How Housing Segregation Affects People
“Jim Crow of the North” is a documentary directed by Daniel Pierce Bergin to show the roots of the worst racial disparities in Minnesota. The film describes the progression of racist practices and policies after restrictive covenants began in the late 1960s. These restrictive covenants became the foundation of discriminatory policies that resulted in the inequalities Minnesota faces today. Housing segregation significantly impacts the lives of individuals and communities. First, high residential segregation instances restrict opportunities for Black people compared to other races. With discriminatory barriers, individual Blacks will have fewer chances to capitalize on their hard-earned income and obtain desirable living locations. Black families will have to reside in disadvantaged neighborhoods compared to white counterparts of equal social status. Additionally, the communities of color will lack access to quality jobs, health care, schools, and other social amenities.
Origin of Current Racial Disparities
Racial segregation has allowed resource withholding and geographical targeting of minority communities through undesirable practices and policies, such as devaluation, underinvestment, and over-policing. The aforementioned forces impede the accumulation of wealth and the prevention of social mobility. Current racial disparities can be traced back to the beginning of restrictive covenants. The high racial wealth gap and the low Black homeownership are results of systemic racism, which includes the Jim Crow segregation rule and other policies against Black people. Housing segregation leads to the extraction of critical resources and wealth that propel social and economic mobility from Black communities, fastening a downward socioeconomic movement. For example, schools that are dominated by minority communities receive less funding than white institutions by $23 billion. The reason for this is that these schools mostly depend on local property taxes for funding rather than the broader government pool.
The solution to closing the racial wealth gap through equalizing education is flawed. Graduates from white colleges have more wealth than those from Black institutions. Therefore, this means that a singularly focused strategy to increase the attainment of a university degree cannot reduce the racial wealth disparity. In addition, resources from disadvantaged neighborhoods have fewer financial literacy opportunities, more payday lenders, and few options for banking. With this, the development of Black businesses is throttled by the people’s lack of overall wealth and homeownership, which are trickle-down effects of Jim Crow’s segregation and other restrictive covenants.