Understanding Inequality: Redlining is only part of the story
Redlining, some scholars contend, has become a “narrative crutch” that obscures a much longer history of housing discrimination. Redlining didn’t create systemic racism in American housing patterns, it sanctioned it. Vulnerable communities still feel the impacts of this profitable disinvestment in vast and far-reaching ways. The perpetuation of racist residential patterns far exceeds the reach of government actors. Public and private actors are, in many ways, equally responsible for the spaces we do and do not inhabit to this day.