Before 1968 it was still very legal for a white real estate agent or property owner to simply refuse a person of color's offers to buy a piece of land or home. Therefore housing segregation was in full force with blacks living in one neighborhood and white people living in another one.
Also during this time were the horrible acts of redlining. Redlining was a horrible practice of racism where certain helpful services would be denied to people who lived in certain areas. The name redlining came from the maps that were viewed by wealthy loan issuers that had the neighborhoods of colored people outlined in red. This meant that this circled section was a very low-income area. Also, it was almost always full of colored people. One of the main issues was that people in these red areas could not receive various types of loans from banks.
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| A map of Brooklyn with certain areas in red signaling low-income black neighborhoods |
Some of the examples of discrimination before this act were passed mostly consisted of race reasons. Reasons like a white man didn't want to do business with a black man or they would lie to them and say that the house was not for sale when it very well is. Another common practice was when the white male selling the house or property did not want a black person in their neighborhood they would direct them to an area with other black people.
This halted the movement of colored individuals in the never-ending journey to be equal with white folk. The discrimination in housing made for black people to have to raise their families and live their lives in much poorer areas than white people. This made for much tougher paths for a black man to be successful in the booming U.S. economy at the time.
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| Fair housing protests |
All of that started to come to subside in 1968 when title VII was added to the Civil Rights Act and it ended banned discrimination in the housing market. Which evidently banned the idea of redlining. The Fair Housing Act it is called and it prohibited discrimination in the sale, rental, financing, or advertisement of housing. Not only to a racial extent but to gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, and more.
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| President Johnson signing the Civil RIghts Act of 1964 which eventually added title VIII the Fair Housing Act |
This was a huge stepping stone for non-white Americans because it allowed them to live in the same townships and neighborhoods as white people. Many sellers in the south or in large cities still refused to sell or finance black people. Not until 1988 did the U.S. decide to enforce this rule by assigning certain organizations to take charge if there is still segregation going on. Associations like the Department of Urban Housing and Development (HUD) and the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) really helped in making a real change.
Housing discrimination is still very prevalent today. The poor communities in and outside of major cities are largely populated by minorities. This is an effect of hundreds of years of racism and segregation and also redlining.
My opinion is pretty obvious and it's that America constantly tries to fix its problems from the past. A whole war was fought between the north and south of this country over slavery where hundreds of thousands of Americans died we are still facing the consequences. With segregation following it African-Americans have always had a tag of inferiority in this country. It feels like in today's world both sides are equal but white people can never seem to escape their brutal past of discrimination. I would say that in a hundred years things would be much better but I bet that's what the citizens of America said in 1922.
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