White Neighborhoods Research Articles

Threatening Property: Race, Class, and Campaigns to Legislate Jim Crow Neighborhoods

While many scholars have documented attempts at urban housing segregation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, historian Elizabeth Herbin-Triant reveals how, in North Carolina, ideologies regarding housing segregation in cities also influenced the southern countryside. White demands to control where African Americans lived grew more fevered as Black families grew in economic power. Concerned about continued loss of property and economic standing, middling whites in particular tried various methods to control and suppress Black property acquisition in urban and rural areas.Herbin-Triant starts her history by explaining how North Carolina's geography and large population of independent, yeomen farmers meant that a significant segment of white farmers embraced a vision of self-sufficiency, democratic engagement, and individualism. These small white farmers acutely felt competition for property from increasingly successful Black farmers. At the turn of the twentieth century, Black farm ownership was expanding and white land ownership was diminishing, a fact that many whites attributed to African Americans' willingness to accept “lower standards of living” (37). Migration to urban areas, too, produced racial tensions. In cities such as Winston, middling whites grew alarmed by growing numbers of Black workers seeking homes in historically white neighborhoods near employment centers. Resentment from working poor and middling whites produced violence and experiments with property segregation that took the form of restrictive covenants and, when those measures failed, racial zoning (which was soon ruled unenforceable).Clarence Poe, the young editor of Progressive Farmer, eventually the largest circulating farm journal in the Southeast, followed such urban segregation practices and the writings of South African apartheid architect Maurice Evans closely, considering how property segregation might be used to advance white small farmers' interests. Embracing populist ideals, Poe promoted yeomen self-sufficiency and the idea that white farmers should work together to benefit white farmers as a group. He sought a successful recipe for land segregation that would strengthen white farmers' economic opportunity and withstand challenges in court, and he regularly promoted the advantages of property segregation in his journal and in other venues. However, elite whites (whether urban industrial interests or rural planters) saw few advantages in property segregation: they saw no reason to hobble Black economic achievement, particularly because it did not threaten their own economic standing. They did not want to encourage migration by stifling Black success, as they depended on easy access to low-cost Black labor, and some thought individuals should be able to dispose of property as they wished. Thus, elites thwarted the property segregation efforts of middling whites in towns and the countryside.While there are already a number of scholarly works examining housing segregation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Threatening Property makes several important contributions to the subfield. Herbin-Triant shows that property segregation was an evolving conversation between urban and rural areas, and at least some white leaders saw advantages to implementing racial segregation in nonurban spaces. Furthermore, she outlines how this North Carolina story is both locally contingent and illustrative of national trends: North Carolina had a white independent, yeomen tradition that meant that farmers who owned (or had owned) small farms felt particularly threatened by and had the potential to be mobilized against Black economic success, a situation that Democratic political leaders took advantage of and that resulted in, among other things, Black disenfranchisement. At the same time, Winston reflected national engagement with racial segregation practices: it mimicked other cities in its attempts to confine Black families to neighborhoods lacking in resources or with fewer advantages. But the author is particularly successful in demonstrating how elite and middling whites experienced and responded to the “threat” of Black economic success in different ways. The elite white inclination to allow some measure of Black economic progress prevailed because elites held significantly more power. Thus, within the white community, conflicting class desires meant that some white supremacist agendas failed, even while white supremacist infrastructure (such as de facto social segregation) endured. And at least in the instances described, the failure of the middling white agenda benefited Black families who owned property or sought to, even while white racist terror continued.

Historical Redlining and Contemporary Racial Disparities in Neighborhood Life Expectancy

Abstract While evidence suggests a durable relationship between redlining and population health, we currently lack an empirical account of how this historical act of racialized violence produced contemporary inequities. In this paper, we use a mediation framework to evaluate how redlining grades influenced later life expectancy and the degree to which contemporary racial disparities in life expectancy between Black working-class neighborhoods and White professional-class neighborhoods can be explained by past Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) mapping. Life expectancy gaps between differently graded tracts are driven by economic isolation and disparate property valuation which developed within these areas in subsequent decades. Still, only a small percent of a total disparity between contemporary Black and White neighborhoods is explained by HOLC grades. We discuss the role of HOLC maps in analyses of structural racism and health, positioning them as only one feature of a larger public–private project conflating race with financial risk. Policy implications include not only targeting resources to formerly redlined neighborhoods but also the larger project of dismantling racist theories of value that are deeply embedded in the political economy of place.

Spatial Disadvantage and Racial Disparities in Gun Homicides.

A spatially disadvantaged census tract is one that is surrounded by disadvantaged tracts. More spatially disadvantaged neighborhoods may experience more violence, independent of their own level of disadvantage, and majority Black middle-class neighborhoods are more likely to be spatially disadvantaged than majority white neighborhoods. The purpose of this paper is to study how much of the racial difference in gun homicide rates between majority Black and majority white middle-class neighborhoods can be explained by differences in spatial disadvantage. To study this, comparable majority Black and majority white tracts were matched to understand how gun homicide rates differ in neighborhoods with similar levels of disadvantage. Further matching on spatial disadvantage reduced the disparity in gun homicides between majority Black and majority white middle-class neighborhoods, suggesting that spatial disadvantage accounts for some but not all of the disparity.

Assault-related Orbital Trauma at an Urban Level I Trauma Center: Racial Segregation and Other Neighborhood-level Social Determinants.

To report the demographics of assault-related orbital fractures over a 7-year period treated at a level I urban trauma center, as well as describe and analyze the variation in assault rates across different racial/ethnic neighborhoods for patients residing in Milwaukee County. A retrospective chart review was conducted for patients who sustained assault-related orbital fractures from January 1, 2013, through December 31, 2019, at the Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A series of negative binomial regression models evaluating the association of neighborhood (i.e., US census tract) racial/ethnic composition, poverty, unemployment, percentage female head-of-household, and education level with neighborhood rate of orbital trauma was conducted. A total of 410 adult patients with orbital fractures attributed to assault were identified during the seven-year period, of whom 326 (80%) resided in Milwaukee County. Among these patients, 242 (74%) were male, 260 (81%) were single, and 206 (63%) were non-Hispanic Black. Majority non-Hispanic Black, Hispanic, and Other-type minority neighborhoods have 5.30, 3.35, and 3.94 times higher incidence rates of orbital assault, respectively, compared with the majority of non-Hispanic White neighborhoods. The elevated incidence rates were significantly attenuated across all minority neighborhoods after accounting for neighborhood factors of poverty, unemployment, and low education level. Low education had the strongest association with the incidence of assault-related orbital fractures, followed by unemployment. Results indicate that minority neighborhoods suffer from compounded burdens of both social and economic disadvantage as well as violent assaults. Additional resources allocated to poor minority communities are needed.

“Their Negro Nanny was with Child By a white man”: Gossip, Sex, and Slavery in an Eighteenth-Century New England Town

In 1746, an enslaved woman named Nanny gave birth in Barnstable, Massachusetts. In the months prior, she had become the subject of gossip throughout town. Rumor had it that the father of her unborn child was one of two young white men—either a poor relative of her enslavers or a son of an elite lawyer. After the birth, the disputed paternity resulted in a defamation suit, the records of which illuminate the social and legal cultures of misogyny and racism at play in eighteenth-century New England and provide a rare account of the intimate experiences of a Black woman in the colonial North. Local gossip about Nanny attests to the complex nature of white men’s sexual access to enslaved women’s bodies, as well as of white women’s efforts to surveil and control those same bodies to maintain familial reputations. In these expansive gossip networks, enslaved people actively engaged in discussions of race and sex with white neighbors. When Nanny testified that both men “Lay with” her, she asserted her own story and personhood while participating in a broader cultural conflict over the privileges and boundaries of manhood and whiteness in the Atlantic world.

Anti-Blackness, Black Geographies, and Racialized Depopulation in Coalfield Appalachia from 1940 to 2000

AbstractIn this article, I investigate the ways that anti-Blackness has shaped coalfield Appalachia's human geographies. I draw on Black Studies and Black geographies literature to inform my theorization of anti-Blackness. Beginning with the question of why Black people left Appalachia in greater numbers than their white neighbors, I find that Black people left the mountains largely due to the unequal effects of deindustrialization. Black communities faced a racialized hierarchy of labor in the coal mines, racialized exposure to hazards and environmental risk, and the pull of other places with friends, family, and better jobs. I argue that the experiences of Black communities in the coalfields illustrate the supposition in Black geographies literature that anti-Blackness shapes human geographies by reproducing assumptions that Black people are aspatial, as in “not producing and making space.” I conclude with a brief analysis of the narratives that white people tell about Appalachian whiteness and identity, and I argue that Black people continue to be deemed out of place in dominant narratives about the region.

Police redistricting reforms and urban governance

AbstractPolice redistricting reforms are surprisingly understudied. While many understand redistricting in other realms as a mechanism of social inclusion and exclusion, police redistricting is often overlooked as merely technocratic. We argue that, in fact, police redistricting reforms are substantively and theoretically important because they articulate urban policy amid the pressures of neoliberal governance. Redistricting defines the functions and activities of the police, responds to political and economic pressures, and redistributes resources across racial spaces. To illustrate, we analyze publicly available materials describing 43 police redistricting reforms in 35 major cities in the United States. We find in these reforms an enduring emphasis on the role of the police as emergency service providers. Urban austerity and growth politics inflect redistricting and impact the distribution of police service across the city. While redistricting can theoretically result in more equitable policing, it can also amplify racial inequities by triaging resources toward downtowns and predominantly white neighborhoods, at the expense of police response in communities of color. We call for more attention to police redistricting as an arena of urban governance.

A Statistical Representation of the Inequities Encountered by African Americans Living in Atlanta During COVID: A Time for Action.

This research analyzes the statistically significant differences that exist between Blacks and Whites living in Atlanta via their social, economic, educational, and housing characteristics during COVID. Hypothesis tests confirmed what visual scatterplots and correlations inferred. The statistics overwhelmingly substantiate that all six of the important quality of life metrics viewed in this study are more favorable towards predominately White neighborhoods, as opposed to predominately Black neighborhoods. In particular, neighborhoods with a super majority of White residents tended to have higher life expectancies at the times of their births, sustained lower violent crime rates, held higher median household incomes, had a smaller percentage of its children living below the poverty level, had higher percentages of residents with at least a high school diploma, and maintained more occupied housing units, when compared to neighborhoods with a super majority of Black residents.

Community reinvestment challenges in the age of gentrification: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as a case study for wide bank lending disparities

Abstract Racially unequal home mortgage loan patterns are alive and well today with many financial institutions. Efforts to change these trends are difficult when few question the ‘reinvestment thesis’—an environment in which financial institutions are assumed to meet community needs, even when data suggest the opposite. In this article, we analyze thirteen years of financial institution lending data from 2007 to 2019 in Pittsburgh that show how the city’s African American neighborhoods are starved for private capital as vastly more loans and loan dollars were approved in white neighborhoods. Conversely, an analysis of public expenditures for affordable housing between 2010 and 2020 demonstrate the majority of government dollars went to minority neighborhoods. These data provide a partial explanation as to why Pittsburgh lost > 10,000 Black residents over the past decade. These wide disparities are a significant barrier to building African American wealth and present challenges to community development efforts.

RACIAL IDENTITY, CLASS STRUGGLE AND GENERATION GAP WITHIN A BLACK-AMERICAN FAMILY AS SEEN THROUGH A RAISIN IN THE SUN BY LORRAINE HANSBERRY

<p>Dealing with democratic rights and equality when the civil rights movement was at its earlier stages, <em>A raisin in the Sun</em> analyzes the context, assesses reality and shapes the life the author observes among Americans in their different socio-economic and even political steps of life. Mainly about how the Walter family will spend a ten-thousand-dollar insurance payment after its patriarch’s death and about whether the family will move into an affordable new home in a hostile white neighborhood, the play relocates both blacks and whites in their responsibilities. In a vivid environment of conflicting interests where race is a place, white is right and money makes and defines the man, this article explains the powerlessness of black people to control their own fate or that of their families as opposed to privileged white Americans, under the lenses of New Criticism as a scientific lead, in a capitalist America.</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0333/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Measuring racial and ethnic disparities in traffic enforcement with large-scale telematics data.

Past studies have found that racial and ethnic minorities are more likely than White drivers to be pulled over by the police for alleged traffic infractions, including a combination of speeding and equipment violations. It has been difficult, though, to measure the extent to which these disparities stem from discriminatory enforcement rather than from differences in offense rates. Here, in the context of speeding enforcement, we address this challenge by leveraging a novel source of telematics data, which include second-by-second driving speed for hundreds of thousands of individuals in 10 major cities across the United States. We find that time spent speeding is approximately uncorrelated with neighborhood demographics, yet, in several cities, officers focused speeding enforcement in small, demographically nonrepresentative areas. In some cities, speeding enforcement was concentrated in predominantly non-White neighborhoods, while, in others, enforcement was concentrated in predominately White neighborhoods. Averaging across the 10 cities we examined, and adjusting for observed speeding behavior, we find that speeding enforcement was moderately more concentrated in non-White neighborhoods. Our results show that current enforcement practices can lead to inequities across race and ethnicity.

How Federal and State Regulatory Systems Perpetuate Environmental Injustice in the United States: Industrial Ethylene Oxide Emissions as a Case Study.

Ethylene oxide (EtO), a known human carcinogen, is emitted from facilities across the United States. A 2018 assessment by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showed that areas around EtO-emitting facilities had cancer risk levels up to 24 times the national average. The EPA notified the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) about the high cancer risk to their residents. Our aim was to analyze actions and implementation equity at the federal, state, and community levels since the EPA notification. Using publicly available data, we identified U.S. emitters of EtO and then analyzed community, state, and federal actions since the EPA notification through content analysis of internet data using the lens of the environmental inequality formation (EIF) theory. Thirty-one of a total 654 EtO-emitting facilities have an estimated cancer risk of over 100 in a million in neighboring census tracts and are located in 13 states and Puerto Rico, representing 7 EPA regions. Content analysis identified themes of community outcry, agency involvement, and legislative action and found no action without community outcry. By January 2021, 2 facilities had closed, 5 facilities had cut emissions, and 24 facilities in 9 states and 5 EPA regions had taken no action. Wealthier white neighborhoods saw facilities close or cut emissions. Differences in state response correlated with differences in community pressure and state priority setting, resulting in over 1 million people having continued significant EtO exposure for years. The impotence of the federal and state regulatory framework perpetuates environmental injustice in the United States.

Pharmacy deserts: More than where pharmacies are

BackgroundIn the United States, geographic access is a major driver of health care disparities. Studies have shown that pharmacy deserts are prevalent in the United States, even in major metropolitan areas. However, one limitation often cited by these studies is the use of distance rather than travel time to define pharmacy deserts. ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to assess pharmacy deserts using travel time and to provide a more holistic approach by incorporating analysis of private vehicles and public transportation. MethodsPharmacy details were collected from the National Provider Identifier database and neighborhood characteristics from collected census data for the four largest U.S. cities. Pharmacy access was evaluated using open-source routing engines. We determined neighborhoods in pharmacy deserts using both distance and travel time analyses. Sensitivity analysis was performed to determine changes to pharmacy deserts based on small changes in travel time. ResultsOf 4654 neighborhoods identified in the four cities of interest, 670 (14.4%) neighborhoods were in pharmacy deserts based on distance. Despite accounting for 28.9% of all neighborhoods, predominantly white neighborhoods only accounted for 4.3% of pharmacy deserts. When evaluating pharmacy deserts by car and public transportation, predominantly white neighborhoods accounted for 2.3% and 1.7% of total pharmacy deserts, respectively. Finally, by reducing travel time from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, pharmacy deserts by car and public transportation increased by 105% and 199%, respectively. All but 3 of the new pharmacy deserts found in the sensitivity analysis were found in nonpredominantly white neighborhoods. ConclusionUsing travel time and incorporating modes of transportation, we found that disparities in pharmacy access are more than just where pharmacies are located geographically. There are additional layers of disparities, such as access to public transportation, that need to be addressed to reduce the number of pharmacy deserts.

The composition and stability of demographic integration through gentrification

ABSTRACT Gentrification, the increase of land values and resident socioeconomic status in previously low-income neighborhoods, is related to the emergence of demographically mixed White neighborhoods. But questions remain as to what kinds of mixtures (White/Black, White/Hispanic, or White/Asian) gentrification facilitates and how stable they are over time. To address this limitation, this study utilizes Census and American Community Survey data for metropolitan areas from 1980 to 2010. We use a typology of racial/ethnic neighborhoods by composition to determine what kind of demographic integration, if any, results from gentrification and how stable it is over time. Using hybrid fixed effects logistic regression to control for modeled and unmodeled factors, we find gentrification is associated with the emergence of mixed-White-and-Black and mixed-White-and-Hispanic neighborhoods, but not mixed White-and-Asian/Pacific Islander neighborhoods. Using conventional logistic regression, we find gentrification that began in the 1980s is related to the long-term integration of Whites with Hispanics and Blacks.

While Some Things Change, Do Others Stay the Same? The Heterogeneity of Neighborhood Health Returns to Gentrification

Gentrification is associated with decreases in neighborhood poverty and crime, increases in amenities and services, among other benefits—all identified as structural determinants of health. However, gentrification is also associated with population-level replacement of the existing community, or threats thereof. Combining census data from the ten largest MSAs in the U.S. with tract-level estimates from the CDC-PLACES Project from 2013–14 to 2017–18, we explore how the changing socioeconomic conditions in gentrifying neighborhoods correlate with changes in neighborhood health. We find significant differences between gentrifying and non-gentrifying neighborhoods in their associations with neighborhood health. The sociodemographic changes occurring in gentrifying neighborhoods generally correspond with simultaneous decreases in aggregate health risk behaviors and negative health outcomes. However, these changes are heterogeneous and complex. Whether and how neighborhood health changes alongside other components of neighborhood change depends on whether gentrification occurs in majority Black, Hispanic, or White neighborhoods. Our findings provide preliminary evidence that the changes accompanying gentrification extend to neighborhood health, but the direction of influence varies by neighborhood composition, type of sociodemographic change, specific health outcome, and spatial spillover. We discuss theoretical implications for future work addressing the mechanisms driving changes in neighborhood health, and potential approaches that differentiate policy responses.

Perceived Neighborhood Racial Composition and Depressive Symptoms Among Black Americans Across Adulthood: Evaluating the Role of Psychosocial Risks and Resources.

Objectives: To evaluate the relationships between perceived neighborhood racial composition (PNRC), psychosocial risks and resources, and depressive symptoms among young (ages 22-35), middle-aged (ages 36-49), and older (ages 50+) Black Americans. Methods: Full sample and age-stratified linear regression models estimated the PNRC-depressive symptoms association and the extent to which it persisted after accounting for psychosocial risks (i.e., neighborhood disorder, other social stressors) and resources (i.e., mastery, social support, racial identity) among 627 Black Americans in the Nashville Stress and Health Study. Results: Living in racially integrated and predominately White neighborhoods was associated with elevated depressive symptoms. While psychosocial risks and resources explained a substantial portion of these associations, patterns varied across age groups. Discussion: PNRC impacts depressive symptoms among Black Americans by shaping psychosocial risks and resources. Findings underscore interconnections between contextual and psychosocial factors, as well as the distinct mental health significance of these processes across stages of adulthood.

Unequal Jury Representation and Its Consequences

We analyze the extent and consequences of unequal representation on juries in Harris County, Texas. We first document that residents from predominantly White and high-income neighborhoods are substantially overrepresented on juries. Using quasirandom variation in those called for jury duty each day, we next establish that Black defendants are more likely to be convicted and receive longer sentences from juries with more residents from these overrepresented neighborhoods. We estimate that equal representation would reduce Black defendants’ median sentence length by 50 percent and the probability of receiving a life sentence by 67 percent. Straightforward remedies could mitigate these legally unwarranted racial disparities. (JEL J15, K41)

The Rise and Fall of a "Free" Delaware: The Missouri Crisis and the Invention of the Free State in the Mid-Atlantic

This article examines both the origins of the "free state" concept in U.S. history as well the little-known, brief period that Delaware was widely considered a "free state." Americans had long talked about "slaveholding" and "non-slaveholding" states—but it was not until the late 1810s and early 1820s that northerners began to use the words "free state." This change represented a rhetorical escalation from "non-slaveholding state" to a term with an even clearer moral valence. But it was not originally obvious to observers exactly which states should be included in the "free" cohort, and, for a time, white Delawareans were successful in convincing themselves and their fellow Americans that they should be counted amongst the northern free states. This article charts Delawareans' arguments in favor of their "free state" status, as well as, over time, their state's fall from grace into the "slave state" category. That it was only in the years after the Missouri Compromise that a nebulous group of non-slave states solidified into an identifiable core of "free" ones demonstrates that the development of the sectional divide in the pre-Civil War era was more gradual and more uncertain than previously thought. It reveals a process of negotiating a "free" identity on a state level that did not mirror reality on the ground. Finally, it uncovers the rhetorical process behind the large-scale erasure of enslaved African Americans' realities in the creation of the "Free North" myth along its borders, even when the evidence of their existence and their experiences would have been impossible for their white neighbors to ignore

Fintech’s relationship with subprime lending in immigrant gateway metropolitan areas

ABSTRACT Financial technology lending (fintech) is a subset of the mortgage industry characterized by all-online application processes and the inclusion of non-traditional applicant data in underwriting decisions. While national studies suggest that fintech lenders mimic traditional lenders and distribute subprime loans to minority borrowers and neighborhoods at higher rates than to white borrowers and neighborhoods, these studies exclude regional differences by race/ethnicity and nativity. We assess variation in neighborhood-level fintech and traditional subprime lending rates across immigrant gateway metropolitan areas. Using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data, we find that immigrant gateways are associated with higher rates of subprime lending than metropolitan areas with low rates of immigration. Results suggest that neighborhood-level composition of Asian and Latinx residents mediate the relationship between subprime lending and immigrant gateways in distinct ways depending on lender type. Findings suggest metropolitan and tract-level racial and ethnic patterns remain key factors in shaping subprime lending rates in a rapidly evolving mortgage credit market.

Connecting past to present: Examining different approaches to linking historical redlining to present day health inequities.

In the 1930’s, the Home Owner Loan Corporation (HOLC) drafted maps to quantify variation in real estate credit risk across US city neighborhoods. The letter grades and associated risk ratings assigned to neighborhoods discriminated against those with black, lower class, or immigrant residents and benefitted affluent white neighborhoods. An emerging literature has begun linking current individual and community health effects to government redlining, but each study faces the same measurement problem: HOLC graded area boundaries and neighborhood boundaries in present-day health datasets do not match. Previous studies have taken different approaches to classify present day neighborhoods (census tracts) in terms of historical HOLC grades. This study reviews these approaches, examines empirically how different classifications fare in terms of predictive validity, and derives a predictively optimal present-day neighborhood redlining classification for neighborhood and health research.