WHITE SPACE, BLACK HOOD

A new urban studies text offers a thorough, well-researched history of inner-city blight as the inevitable legacy of segregation and racism.

Georgetown law professor Cashin, the author of Loving, Place Not Race, and other notable books on racial issues, shows how so many of today's "descendants" of American slavery are trapped in high-poverty neighborhoods because of deliberate state and federal policy decisions that “construct ghettos” and perpetuate inequality. She illustrates how anti-Black processes of sorting out the "residential caste"—boundary maintenance, opportunity hoarding, and stereotype-driven surveillance—led to overinvestment in affluent areas ("white space") and disinvestment from Black neighborhoods. Using the urban history of Baltimore as an example, Cashin describes how "redlining" codified a two-tier system of home loans; "blockbusting" enticed panic selling by White homeowners; and intrusive road-building cleared out inner-city "blight" (read: “undesired people”). "Urban renewal" effectively contained descendants in high-poverty, high-crime areas. Ghettoization, in turn, defined Black space, allowing bigots to attribute bleak living conditions to Blacks' allegedly "innate character.” Even the word ghetto became an adjective describing inner-city style, dress, speech, and social codes. All of these hold today: “The past is not past.” Segregation, fear, and racism are mutually reinforcing. The implicit racism in the redlining process often led to D ratings for Black neighborhoods, marking them as "hazardous," while the Federal Housing Administration’s 30-year mortgage plan, a path to the middle class, has always been offered primarily to Whites. Meanwhile, interstate highways facilitate White flight, effectively creating walls around Black neighborhoods. While extensively documented and amply footnoted, Cashin's survey remains compelling and accessible to a general readership. She clearly presents the effects of concentrated poverty on a populace—how, for example, segregated schools affect educational outcomes—and shows how the work is never done. “While we must stop the bleeding at its source and prioritize poor Black neighborhoods,” she writes, “broader systems work is never finished in America.”

A resonant, important argument that White supremacy and racial division poison life in our cities.