Racial steering is where a real estate agent will show you houses in certain neighbourhoods and not in others – not according to what you can afford, but according to your race! They do this without you knowing it. It helps to keep America divided by race.
For example, when I look for a house I tell the agent what kind of house I am looking for. The agent will pass by whole neighbourhoods. Not because they have no houses I would like, not because I cannot afford them, but because those neighbourhoods are all-white. I do not know this at the time – I find it out later after I move to that town. And the neighbourhoods that I am shown have a surprising number of blacks.
Sometimes they will show me a house that is in an all-white neighbourhood, but it is a house they know I will not like. Sometimes when I ask about certain neighbourhoods they will lie to me and say nothing is there or give me the strangest look. Or disappear and then come back and tell me there is nothing.
Not every agent does this. Some are honest – that is how I can tell the others are lying. But it does seem to be the general practice.
I have lived most of my life in and near New York, but this sort of thing goes on all across America. A study done in 2006 in 12 cities showed that 87% of home buyers are steered by race. That is worse than in 1989.
Racial steering is against the law in America. It was outlawed in 1968 by the Fair Housing Act. All the agents know this, they learned it in their courses.
Nearly 90% of suburban whites live in a place that is less than 1% black. That is unnaturally low: the American middle-class is not 1% black but 9% black. The other 8% get steered into mixed or black middle-class neighbourhoods.
In most “mixed” neighbourhoods I have seen the old people are white, the young people are black: very few young white families are moving in. Over time they will become all black. And, in fact, mixed neighbourhoods in general have become less and less mixed since 1980.
Given a choice, most blacks prefer to live in mixed neighbourhoods, not all-black ones. By mixed they mean something like a 25% black. But for whites 1% black is mixed enough. Anything over 10% black is too black for most of them.
Some effects this practice:
- It raises the value of white-owned houses and lowers the value of black-owned houses. This makes whites richer, blacks poorer than they should be.
- It keeps blacks out of good schools since they are kept out of certain neighbourhoods
- It means whites continue to know little about blacks because they continue to live in a white bubble. So racism lives on and divides the country.
Note that while racial steering helps to keep towns and cities divided by race, it is not the only thing. Redlining and white flight also play a part.
See also:
A video about something not too dissimilar
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Great link. Thanks. As screwed up as Harlem was, it is still sad to see it gentrify.
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I’ve heard about this phenomenon (racial steering) but I don’t know what can be done to stop this.
I live in a “mixed” neighborhood you just described: old white people and young black couples seeking the American dream but as of late, I’m slowly seeing more younger white people moving in.
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Although Blacks can live anywhere and some real estate agents show their Black clients all possible residential areas recently, there are still some real estate agents around the country steer Blacks and certain Latinos such as Puerto Ricans into Black and multiracial neighborhoods as opposed to showing houses in the white areas of the city/metro area.
Stephanie
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Realtors are in the business to make money. Those representing buyers make the most money when their clients purchase the most expensive house they can afford to buy, regardless of neighborhood. Those selling make the most money when they sell to the buyer willing to pay the highest price, regardless of the ethnicity of the buyer.
Where is the incentive in this model that would lead realtors to engage in steering? I would suppose that a realtor whose business model generates a lot of listings in solidly white neighborhoods might engage in steering so as to avoid alienating his business source base.
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Blanc2: Good comment.
Your question assumes that money is always a more important motive than race. Not always.
That said, a real estate agent could argue that he himself is not racist, but it is his customers. Whites will pay more for the same house in an all-white neighbourhood than in a mixed or black one. So it makes sense for real estate agents to maintain white neighbourhoods – it pays in the long run.
Speaking for myself, I would much rather be accused of unwitting racism than setting out to break the law on purpose just to fill my pockets.
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What about gentrification? I have read that many whites are moving ‘back’ to traditionally black neighbourhoods and renovating the homes.
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In the short term it is good, but in the long term it drives out blacks or, in the case of Harlem, working-class blacks.
More on gentrification here:
and what I saw with my own eyes here:
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Racial steering kept most Black families from buying suburban homes, like this one:
http:historynewsnetwork.org/sites/default/files/153283-800px-Kenilworth_Club_3.JPG
Racist realtors, who don’t have Black people’s best interest at heart, “steer” Black home buyers in hazardous or declining areas.
http:urbanology.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/BSRCmap.jpg
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When it comes to Black families buying homes redlining is more prevalent than ever.
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@ Kiwi
My mother’s side of the family moved to San Francisco in the 60’s. They lived in the predominantly black Fillmore district. SF is a little different because areas like the Fillmore are literally only a few feet away from Asian America meccas like Japantown. In the 80’s, my mother was the breadwinner of the family because my father was still in school trying to get his life together. So I ended up growing up in SF’s Oceanview district which was also predominantly black with Asians being the second largest demographic group in the neighborhood. A lot of it had to do with the close proximity to the high Asian population in bordering Daly City. During the 80’s and 90’s, Oceanview was a scary place to live. Lots of drug dealing, violence, murder and mayhem. But today, Asians have come to be the number one gentrifiers of Oceanview. Oceanview went from 50% black and about 20% Asian to 40% Asian and 25% black in 20 years. That’s because Asian Americans wield more political power in a city like San Francisco although you still do have Asian American ghettoization in SF is the roughest neighborhoods like the Tenderloin and Visitacion Valley. Asian American ghettoization is even more widespread and apparent in Oakland where everyone of all races who live in the inner city embrace the dysfunctional ghetto culture. Asian Americans represent the largest demographic group in Funktown in Oakland, but all the same social ills that plague all black areas in Oakland and SF exist there within the Asian American community.
But I have seen racial steering and white flight where I live in a mixed suburban town in Maryland. My town went from 60% white and 15% black to 50% white to 25% black in the past 15 years. 20 years from now, the areas in my town like my neighborhood will become majority black as all the poor black people from Baltimore need to move somewhere when the run-down houses in the city become completely unlivable.
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