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Racial Wealth Gap
Redlining is a form of discrimination in which financial institutions refuse to provide the same services—especially credit for mortgages—to minority groups. The term “redlining” comes from government maps that color-coded minority neighborhoods red in order to indicate that banks should not lend to buyers in those neighborhoods.
Redlining Quotes in The Sum of Us
The The Sum of Us quotes below are all either spoken by Redlining or refer to Redlining. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 7 Quotes
Who your neighbors, your co-workers, and your classmates are is one of the most powerful determinants of your path in life. And most white Americans spend their lives on a path set out for them by a centuries-old lie: that in the zero-sum racial competition, white spaces are the best spaces.
White people are the most segregated people in America.
That’s a different way to think about what has perennially been an issue cast with the opposite die: people of color are those who are segregated, because the white majority separates out the Black minority, excludes the Chinese, forces Indigenous Americans onto reservations, expels the Latinos.
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McGhee self-consciously inverts the common wisdom about segregation when she argues that “White people are the most segregated people in America.” She frames the problem in this way so that she can emphasize who is truly responsible for the nation’s widespread pattern of racial segregation. The idea that “people of color are those who are segregated” presents segregation as a problem with people of color, as though they have chosen it. But really, it is a harm that has been done to them. Through policies like redlining, the nation’s white majority has forced communities of color into particular neighborhoods and Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus e
Public policy created this problem, and public policy should solve it. Because of our deliberately constructed racial wealth gap, most Black and brown families can’t afford to rent or buy in the places where white families are, and when white families bring their wealth into Black and brown neighborhoods, it more often leads to gentrification and displacement than enduring integration. The solution is more housing in more places that people can afford on the average incomes of workers of color.
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McGhee argues that policy action is Americans’ only meaningful tool for undoing residential segregation. After all, this segregation is the result of the government’s longstanding redlining and mortgage discrimination policies, combined with economic policies that have led to skyrocketing housing prices and declining wages since 1970. These policies were designed to preserve and grow white wealth, so of course they led to a vast racial wealth gap—and today’s profound inequality between white and nonwhite neighborhoods around the U.S. Since policy caused the problem, McGhee insists that policy has to solve it. Individual action is not enough; people cannot simply integrate Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem acc
Chapter 10 Quotes
Wealth is where history shows up in your wallet, where your financial freedom is determined by compounding interest on decisions made long before you were born.
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McGhee argues that the U.S. should give down payment and mortgage assistance to redlining victims and their descendants as a form of reparations for the harms they have suffered. She brings this up to illustrate the benefits of “targeted universalism”—or policies that achieve universal goals by targeting assistance to the groups that most need it. However, she also takes the opportunity to make an important point about the racial wealth gap. In a nutshell, white Americans are disproportionately wealthy because public policy has given them time in the market. Whether they profited from slavery, built homesteads on stolen native land, Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perferendis consectetur et. Dicta impedit ut. Ducimus possimus quo. Non
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Redlining Term Timeline in The Sum of Us
The timeline below shows where the term Redlining appears in The Sum of Us. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 4: Ignoring the Canary
...bought and refinanced struggling white homeowners’ mortgages. But it also invented the practice known as redlining: in its investment risk maps, it colored neighborhoods where Black people lived red, designating the...
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...contracts to prevent buyers from ever reselling their homes to people of color. These official redlining policies are the main source of the racial wealth gap today: the average white family...
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While the 1968 Fair Housing Act outlawed redlining, the government didn’t start enforcing it until the 1990s. Thus, throughout the 20th century, most...
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...told a similar story, blaming the financial crisis on the government forcing banks to stop redlining and start lending to minorities. This narrative fell into convenient, age-old stereotypes about irresponsible people...
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Chapter 7: Living Apart
As McGhee explained in Chapter Four, the government used redlining and mortgage discrimination to enforce housing segregation across the country. Later, urban planners started routing...
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Chapter 10: The Solidarity Dividend
...with the most property, aggravating inequality instead of rectifying it. Instead, the U.S. should help redlining victims with down payments. This would have positive spillover effects: increasing Black homeownership would increase...
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