Redlining Today: How and Why Race Matters for Access to Wealth in Baltimore
Part of the Examining Structural Racism segment of the UB Law in Focus Discussion Series
When the federal government created color-coded maps in the 1930s, it defined areas desirable for lending and investment using race and racial segregation as a criterion. The result was access to credit, housing and wealth building that was racially and geographically segregated.
Today, race is no longer a criterion, but the patterns of racially segregated investment and disinvestment set back then continue today. How do these patterns continue to racialize access to wealth and well-being in Baltimore? How can these patterns be broken, and does government have an obligation to take the lead? Is there a way to do so without gentrification and displacement?
On July 14, Prof. Cassandra Jones Havard , banking law scholar and expert on financial inclusion; Prof. Audrey G. McFarlane, scholar of property and race and expert in local economic development; and Prof. Jaime F. Lee , a scholar of community economic development law and expert in water justice, addressed these issues. Renee Hatcher , assistant professor of law and director of the Community Enterprise & Solidarity Economy Clinic at the University of Illinois at Chicago John Marshall School of Law, moderated the discussion.
There is a suggested reading list from McFarlane to learn more on this topic:
- David M. P. Freund, Colored Property: State Policy & White Racial Politics in Suburban America (2010)
- Antero Pietila, Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City (2010)
- Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (2017)
- Beryl Satter, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America (2010)
- Keeanga-Yahmahtta Taylor,
Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership
(2019).
Panelists
Cassandra Jones Havard
Professor of Law
Audrey G. McFarlene
Assoc. Dean, Faculty Research and Development, and Dean Julius Isaacson Professor of Law
Jamie F. Lee
Assoc. Professor of Law and Director, Community Development Clinic
Future Events
To recommend a topic idea or to express your interest to serve as a panelist for a future event, contact Jason Keller at jkeller@ubalt.edu.