How Modern Inequality was Engineered

The Redlining Blueprint: How Modern Inequality was Engineered

​When we look at the geography of American cities today, we often see a stark divide between thriving suburbs and neglected urban centers. Many assume this was a natural result of economic choices, but history tells a different story. The wealth gap was not an accident; it was a design. This design is known as Redlining, a systemic policy that literally mapped out the segregation we see today.

​Mapping the Divide: The 1934 Housing Act

​In the midst of the Great Depression, the U.S. government created the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to help citizens secure mortgages. However, the FHA didn’t provide help equally. In collaboration with the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), they created “Residential Security Maps” for over 200 cities.

​These maps used a color-coded system to rank the “risk” of lending in certain neighborhoods:

• ​Green: “Best” (Always white, affluent areas).

• ​Blue: “Still Desirable.”

• ​Yellow: “Definitely Declining.”

• ​Red: “Hazardous.”

​Any neighborhood with a significant Black population no matter the income level of the residents was colored Red. This meant the government refused to insure mortgages in those areas, making it nearly impossible for Black families to own homes and build generational wealth.

​The Suburban Boom vs. The Urban Bust

​While Black families were trapped in “redlined” districts where property values were suppressed, white families were given government-backed loans to move into the newly built suburbs. This was the birth of the “American Dream,” but it was a gated dream.

​Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion in home loans. More than 98% of those loans went to white families. This massive injection of capital into one group while systematically denying it to another os the primary reason the average white family today holds significantly more wealth than the average Black family.

​To achieve real justice today, we must look at the blueprint that was used to build these walls and demand policies that offer the same level of federal investment to the communities that were intentionally left behind. Wealth is not just worked for; in America, it was often granted and it is time for that grant to be made whole for everyone