Washington Real Estate Fair Housing (3 Hr)

The United States has a long history of racial discrimination and segregation, which includes housing. Many Americans throughout our history have been denied or restricted access to lending, neighborhoods where they could live, and financial programs. This has been true not only in the South but also in Washington.

Types of Racism

Broadly, racism is prejudice or discrimination due to a person's race. There are many types and ways to categorize racism, but we will focus on four types: structural, institutional, internalized, and interpersonal.

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Interpersonal racism refers to behavior or speech by individuals that reflect prejudice or discrimination based on race.

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Structural racism refers to the ways in which societal systems, structures, and policies perpetuate racial inequalities.

Understanding Racism: Structural and Institutional

Structural Racism

Structural racism is a result of our history and attitudes formed over generations. It seeps into and is codified in another type of racism, institutional racism. Structural racism is related to how a society is set up and organized, as well as the policies and traditions put in place over time. This can include how race is discussed and treated within an institution or in the media.

This form of racism can normalize historical and institutional practices that disadvantage people of color. Even if a policy excludes a minority group and benefits white people, that would be an example of structural racism. It’s closely related to institutional racism, which enforces the structural attitudes developed over time.

Systemic racism refers to an invisible system that upholds the ideology and institutional superiority of white people over other races in society. This can occur both consciously and unconsciously. Although individuals may not perceive themselves as racist, they may continue to benefit from systems offering advantages to white people.

Research and Findings

A study conducted in 2017 by Katherine DeCelles at Harvard also highlights one of these societal benefits: job hiring.

The study summarizes by saying,

Institutional Racism

Institutional racism is a subset of structural racism, which includes the practical rules and policies an institution has in place that better serve white people while not providing the same levels of service or even harming minorities.

During the Depression, the country faced a housing shortage, and the federal government stepped in to help alleviate the issue. In doing so, they created programs that helped to segregate housing throughout the United States in a process known as redlining. Redlining came about with the formation of the Federal Housing Administration around 1934. The Federal Housing Administration committed to ensuring unpaid balances of borrowers who couldn’t make payments. What this did was allow many to become homeowners and be able to qualify for loans since lenders were protected from default.

This policy of segregation is even more clear when you look at one of these maps.

The Colors You See on the Map Had Grades

1. A (Best): These neighborhoods were usually upper-class white neighborhoods that were seen as providing a shallow risk of default for banks. One feature evaluated was whether it was ethnically homogeneous.
2. B (Still Desirable): This classification included mostly, if not wholly, white US-born citizens. Lenders saw these as still desirable.
3. C (Declining): These areas were typically populated with working-class people and first or second-generation immigrants. The neighborhood would often have older buildings.
4. D (Hazardous): This grade was often granted to minority communities such as Asian, Mexican, Jewish, and African-American families.

Interpersonal Racism

Interpersonal racism occurs between individual people. This type of racism is the one that is the most overt or well-publicized. It happens when a person takes action as a result of stereotypes that they hold. It might be a hate crime, housing discrimination, negative comments about minorities, or racial profiling. Since these incidents are more prominent, they are more likely to be reported in the media.

However, just because this type of racism is written about in the press does not mean that most of the time it happens, it makes it to the media—quite the opposite.

Internalized racism can manifest in a couple of forms through individuals who receive benefits from historical events, media, and institutional power. The second is from the group that is being oppressed. Over time, consistently disadvantaged people can develop attitudes that impact their sense of self, potentially leading to a sense of superiority and an inflated self-image within the advantaged group. Examples include cognitive dissonance and paternalism.