Beyond My Idyllic Bubble — The Other America

By Payton Montes / Winter 2021

In spring of my first year of college, my sociology professor, along with my cohort of fellow students, spent an entire semester deconstructing the myths, perceptions, and some most sinister manifestations of American racism. Essentially a conduit for consciousness raising, some of the most intellectually transformative moments for me both as an academic and an ally to social justice occurred within these short six months. Despite the rapid influx of knowledge and shaking of preconceived notions of my social and political environment, there was, for some reason, a single phrase my professor uttered that would clatter in my head like the ring of tinnitus: “nothing blinds like privilege.” The implications of such a phrase would, for the time being, be lost on me. But subconsciously, it would come manifest as the very lens through I now view people, our society, its history, and my place in it. Furthermore, it would come to fuel my now compulsive obsession with understanding one social problem in particular – one that I hope to dedicate my personal and professional life to the collective effort of both illuminating and dismantling its dominion: residential segregation.

I was born and raised in Loomis, California. A small, rural, and culturally isolated community located just outside of Sacramento. Perhaps you have heard of people living and operating in “bubbles” of various forms. Such a phrase hits me close to home. The rolling green hills surrounding the idyllic town might as well been the edge of giant terrarium-like dome – one that sheltered itself from any semblance of understanding of reality outside of its borders. All my neighbors, my teachers, friends...quite literally every person one could have the chance of seeing across the town was the same color as me. Fair skin, straight hair, and blue eyes evaded any sense of regard. To make matters more acute – generally speaking – we all had money. I never knew a day of school with less than up-to-date furnishings, interiors, computers, an abundance of books, supplies and teachers who had ample attention and energy to help me with my math problems. For eighteen years, this was my reality. For thousands of others, it was for generations.

Cliché I am aware. Small town white boy goes off to college and suddenly realizes, “Gee! The world sure is a lot more complicated and deceitful than my 20 square mile youth...” While that certainly was a portion of my awakening to inequality, the emergence of my awareness is riddled throughout my childhood. I can remember in many instances traveling outside of Loomis to Sacramento and distant cities of the Bay. I can recall seeing Black and Brown faces I never saw back home (perhaps me simply taking such dramatic notice should have sent me into a more aggressive journey of critical thinking; however, doing so may contest the capacity of white supremacy in creating unwavering and blinding ideology). I also realized the obvious difference between the places in which these people lived and Loomis. The streets were littered with potholes and dry grass sprouting through the cracks in the asphalt. Yards were generally barren, with only the occasional untamed mulberry tree and metal fence accentuating the small and decaying houses. When our high school would play Sacramento schools in sporting events, it was difficult to not notice the jail like perimeter of our rival school’s campus. Where a colorful mural or flashy post with arrows pointing to major colleges might have stood at my school – here, only blank walls, rusty lockers and an atmosphere of dread pervaded.

“Why would anyone live here?” I would sometimes ignorantly ponder to myself. Such a question is heavily rooted in perhaps the biggest misconception of American cities. In our culture, we possess a general understanding that people live where they do simply because of choice. Much of this perception finds its basis in American hyper-individualism, wherein complex and often implicit social problems are detracted away from collective explanations and towards the independent choices of individual actors. Our culture’s imagination is largely defined by the stories of immigrants fleeing to the United States and voluntarily congregating into ethnic enclaves. The same thinking usually follows when discussing Black and Brown neighborhoods and urban ghettos – that similar ethnic and racial groups naturally congregate and self-isolate on the basis of likeness. Segregation is natural, unavoidable, and an intrinsic fact of post-colonial life. This is a superficial, misguided, and often detrimental way of thinking. The idea that the racial geography of our cities and towns is somehow the consequence of a natural process or happenstance fails to recognize the true apparatus at work. It fails to attribute tangible blame to implicit and intentionally racist attitudes, practices, and structures. It represents yet another desperate effort of the American identity in saving face – the yearning of whiteness to maintain a persona of benevolent intention while simultaneously defending its position of supremacy.

To understand how residential segregation took hold across nearly every American city, one must begin with understanding of the role of Black migration in igniting such an oppressive beast. After the abolition of slavery, much of the nation’s African American population remained heavily concentrated in the South; however, push factors such as racial violence an pull factors of increased economic opportunity drew nearly six million Black Southerners to leave the South to Northern, Midwestern, and West Coast cities (Harrison, 1991)(Takaki, 1993). Referred to as the “Great Migration,” cities outside of the South witnessed profound increases in the visibility and quantity of their Black populations for the first time. Such visibility, however, presented an immediate perceived threat by the dominant white populations (Eitle et al., 2002). During the first wave of the Great Migration, cities across the North and Midwest quickly adopted racial zoning laws aimed at both containing and isolating incoming African Americans away from whites. According to Rothstein (2017), “in addition to promoting segregation, zoning decisions contributed to degrading African American neighborhoods into slums.” For many cities, the early outlines of the urban ghetto were laid.

Following the Great Depression and World War II, unprecedented prosperity signaled the resurgence of a second wave of Black migration from the South – this time, primarily into Northern and especially West Coast cities. This period, however, would demonstrate a far more concerted and formalized attempt to segregate cities across the country. One instance of such an effort can be seen in the federal project to segregate public housing. In response to a chronic housing shortage and a key portion of the New Deal apparatus, the Public Works Administration (PWA) began to implicitly segregate public housing communities by race (Weaver, 1956). The PWA often ignored the racial composition of existing neighborhoods – introducing segregation in communities that were previously heterogenous and integrated. (Massey & Denton 1993).

Perhaps the most notorious mechanisms that fostered residential segregation – one that helped to quite literally draw the lines between white and nonwhite – was that of mortgage redlining. Again, as the result of the New Deal and shortage in housing, the federal government founded the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) in an effort to refinance the mortgages of American’s struggling during the economic crisis (Cavanaugh, Maureen, et al., 2018). In order to assess the likelihood of borrowers defaulting on their loans, the agency employed local real estate agents across the United States to survey urban neighborhoods as a guide for which communities where at the greatest risk (Rothstein, 2017). The culmination of these surveys produced security maps, relying on color-coded schemes to display lowest to greatest risk of default – with red signifying the latter. In almost uniform fashion, the neighborhoods designated as the greatest risk overlapped with neighborhoods with the highest percentage of nonwhite residents (Rothstein, 2017). This was not mere coincidence, as racially implicit criterion was more than blatant in agency documents. Regarding the description of Logan Heights in San Diego, “Racial concentration of colored fraternity. Homes show only slight degree of pride of ownership and are on the average negligently maintained” (Cavanaugh, Maureen, et al., 2018). By becoming cut off from access to federal mortgages, Black and Brown Americans were largely blocked from keeping up with whites in terms of generational wealth accumulation.

This would not signal the endpoint of mortgage redlining. The newly formed Federal Housing Administration (FHA) sought to expand mortgage access to millions of working- and middle-class Americans following World War II (Rothstein 2017). To provide such loans, the FHA largely mimicked the same risk assessment scheme produced by the HOLC – making race a central and explicit factor in determine loan eligibility (Rothstein 2017). The prohibition of capital access to Black and Brown families was complemented by an additional venture of the FHA. Following the procurement of mortgages by millions of white families and a cultural desire to flea Black and Brown communities in the city, the FHA helped to fund the development of numerous suburban projects (Rothstein, 2017). These communities were almost completely off-limits to nonwhite buyers – becoming homogenous white enclaves by default, evolving into the majority white and middle to upper-class suburbs that characterize the majority of American cities today. While white flight exacerbated the spatial disparity whites and nonwhites, wealth soon followed outside urban cores. Black and Brown communities were left behind. Property values plummeted. Schools became increasingly homogenous and underfunded. The modern outlines of the urban ghetto had reached maturity, signaling that future generation would have little to no opportunity to escape.

Given all this knowledge, why do we continue to often affiliate segregation with the South and Jim Crow? If both products of each system are the same, shouldn’t we be either currently dismantling manifestations of residential segregation in our cities, or at the very least, be teaching about it before the college level? The truth is, one very intrinsic mentality to modern social, economic, and political relations has swayed public perception of not just residential segregation, but contemporary racial oppression in its entirety. The mentality in question is known as broadly as colorblindness. In modern segregation, there are no “whites only!” signs. No formally segregated schools on the basis color. There exists in practicality no de jure forms of segregation by race, explicitly. Racism has evolved passed the need for such directness. Instead, we operate in a confusing and alienating system of very tangible inequality that is now more difficult to identify. The racialized manipulation of our cities by federal and local authorities in the 20th century materialized invisible shackles on the ankles of Black and Brown communities. Rather than being officially isolated by the legal apparatus, nonwhites are quarantined from wealth accumulation and essential community resources as a consequence of the mere passage of time. The racial under-caste has remained, in essence, in a position of subservience at birth.

Colorblindness is not only limited to the issue of residential segregation, however. In fact, many of the other most pressing racially systemic issues in our society have been rendered opaque by its influence. Take the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration for instance.

The mass absorption of Black and Brown bodies into the carceral state, utility as a source of cheap and expendable labor, and subsequent political disenfranchisement could not be undertaken by the same system of Jim Crow. Following the Civil Rights movement, race simply could not take the same explicit significance it once had. However, racism – as with many systems of power – is cunning and flexible to change. Soon after, criminality became a stand-in for nonwhite (Alexander, 2010). Coupled with the militarized police state, Black and Brown neighborhoods became specifically targeted under the guise of combating urban crime. Prisons grew, becoming more brutal and repressive. Changing laws ensured that upon release, criminals could not vote, gain access to public housing, employment, etc., further entrenching nonwhites into a permanent caste akin to apartheid (Alexander, 2010). Colorblindness, in essence, has allowed the same social relations to remain steadfast and healthy – 156 years after the abolition of slavery.

I need not waste time, as I have spent on others, in trying to convince you that these issues should illicit your concern. If you are white, whether or not you concerned is irrelevant. Centuries of racial domination on one end and of wealth accumulation on the other have placed you into a position of social and political supremacy – regardless of if you feel you have reaped the totality of these benefits at all. As a result, it is not so much of an opportunity for you to contribute to correcting and dismantling such stains on the past as it is your responsibility.

Now, given these seemingly impenetrable, alienating, and quite frankly mystifying problems, what feasible if not meaningful options are at our collective disposal? If we take residential segregation for instance, it is extremely unlikely, at least in this political and social climate, that a comprehensive effort to undue years of geographic and social inequity lies anywhere on the near horizon. Of course, baby steps – seemingly the business of the American democratic system in terms of damage control – may offer some solace and sense of purpose. Reparations could deliver much needed capital to communities that have directly and indirectly denied it for decades if not centuries. More equitable housing policy and changes in tax regimes could encourage the return of essential resources in neighborhoods that have undergone years of degradation. However, such steps are likely to fall short of perhaps the most paramount goal of social justice: working to eradicate systems of power, both social and psychological. If we aren’t concerned with eradicating racism in its entirety and only its most pernicious symptoms, then what are we really doing with our time?

This dilemma should not lead one to a point of despair, however. Some of the most accessible and transformative methods correcting social problems are often the most intimate. Colorblindness really only really works on those who have the most capacity to change the present state of social relations. As a result, it is foremost incumbent on those who benefit the most under the current system to understand how such dynamics operate, how they manifest, and who they impact. To put it plainly, it is incumbent on white readers to engage in a serious effort of racial and class consciousness raising. This includes but certainly isn’t limited to becoming involved in mutual-aid organizations, reading, listening, and applying the tools provided by prominent anti-racists and philosophers of social justice, as well as productively calling out the interpersonal manifestations of racism in other white people.

But what does consciousness raising have to do with dismantling a physically and historically imposing apparatus such as residential segregation? Racism, along with classism, sexism, xenophobia, and so on, is at its core a social system – and every social system is predicated on a certain set of preexisting conditions to survive. Generally speaking, those very conditions take the shape of the lack of social solidarity. Without solidarity and the reflection of one human beings’ experience and worth to another, perceptions of dissimilarity take hold, otherness spreads, and systems embedding social stratification are born. We must move away from being satisfied with solving symptoms of social problems. Our time on this planet, if for nothing else, ought to be dedicated to fostering our interconnection and reliance on one another. Hyper-individualism must be toppled, and collectivism stand triumphant for the hope of a more harmonious and above all just world. In the words Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams (2020) in describing white supremacy, “This disease keeps us from fully knowing each other, from seeing each other. Every single one of us must be, by way of our commitment to liberation, committed to being the cure.”

Works Cited

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Press, 2020.

Cavanaugh, Maureen, et al. “Redlining's Mark on San Diego Persists 50 Years After Housing Protections.” KPBS Public Media, KPBS, 5 Apr. 2018.

Denton, Nancy A., and Douglas S. Massey. American Apartheid. Descartes, 1995.

Eitle, D., et al. “Racial Threat and Social Control: A Test of The Political, Economic, and Threat of Black Crime Hypotheses.” Social Forces, vol. 81, no. 2, 2002, pp. 557–576.

Harrison, Alferdteen. Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South. University of Mississippi, 1991.

Rothstein, Richard. “Racial Zoning” and “Own Your Own Home.” The Color of Law. Liveright, 2017, pp. 39-75.

Takaki, Ronald, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Little, Brown and Company, 1993.

Weaver, Robert. “Racial Policy in Public Housing.” Phylon, vol. 1, no. 2, 1956, pp. 149-156.

Williams, Kyodo Rev. “Your Liberation Is on the Line.” Lion's Roar, 6 Feb. 2020.