neighbors are black, your home will not appreciate the way it would if you lived in an all-white neighborhood, and you may lose money when you sell, just as John did on his Feldwood Road property. When your neighbors are virtually all white, you are most likely to make tax-free money when you sell your home—again, just as John probably would, based on the rising value of his Candler Park home. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 1264

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The entire reparations case on housing condenses here: black families are wealth-bound by a factor wholly outside their own behavior — the aggregated preferences of white buyers.
• XREF: Connects to the saturated-system harm thesis — individual racists need not act with intent; structural outcomes follow from aggregated preference. — connects to: Black occupancy raised Mozley Park property values despite white predictions — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 179
• ADDENDUM: Causal chain is central to the saturated-system harm argument; usable directly for the reparations brief.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 1264