The Political Economy of Black Housing: From the Housing Crisis of the Great Migrations to the Subprime Mortgage Crisis (Report)

SEGREGATED HOUSING in the United States is not a function of individuals preferences expressed in a free-market with perfect or near-perfect information. During various periods of history and under different stages of capitalism, the U.S. government, business organizations, the residential finance industry, neighborhood organizations, and individuals have engaged in covert and overt practices to actively create racially segregated, inferior, and higher-cost housing. These practices often include federal and state laws, municipal ordinances, assessment practices, private deed restrictions, racial steering, redlining and disinvestment, block busting, urban renewal, location of public housing, and individual and group terrorism. (1) I argue that economic and political systems must be understood as structural forces that confine African Americans' life chances, including access to material resources like housing. When discussing life chances in the U.S., sociologists Robert Perrucci and Earl Wysong argue that "Inequality is contained within a class system that resembles a game of monopoly that is 'rigged' so that only certain players have a chance to own Park Place, and a great many others go directly to jail." (2) I will show how racialized social processes that are inherent in markets shape and reinforce inequality. I will theoretically "unpack" the contradictory relation between the use-value and exchange-value of housing as a commodity of the American Dream.