most African Americans still live in “Black sections” while whites live in “white sections” of the City of Brotherly Love.
Modern studies say that the city is, in fact, “hyper”-segregated. According to University of Pennsylvania sociologist Dr. Camile Z. Charles, Philadelphia remains one of the 29 most hyper-segregated cities in this country. Her study, “The Dynamics of Racial Residential Segregation,” published by the Annual Review of Sociology in 2003, traces the isolation of Blacks, Hispanics and Asians in 50 metropolitan regions in the Northeast, the South, the Midwest and the West, looking at measures of “Dissimilarity,” “Isolation” and “Exposure.”
Though many factors contribute to tendencies of Blacks, whites, Asians and Latinos to live among their own kind, the hostile environment whites create toward people of color is still the chief reason for “voluntary” segregation.
For an idea of just how hyper-segregated Philadelphia is, check out Dr. Charles’ definitions:
“Evenness – measured as the index of dissimilarity – describes the degree to which a group is evenly distributed across neighborhoods or [census] tracts. A score over 60 is interpreted as extreme segregation between two groups, indicating the percentage of either group that would have to move to another tract to achieve within-tract population distributions that mirror the metro area. Isolation . . . is interpreted as the percent that is the same race in the average group member’s neighborhood or tract; scores of 70 and over are considered extreme, indicating that the average person lives in an area that is 70 percent the same race. The inverse of isolation is Exposure . . . interpreted as the average probability of contact with a person-of-another-race comparison group (usually whites).”
Philadelphia ’s index of dissimilarity for Blacks is 72, 12 points higher than the benchmark for “extreme” segregation. Its score for the isolation of Blacks is 62, eight points less than the extreme level, and the measure is going down. The exposure score of 40, up 4 points since the last time it was measured, still does not represent much integration in the city’s neighborhoods, however.
Those small indicators of progress, Dr. Charles says, have come about because of the immigration of new groups of Hispanics and Asians, who frequently move into areas that used to be almost exclusively Black.
The new immigrants, whose level of isolation and dissimilarity are usually lower than for Blacks, tend to concentrate in areas with others of their kind, raising their own level of isolation.
How did things get this way?
One big answer lies in federal policy during the first half of the 20 th century. The Federal Home Ownership Loan Corporation, a New Deal agency that invented the 30-year mortgage before it morphed into the FHA, also invented redlining.
The agency, one of Franklin Roosevelt’s initiatives to help recover from the Great Depression, sent inspectors to look at housing across the country to determine where federal investment would help the most. The inspectors, reflecting the prejudices of the era, marked red on their maps to forbid making the loans in areas where there were not enough “red-blooded, high-quality Americans.”
Blacks, Asians, Jews, Hispanics and Eastern Europeans all lived in the areas marked in red, so mortgage lending was off-limits in most of the city.
Not surprisingly, after World War II, when G.I. Bill loans and FHA mortgages made it possible for millions of Americans to move into brand-new homes in areas that, coincidentally, were not occupied by the less-desired groups, the modern pattern of urban segregation emerged. Social scientists tracked this development, but the average citizen did not have a clue.
That was then. Federal policy has long since changed. So why are things still this way?
Dr. Charles has an answer: Racism.
She says it holds back even middle class Blacks, who could afford to buy houses in the neighborhoods populated by their white peers.
Disputing claims made by renowned sociologist Orlando Patterson in a Dec. 30 New York Times opinion piece, in which Dr. Patterson argued that Blacks with better income chose to live in Black enclaves, even in the suburbs, because of a misguided sense of racial solidarity, Dr. Charles said, “It’s not ethnocentrism, it’s fear of white hostility.” And economics.
Middle class means something different when applied to African Americans, Dr. Charles said.
“The Black middle class is an ‘income’ middle class,” she said in an interview. While whites that have attained middle-class status build up wealth that is on average eight times the wealth of the average middle-class Black family, middle-class status among Blacks is almost entirely based on their income and the types of job they hold.
“African-Americans tend to be concentrated in the lower class of jobs that indicate middle-class status,” as she put it. Blacks are “more likely to be schoolteachers, police and firefighters than to be doctors and lawyers.”
They are “more likely to have to work more than 40 hours a week to maintain middle-class status,” and all Blacks are still “likely to experience prejudice and discrimination, whether they are still legal or not.
“Middle class Blacks work with whites every day,” Dr. Charles said, “and they experience that hostility daily,” and thus attempt to shield their families from it by moving to areas where Blacks are predominant.
Where upper-income Blacks do live in neighborhoods that are more integrated, Dr. Charles says, close examination shows that their incomes are higher than those of their remaining white neighbors. The whites who could move out have already gone.
“Discrimination is more subtle and harder to prove today,” Dr. Charles said. “The burden of proof is on the person who has been discriminated against.” But the better-income Blacks, aware of the hostility and discrimination, avoid areas where they are more likely to experience it.
Real estate steering follows the racial attitudes of neighborhoods, Dr. Charles said.
“Real estate agents respond to what they know of neighborhood prejudice and hostility, not just their own prejudices. So steering of Blacks into Black neighborhoods continues.”
Can anything be done to change things?
City Council member Marian Tasco thinks it can, particularly as Mayor John Street’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative continues. Tasco, who has been in the Council since the late 1980s, has witnessed major changes over the last two decades.
“In the beginning, I represented two neighborhoods, West Oak Lane and Mount Airy, the area from East Olney Avenue to Cheltenham, Fifth Street to Front, was a white area. Now, my district goes all the way to Rising Sun and Cottman, and areas like Lawncrest are integrating.
“You will hear, particularly from elected officials, that the Northeast is becoming more racially diverse, and that’s good, but the city has to look at the other factors. In many cases, real estate agents engage in ‘block-busting’ when Blacks start to move in. That happened in Mount Airy many years ago, and that’s why we had to form group like West Mount Airy Neighbors and East Mount Airy Neighbors. We had meetings to combat that kind of activity.”
“Real estate agents were beginning to block-bust over by Front Street and Rising Sun Avenue, too. There were one-page ads in the Olney Times talking about families selling homes. We had meetings to prevent panic, to prevent whites moving out because other people were moving in.
“I think city agencies have a duty to work with the people in the neighborhoods, to let them know that there are more similarities than there are differences, and where there are differences, we can work together to resolve the problems that come up. The Commission on Human Relations needs to be right in there. Years ago, they were very visible, but I don’t know what they are doing now.
“Where you have cultural differences and racial differences, there has to be some agency that brings people together and gets them past their differences.”
Council President Anna Verna would agree.
“Personally, when I was growing up, my father was very active in Democratic politics,” she said. I have lived in an integrated neighborhood all my life and I know it benefited me and helped me grow as a person. People fear what they do not know.
“In terms of the city, even though we’ve made some progress, we still have a very long way to go before we achieve a more acceptable level of residential racial equality. That’s why it’s so important to maximize affordable housing for people and to fight to achieve greater opportunities in education and employment. Everyone deserves an equal opportunity to provide the best possible quality of life for their family and for use to be one united community.”
Councilman Wilson Goode thinks the answer is better diversity in income levels, as the city plans to redevelop its housing stock and rebuild neighborhoods.
Joining with Councilman Darrell Clarke and co-sponsors Frank DiCicco, Juan Ramos, Blondell Reynolds Brown Jannie Blackwell and former Councilman Michael Nutter, Goode supported Council Bill 060732, to require that 10 percent of all housing in a city development project of 20 or more dwelling units be set aside for affordable housing. The bill, introduced in September 2006, is still in committee.
According to Eva Gladstein, director of the Neighborhood Transformation Initiative, that target has already been exceeded.
Of the $75 million of NTI resources used for land acquisition, Gladstein says, less than 2 percent was for market-rate development; 30 percent was for affordable housing development, and 60 percent was identified by City Council for future development in the targeted areas of Mantua, Tioga, Logan and Strawberry Mansion. “These allocations,” she said, “help ensure that there are economically diverse communities in the city.”
In addition, the city used $2 million of the NTI dollars to create the Equitable Development Strategy, of which one component is the FirstHome mortgage program, a subsidized mortgage program program under which developers agree to set aside units in new construction projects for low-to-moderate-income families. Another component includes neighborhood workshops to help families understand the benefits of increased home values. Other programs include the Targeted Basic Systems Repairs Program and the Housing Trust Fund.
“In addition,” Gladstein said, “the administration is working with Councilman Clarke on his effort to craft an Inclusionary Housing policy for the city.”
Finally, Gladstein said, NTI proceeds have been used to support home improvement loans to help people remain in their homes as home values rise. These include the Philadelphia Home Improvement Loan (PHIL) program, to assist those with less that stellar credit to get loans, the Energy PHIL loans for improvements to heating systems, and the HELLP program, a refinancing loan for victims of predatory lending.
But as Professor Charles says, the watchword is vigilance: “Prejudice and discrimination still exist, legal or not.” |
