White-Only Suburbs: The History You Didn't Learn

thank you when Sanu sadani is Rani bought a house in this neighborhood in California's Silicon Valley she found something disturbing in the fine print of her home deed the language that I read basically said the only people allowed to live in this community in these homes are white unless you're a servant the subdivision is called Ladera and the racist covenants were attached to the Deeds of all 500 some homes here the rules are no longer enforceable or even legal but they've been on the books since the neighborhood was laid out 70 years ago and they

help illustrate how so many of America's suburbs ended up segregated it hurts it hurts to be told you're not welcome forget welcome you're not allowed it so offended me I thought well this has to be offending everyone who buys property here [Music] some of ladera's residents set out to understand how this happened and it turned out these relics of segregation grew out of a historical moment more often remembered for progressivism and inclusion to a new deal for the American people the New Deal programs launched between 1933 and the end of the second world war transformed

Society but black Americans reaped far fewer benefits from these programs than white Americans the New Deal expanded government capacities in a way that provided economic rights for people the right to Capital the right to a job the right to Health Care the right to old age pension what was problematic is that that right was not inclusive one of the clearest examples of this came when New Deal agencies began ensuring affordable home loans before backing the loans agencies mapped communities across the country dividing them into zones judged to be higher or lower risk for banks records

show a key factor Federal map makers used to determine this perceived risk was race this practice called redlining largely cut people of color off from affordable borrowing it's not a case that you just had these bigoted bankers and these bigoted homeowners the federal government was culpable black people by Design were excluded from this benefit it's exactly what happened in Ladera in the late 1940s a mixed race group of about a hundred families banded together to build cheap homes near Stanford University workers teachers and professors including the novelist Wallace stegner formed a Cooperative to buy and

transform attractive hilly Ranch Land into an affordable suburb named Ladera but the project soon stalled no bank would give them the loan to build these homes the banks wouldn't do it because the federal housing Administration wouldn't insure their loans because of these hundred members of The Cooperative three were African Americans at the time the federal housing Administration explicitly recommended that race restrictions be used in new Suburban developments its lending manual even included instructions for Banning buyers who weren't the race for which new homes were intended the segregation that this program alone created is responsible for

much of the racial inequality we have in this country today unable to find financing the Ladera Cooperative disbanded and sold the land to a private developer who built Ladera as a whites only community by the 1950s this mix of federal policy and private discrimination left few options for black Americans seeking homes in this part of California my dad got involved with the palette of Stanford branch of the NAACP they were proving that there was housing discrimination and it was Notorious here very subtle but it was Notorious my dad could easily pass for white my mom

was was brown skinned you knew who she was it was actually something that that was very painful for my mother because my dad would go to rent an apartment or to buy property they'd say wonderful he'd say let me bring my wife and as soon as she came back with him they would say no this is no longer available when my parents came here from Alabama they figured okay this is a nice area we don't have to worry about our kids getting lynched there's not open racism but they didn't factor in that there was a

slew of hidden racism about nine miles from Ladera Elwyn raynor's family opened up this service station in one of the only areas open to Black American Property buyers now known as East Palo Alto the African-Americans were guided to this area any houses on the other side of the freeway were considered to be out of their price range or the interest rate alone would kill that dream of them owning a house because they couldn't afford it it's like they say you're on the wrong side of the tracks for us it was the wrong side of the

freeway for decades East Palo Alto and neighboring Belhaven were unincorporated communities without a city government where housing shared space with heavy industry and residents enjoyed few of the amenities available to the majority white suburbs like Palo Alto Menlo Park or Ladera we had roads that were that were you know badly paved we had many many a neighborhood that did not have sidewalks we had a school district that was grossly underfunded you know we were walking in the middle of the street instead of walking on sidewalks we were had bad lighting we had bad water we

didn't even have a city we didn't have a place where we could go and complain even today East Palo Alto is 70 black and Latino the median family income is eighty three thousand dollars half the households rent and more than 10 percent of families live in poverty compare this to Ladera 75 percent white the median family income stands just below 200 000 the poverty rate is one percent and nobody rents and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out you know what that's really all about what's it all about that well it's

about race what is critical to note is that a white asset-based middle class didn't simply emerge it was structured and was structured largely through home ownership it was structured largely through policy that facilitated white people to acquire homes that appreciated over their lifetime that could be passed down to Future Generations as well the considerable Gap in education and income between America's black families and white families has slowly narrowed since the Civil Rights era but the Gap in wealth what families own has been a different story throughout American history the racial wealth Gap has been dramatic

for every dollar held by a typical white family at the median the typical black family has had about a dime so this asset-based wealth-based white middle class that was generated from New Deal and post-war policies was never extended to black people and economists say one of the most significant factors creating the wealth gap between white and black Americans is home ownership much of a middle-class family's net worth is determined by the value of their home and whether you or your ancestors could buy one in the first place a home also facilitates your ability to generate

wealth to do other things you can finance an expensive college degree with wealth if you want to change jobs you can pursue Your Dreams a home provides access to Neighborhood resources a home provides access to in the American context with public schooling good schools my father's family was a group of seven that lived in one room so when I look at the opportunities my children had by living in this neighborhood function of purely geography that zip code it's a huge amount of privilege to have grown up in this neighborhood there's no quick fix for the

inequality that's grown out of residential segregation but researchers say it's worth considering what history can teach us [Music] the problems that exist today what it's important to note they're not insurmountable the New Deal was about jobs it was about income it was about pension it was about health there are certain enabling goods and services that people need in order to thrive that's a reality and just like government facilitated it in the past they can facilitate it today only this time they can do it in a way that is inclusive in the meantime a group of

Volunteers in Ladera gathered enough signatures to formally strike the whites only language from all 534 deeds in the subdivision we didn't have a statue of Robert E Lee in our neighborhood but we did have this and we had the power to get rid of it and I would say that if the pendulum had to go from you are not allowed to taking them down we now need to say you are welcome