Dreams Deferred: Suburban Segregation in North

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States signaled a new era in race relations. Race or minority status is no longer an insuperable barrier to holding higher office-or achieving other kinds of success-in American society. However, it is important that this country's pride in its first black president does not obscure the long, tortured history of racism and minority oppression that marred much of the twentieth century. Although Obama's election is an incredible achievement, for himself, for African-Americans, and for the nation in general, it was not long ago that racial minorities were effectively shut out of the American dream. One need only look at the history of housing segregation in this country to understand how far we have come in such a short time.

Anecdotes about racism in the 1960s and 1970s tend to center on the South. But prejudice was just as prevalent in many northern states as well, although it was expressed in a more subtle, and thus potentially more treacherous, way. Most people think of segregation as an exclusively Southern phenomenon epitomized by the relegation of blacks to the back of the bus. But segregation made its effects felt in the North as well. Even though segregation in the North was not openly advocated and legally mandated as it was in the South, it was just as insidious because it operated on deep-seated prejudices. These prejudices were difficult, even impossible, to eradicate through legal means simply because they were not overt.

Many do not realize that housing segregation endured well into the twentieth century in suburban communities in the northern United States. Examples of model-American communities that subtly excluded blacks include Freeport, Roosevelt, and Levittown on Long Island in New York State. An understanding of what happened in these northern communities demonstrates the genesis of those inner-city neighborhoods known as "slums" and reveals how and why they were allowed to persist.

For African-Americans who moved north in order to escape the overt, legalized racism prevalent throughout the South, housing segregation in northern suburban communities frustrated the realization of the American dream. Traditionally, part of the American dream is owning a home; but many blacks found it difficult to buy a house even when they had the financial resources to do so. Although segregation was not explicitly authorized by law as it was in the South, the more subtle racism of the North was just as effective in preventing African-Americans from achieving a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Even when the applicable legal bodies, for instance the court system and the state and federal legislatures, acted to diminish the direct effects of racism on blacks, private actors still found ways to stymie the progress of African-Americans.

For instance, when the New York State Housing Commission offered the village of Freeport a loan to build new housing to eliminate the African-American slum at its center, the village board passed a referendum to reject the loan. In other words, the board actually refused to accept a grant of public money that would improve the community as a whole simply because it did not want to provide better housing options for African-Americans. In addition, communities ensured that their populace would remain all-white by encouraging protective covenants through which home-buyers promised not to subsequently sell their property to African-Americans.

It took a long time for the government to actively advocate for racial integration in housing, and a sizeable African-American middle-class did not begin to emerge until the 1960s and 1970s. Even then, however, the survival of the black middle-class was threatened by the phenomenon of white flight, which was aided and abetted by real estate agents acting for their own personal gain. Realtors would engage in a campaign to convince whites that an influx of African-Americans would result in higher crime rates and lower property values. Through this practice of "blockbusting," realtors convinced whites to sell their homes at bargain basement prices and then turned around and sold the houses to blacks for more than what they were worth. Realtors also imposed a segregation of their own devising by steering blacks and whites to racially-designated neighborhoods. Meanwhile, the phenomenon of white flight created a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the rapid abandonment of the neighborhood by more and more families caused the community to deteriorate.

The active role that realtors played in racial segregation remains shocking. Some went so far as to stage break-ins in targeted suburban neighborhoods in order trigger white flight so that they could profit from the rapid racial turnover of a residential area. It is important to realize that, the election of Barack Obama notwithstanding, these types of abuses against blacks and other minorities, as well as whites in lower-income groups, persist even today. The predatory lending and other abuses by banks and financial institutions that came to light during the recent subprime crisis are not without precedent. In "white flight" communities in the 1960s, 1970s, and beyond, realtors often roped desperate blacks into mortgages that they could not afford, just as over-eager subprime lenders have done in recent years with minority home buyers. We must not let the progress we have made blind us to what still must be done to rid our society of the effects of racism and oppression once and for all.