Racial Profiling in Redlining Maps

The University of Richmond has released a large update to its amazing Mapping Inequality project. This update includes introductions to the redlining maps produced for around 80 cities, written by scholars and historians and the addition of around 100 new cities to the project.

Under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal black homeowners were discriminated against by redlining maps. These maps identified areas with significant black populations as risky for mortgage support. Black homeowners living in these areas were unlikely to be successful when trying to refinance home mortgages through the government sponsored Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC). The Mapping Inequality project allows you to explore the HOLC redlining maps for yourself and discover how your neighborhood was classified by the government in the 1930s.

The project's latest update also includes a new search function for the neighborhood descriptions made on Redlining maps by agents. These descriptions reveal the extraordinary racial prejudices of some of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation agents responsible for classifying which neighborhoods were desirable for lending purposes and which were too risky for mortgage support.

For example in Phoenix, Arizona area D5 is described by the HOLC agent as having "suffered no encroachment by Negroes, Mexicans, etc.". In area C6 in Montgomery, Alabama the HOLC agent notes that "If proposed negro development fostered by Catholic Church materializes, future trend of residential desirability will be downward." In response to the mere possibility of future black residents the agent classified the neighborhood as type C - "Definitely Declining".

You can use the new neighborhood descriptions search facility to search for individual terms used by HOLC agents in their notes. For example you can search where the agents used the words Negro, Mexicans, Orientals, foreigners etc. Searching for these individual words quickly reveals the type of negative and prejudicial language that the agents use for describing the non-white residents of neighborhoods. 

Non-white people are usually described as 'infiltrating' or 'encroaching' on areas. With the result that these areas were then less likely to receive financial services. An example of this can be seen in Oakland, California. In area C2 in Oakland the HOLC agent states "Infiltration of Negroes and Orientals possibility". He therefore classifies this neighborhood as also type C - "Definitely Declining". 

Over and over again the neighborhood descriptions on the HOLC's Redlining maps see the 'infiltration' or 'encroachment' of non-white residents as being detrimental to neighborhoods. Area C3 in Topeka is described by the HOLC agent as "among the best sections of the city". However despite being one of the 'best' areas of the city it is "blighted because of the presence of negroes". The agent therefore classifies one of the city's "best sections" as "Definitely Declining".

To the HOLC agents it doesn't matter if non-white residents are actually bringing new wealth into a neighborhood. Even the possibility of new rich non-white residents is described by HOLC agents using negative terms. For example the notes for area C6 in Oakland remark on the "Infiltration of wealthy Orientals and Oriental store keepers". The result of new wealthy 'Oriental' residents moving into the area means that the neighborhood was deemed as 'Definitely Declining' by the HOLC.

At the other end of the HOLC classification scale the notes for type A - 'Best' and type B - 'Still Desirable' areas often record that a neighborhood "Prohibits Asiatics and Negroes" or "that there are no Negroes or Asiatics allowed in the city limits". The existence of racial covenants is seen as distinctly positive by the HOLC and obviously played a big part in many areas being deemed desirable. Therefore the residents of these neighborhoods were seen as worthy of receiving government aid.