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quote
After the Great Depression, when the federal government graded neighborhoods in hundreds of cities for real estate investment, Black and immigrant areas were typically outlined in red on maps to denote risky places to lend. Racial discrimination in housing was outlawed in 1968. But the redlining maps entrenched discriminatory practices whose effects reverberate nearly a century later.
To this day, historically redlined neighborhoods are more likely to have high populations of Black, Latino and Asian residents than areas that were favorably assessed at the time.
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The new study’s lead author, Haley M. Lane, said she was surprised to find that the differences in air pollution exposure between redlined and better-rated districts were even larger than the well-documented disparities in exposure between people of color and white Americans.
“At the same time, there are so many other effects that are creating these disparities, and these delineations by redlining are just one,” said Lane, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
Researchers have unearthed patterns of all kinds since scholars digitized a large collection of redlining maps in 2016.
With less green space and more paved surfaces to absorb and radiate heat, historically redlined neighborhoods are 5 degrees hotter in summer, on average, than other areas. A 2019 study of eight California cities found that residents of redlined neighborhoods were twice as likely to visit emergency rooms for asthma.
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Joshua S. Apte, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley who worked on the study, said he had assumed the differences between neighborhoods would be more pronounced in certain regions, like the South. Instead, the patterns he and his colleagues found were remarkably consistent across the country.
“This history of racist planning is so deeply ingrained in American cities basically of any stripe, anywhere,” Apte said. “We went looking for this regional story, and it’s not there.”
The surveyors hired by the government in the 1930s gave each neighborhood one of four letter grades, from most to least desirable. And the new study found that “D” neighborhoods, the least desirable, decades later are generally more exposed to dirty air, and more of their residents live near highways, railroads and industrial pollution sources.
In part, this is because some areas graded “C” or “D” in the 1930s already hosted heavy industry and other sources of pollution. Over time, a lack of investment in these neighborhoods also made them attractive for new polluting projects, like interstate highways, that required cheap land.
end quote
Those who try to deny the extent that Racism was facilitated across America are in great denial of what exist in the long 100 yr history of Jim Crow Segregation.
I say, those deniers or racism also, ignore the fact that along with Race was Monetary Class Segregation with regards to poor white society, because in some areas where there are poor whites, they were also subjected to a higher level of toxicity in their areas than were the well to do and wealthy whites. Poor whites should recogonize, they were not exempt from the areas designations for toxicity.
How Air Pollution Across America Reflects Racist Policy From the 1930s
Urban neighborhoods that were redlined by federal officials in the 1930s tended to have higher levels of harmful air pollution eight decades later, a new study has found, adding to a body of evidence that reveals how racist policies in the past have contributed to inequalities across the United States today.After the Great Depression, when the federal government graded neighborhoods in hundreds of cities for real estate investment, Black and immigrant areas were typically outlined in red on maps to denote risky places to lend. Racial discrimination in housing was outlawed in 1968. But the redlining maps entrenched discriminatory practices whose effects reverberate nearly a century later.
To this day, historically redlined neighborhoods are more likely to have high populations of Black, Latino and Asian residents than areas that were favorably assessed at the time.
-----
The new study’s lead author, Haley M. Lane, said she was surprised to find that the differences in air pollution exposure between redlined and better-rated districts were even larger than the well-documented disparities in exposure between people of color and white Americans.
“At the same time, there are so many other effects that are creating these disparities, and these delineations by redlining are just one,” said Lane, a graduate student in civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.
Researchers have unearthed patterns of all kinds since scholars digitized a large collection of redlining maps in 2016.
With less green space and more paved surfaces to absorb and radiate heat, historically redlined neighborhoods are 5 degrees hotter in summer, on average, than other areas. A 2019 study of eight California cities found that residents of redlined neighborhoods were twice as likely to visit emergency rooms for asthma.
-----
Joshua S. Apte, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Berkeley who worked on the study, said he had assumed the differences between neighborhoods would be more pronounced in certain regions, like the South. Instead, the patterns he and his colleagues found were remarkably consistent across the country.
“This history of racist planning is so deeply ingrained in American cities basically of any stripe, anywhere,” Apte said. “We went looking for this regional story, and it’s not there.”
The surveyors hired by the government in the 1930s gave each neighborhood one of four letter grades, from most to least desirable. And the new study found that “D” neighborhoods, the least desirable, decades later are generally more exposed to dirty air, and more of their residents live near highways, railroads and industrial pollution sources.
In part, this is because some areas graded “C” or “D” in the 1930s already hosted heavy industry and other sources of pollution. Over time, a lack of investment in these neighborhoods also made them attractive for new polluting projects, like interstate highways, that required cheap land.
end quote
Those who try to deny the extent that Racism was facilitated across America are in great denial of what exist in the long 100 yr history of Jim Crow Segregation.
I say, those deniers or racism also, ignore the fact that along with Race was Monetary Class Segregation with regards to poor white society, because in some areas where there are poor whites, they were also subjected to a higher level of toxicity in their areas than were the well to do and wealthy whites. Poor whites should recogonize, they were not exempt from the areas designations for toxicity.
