By: Mike Shields & Mohona Siddique
Date: June 4, 2020
AUTHORS' NOTE:
As the country was buckling under the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic, the widely broadcast killing of an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by a white Minneapolis police officer along with Amy Cooper's threatening use of police force to confront Christian Cooper in Central Park added to a litany of events that precipitated renewed protests against police brutality across the nation. While some protests remained peaceful, like those in Camden, New Jersey, peaceful protests in Philadelphia incited civil unrest and resulted in violent confrontations. It is not the first time that communities in Philadelphia have protested against racial injustice and police brutality, and the events of recent weeks are not isolated. Rather, they exist within the historical context of the intersection of race and economic opportunity – and for Black Americans and many other communities of color in the U.S, economic opportunity and mobility still remain out of reach.
To provide context and data to inform ongoing conversations about structural racism and illustrate how these enduring inequalities have shaped present-day neighborhood and civic relations in Philadelphia, the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia is launching a special Leading Indicator series called The Color of Inequality. The series will highlight measures of racial and ethnic inequality in the City of Philadelphia to contribute to ongoing conversations about racism and prejudice.
The Color of Inequality Part 1: Housing and the Built Environment
For those of us who live in Greater Philadelphia, the narrative of Philadelphia as “the poorest big city in America,” is not unfamiliar. What may be less familiar is how Philadelphia’s persistently high poverty rate derives directly from a legacy of racialized policy and planning decisions. For centuries, policy has been wielded as a weapon to marginalize African Americans in the U.S, which the Brookings Institution’s Andre Perry refers to as “policy violence.” While this notion encompasses a broad range of historic and modern policies, this installment of the Color of Inequality will focus on policies that impacted the built environment and housing to unpack how the very real consequences of these policies manifest as poverty in present-day Philadelphia.
The Leading Indicator: Segregation in Today's Philadelphia
To illustrate the collective impact of these policies, Figure 1 depicts a dot density map using race and ethnicity measures from five-year estimates of the 2018 American Community Survey. The map shows the concentration of Philadelphia’s racial and ethnic groups in specific neighborhoods and sections of the city. It also shows how the legacy of redlining has kept many minority neighborhoods poor.
FIGURE 1
NOTE: Data were obtained from five-year estimates of the 2018 American Community Survey maintained and curated by the U.S. Census Bureau
Figure 2 details the economic impacts of racial concentration and segregation. Median household incomes in majority-Black census tracts are 48 percent of the median household income in white-majority tracts (a difference of $35,838). The poverty rate is 2.6 times higher in majority-Black tracts versus majority-white. While non-Hispanic whites represent a smaller proportion of the population than African Americans, non-Hispanic white-majority tracts comprise 40 percent more land mass than Black-majority tracts, largely due to the fact that many non-Hispanic whites live in peripheral neighborhoods of the city with density that resembles the surrounding suburbs. Median household incomes in Hispanic/Latinx-majority tracts are even lower, roughly 35 percent of the median household income in white-majority tracts, with a poverty rate that is nearly 4 times that of white-majority tracts. Interestingly, tracts that have no dominant racial or ethnic group have median household incomes and poverty rates that roughly resembles the city as a whole.
FIGURE 2
NOTE: Data were obtained from five-year estimates of the 2018 American Community Survey maintained and curated by the U.S. Census Bureau. All racial categories except "Racially/Ethnically Mixed" and "Hispanic/Latinx" exclude persons of Hispanic or Latinx ancestry. Thus the majority Black/African American tracts should be read as "Non-Hispanic Black/African American" tracts.
* Unmeasured tracts include any census tract with a population less than 500 residents and any tract where "group quartering" residents exceeded one-third of the total population.
This spatial analysis suggests that discriminatory policies and trends have long-term negative economic impacts on communities of color – further contributing to these communities’ collective frustration and distrust that often manifest in protest. And yet this analysis only focuses on policies related to housing and the built environment; a small piece of a vast tapestry of structural inequalities that have kept communities of color at a disadvantage. Since structural inequality is the result of policy decisions and practices, informed decisions and practices can lead to better outcomes.
Works Cited
[1] Mitchell, Bruce & Juan Franco. 2018. “HOLC “Redlining” Maps: The Persistent Structure of Segregation and Economic Inequality.” National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), March 20. Retrieved from: (https://ncrc.org/holc/).
[2] Madrigal, Alexis C. 2014. “The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood.” The Atlantic, May 22. Retrieved from: (https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-racist-housing-policy-that-made-your-neighborhood/371439/).
[3] Jackson, Kenneth. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York City, NY: Oxford University Press.
[4] Gross, Terry. 2017. “A 'Forgotten History' Of How The U.S. Government Segregated America.” National Public Radio (NPR), May 3. Retrieved from: (https://www.npr.org/transcripts/526655831).
[5] Gottlieb, Dylan. 2019. “How gentrification caused America’s cities to burn.” The Washington Post, September 13. Retrieved from: (https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/09/13/how-gentrification-caused-americas-cities-burn/).
[6] Kennedy, Maureen & Paul Leonard. 2001. Dealing with Neighborhood Change: A Primer on Gentrification and Policy Choices. The Brookings Institution Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy and PolicyLink, April Discussion Paper. Retrieved from: (https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/gentrification.pdf).