White homebuyers reject neighborhoods with black residents regardless of amenities.

Evidence

White Americans—present-day, twenty-first-century white Americans—simply do not want to live next to too many blacks, even when they can get everything they want in a racially diverse neighborhood. It is specifically the presence of black people, not other racial or ethnic minorities, that brings out white Americans’ concerns. In one study, subjects were shown videos of different but actual neighborhoods with actors playing residents—all-white, all-black, and 60 percent white/40 percent black—and asked which they preferred. The videos controlled for social class, which meant amenities in the white neighborhoods were like the amenities in the other neighborhoods. White Americans still preferred the all-white neighborhoods. Black Americans, on the other hand, least preferred the all-white neighborhoods, and viewed the all-black and racially diverse neighborhoods similarly and preferred them. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 225

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the tax-code neutrality argument: home price appreciation rewards white preferences in the housing market, grounding the mortgage interest deduction critique.