Housing Discrimination and Racism in America

If your parents or grandparents bought a house in America during
the post war boom years … they and you benefited from a system of
racial oppression that encouraged white wealth building through
home ownership with one hand … and held back black families with
the other. 


Mine did and I do.  

This isn’t the episode I was planning to record this week but I
hope you’ll stick around to think about how the history of
housing discrimination in this country affects the mid-century
houses we love and the world we all live in.


I'm using this week's podcast to talk about how systemic racism
was literally built right into the Mid-Century neighborhoods that
I otherwise love. We all need to acknowledge that part of our
history and start talking more about what we can do to make
positive, anti-racist changes in our own lives and
communities. 


In today's episode you'll hear ...


Why I think it is important to stop what I'm doing and
address the systemic racism that is embedded in American culture
and in the history of the Mid-Century era I otherwise love so
much.

How the wealth gap between black and white families in
America holds people back [4:28]

A quick history of the Great Migration that Black Americans
undertook to escape Jim Crow ... [5:15]

But how what they found here in the North was systematic
Housing Discrimination  and how that worked against black
homeownership in many ways  [6:05]

How the Fair Housing Act (1968) didn't really fix things ...
it couldn't. [8:35]

And how blue states like mine and liberal cities like Madison
use subtle racism to keep black and white families segregated to
this day [9:42]

A few ideas about what we can to today to be more anti-racist
in our lives and our homes [11:38]



Get all the resources I mention in the episode at
www.midmod-midwest.com/309/