{"id":2816,"date":"2021-10-22T08:14:34","date_gmt":"2021-10-22T13:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/?p=2816"},"modified":"2021-10-22T08:15:07","modified_gmt":"2021-10-22T13:15:07","slug":"2816","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/2021\/10\/22\/2816\/","title":{"rendered":"Map of the Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u201cRedlining\u201d has become more and more of a political buzzword lately, never straying too far from news headlines. But what exactly is it? This history takes us back almost a full century. As part of the New Deal, the Home Owners\u2019 Loan Corporation under the Roosevelt administration began to create guidelines for creditworthiness of properties in major American cities. During the mid-1930s, a host of maps were produced by the HOLC showing neighborhoods in the U.S. labeled with an A, B, C, or D rating, complemented with a color code that ranged from green to red. <\/span>The grading scale relied heavily on racial composition as a key metric<\/span>. <\/span>Specifically, only areas with \u201c0% Negros\u201d were able to qualify for a green A rating. The higher percentage of black people there were in a neighborhood, the lower the rating became. Practically, this meant that the presence of African Americans brought down property values significantly; massive white flight to the suburbs resulted partially from this. As white people settled into the rapidly growing suburbs labeled A and B lined in green and blue, black people were left behind in inner cities labeled C and D lined in yellow and red. With these low ratings, black people were unable to secure government-insured mortgages and became trapped in poor neighborhoods lined in red with no way out. And thus the name: redlining.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As can be seen on the map on the left, there remains a heavy concentration of African Americans in inner-city Chicago today. That part of the city is generally referred to as simply the \u201cSouth Side.\u201d This is the part of the city where suburban parents warned their children away from, and where gun violence has rocked the nation. This is also the part of the city with a 93% black population, compared with a 29% total black population in Chicago. Almost a century later, Chicago is still a deeply separated city. The real-life effects of this de facto segregation is still playing out today; nothing is a better testament to this than public education funding in the South Side versus the neighborhoods further up north.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a coincidence that the South Side has stayed black, nor that it has stayed poor. The map on the right shows the per-student funding of school districts in Chicago as a percentage of the national average. Comparing the two maps, it\u2019s easy to see that the percentage concentration of African Americans has an almost exact indirect correlation with the amount of funding received by school districts in the area. Even though the South Side is on par with the national average in terms of funding, Illinois schools are about $5,000 better funded per-pupil than the national average. Thus, the South Side isn\u2019t quite receiving its due. In fact, schools in the South Side receive an average of $0.73 per-pupil for every $1 that schools in nearby suburbs (with a lot more white students) receive. Illinois has sidelined the South Side because it\u2019s been black and poor, and it\u2019s stayed that way without proper support and investment from the state. Black students from these high-poverty areas with more need from schools are left behind again and again, generation after generation\u2013\u20133 in 4 adults there today live in the same neighborhood they grew up in. As <\/span>USA Today <\/span><\/i>put it, \u201cracial injustice has been baked into our education system since its genesis.\u201d These two maps laid out side-by-side are a direct confrontation of past wrongs that need to be corrected.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And therein lies the power of maps. These current housing patterns and school districts exist the way they do because of maps drawn by old white men who have long been six feet underground. And yet, its harmful impacts are still felt vividly today. The Home Owners\u2019 Loan Corporation, the government, and the banks in the 30s all asserted their power over housing in Chicago through maps. They made maps that bordered and ordered the lives of the people in the city, doing the work of the state and the white men in power. These maps have shaped, and continue to shape, the lived experiences of countless Chicagoans of every race. Now, school districts are once again determined by and enforced on maps. A map\u2019s inherent power\u2013\u2013especially when backed by the state\u2013\u2013in holding unparalleled authority over all things spatial makes it a scarily effective tool of control. The instant a school district map is drawn and published, it begins to feel like an unquestionable authority already set in stone. Recognizing that this power came from maps means that we can repurpose the power. At the very least, we can use the two maps above to point out the injustice of Chicago\u2019s funding of public schools. These maps can become tools of education, and they easily present an argument of necessary change. Taking it a step further, activist groups can take the information from these maps and build new ones that house fairer school districts. This kind of counter-mapping as a form of protest can both promote productive dialogue and present real alternatives to current school district divisions. Creditworthiness maps from the 1930s formed the Chicago we know today; a better, more equitable Chicago can be rebuilt with new maps made by the right hands.<\/span><\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/b><\/p>\n

Bruce, Baker D., Danielle Farrie, and David Sciarra, \u201cIs School Funding Fair? A National <\/span>Report\u00a0<\/span>Card,\u201d <\/span>Education Law Center, <\/span><\/i>7th Edition, February 2018, Accessed 27 September <\/span>2021, <\/span>https:\/\/drive.google.com\/file\/d\/1BTAjZuqOs8pEGWW6oUBotb6omVw1hUJI\/<\/span><\/a>view<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Coates, Ta-Nehisi, \u201cThe Case for Reparations,\u201d <\/span>The Atlantic, <\/span><\/i>June 2014, <\/span>https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/magazine\/archive\/2014\/06\/the-case-for-reparations\/361631\/<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conidi, Anna, et al. \u201cThe Segregated Urban Landscape of Chicago,\u201d <\/span>Story Maps, <\/span><\/i>12 November\u00a0<\/span>2020, <\/span>https:\/\/storymaps.arcgis.com\/stories\/913025e92c024d3eb421f7e7c40fea71<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Guastaferro, Lynette, \u201cWhy racial inequities in America’s schools are rooted in housing policies\u00a0<\/span>of the past,\u201d <\/span>USA Today, <\/span><\/i>2 November 2020, <\/span>https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/opinion\/<\/span><\/a>2020\/11\/02\/how-redlining-still-hurts-black-latino-students-public-schools-column\/60833<\/span><\/a>42002\/<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRace and Hispanic Origin,\u201d <\/span>United States Census Bureau, <\/span><\/i>1 July 2019, <\/span>https:\/\/www.census.gov\/quickfacts\/chicagocityillinois<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reyes, Cecilia, \u201cSame City, Different Opportunities: Study Maps Life Outcomes for Children\u00a0<\/span>from Chicago Neighborhoods,\u201d <\/span>Chicago Tribune, <\/span><\/i>16 October 2018, <\/span>https:\/\/www.chica<\/span><\/a>gotribune.com\/investigations\/ct-american-dream-for-chicago-analysis-htmlstory.html<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Turner, Cory, \u201cWhy America\u2019s Schools Have a Money Problem,\u201d <\/span>NPR, <\/span><\/i>18 April 2016, <\/span>https:\/\/<\/span><\/a>www.npr.org\/2016\/04\/18\/474256366\/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cRedlining\u201d has become more and more of a political buzzword lately, never straying too far from news headlines. But what exactly is it? This history takes us back almost a full century. As part of the New Deal, the Home … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5441,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2816"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2821,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions\/2821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/livesofmaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}