The effects of these covenants are still present today:
Why Covenants Matter
The Supreme Court made covenants unenforceable in 1948. The Minnesota Legislature prohibited their use in 1953. And Congress banned these racial restrictions as part of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. So why do we care about covenants today?
By the time that covenants were abolished,
the damage was done. And
. We needed, as a nation, to address the harm that it did. We needed to acknowledge how racism was embedded in structures and institutions. But we didn't. So we are still living with the legacies of these discriminatory deeds today in the United States.
Covenants divided Minneapolis--and many other northern cities--by race. These residential segregation patterns
persist today. And this physical segregation undergirds our contemporary racial disparities, which
.
Separate is not equal. In the United States, racial segregation channels the flow of resources. Where you live
. Majority white neighborhoods have more parks and more generous tree cover. Communities of color have more
. They have less access to medical care, which translates into
. Schools in these neighborhoods usually have
. Some institutions beat the odds. But most struggle to maintain the resources necessary to meet the needs of their communities.
But covenants did more than steer people to certain neighborhoods. They also determined who could buy property. "Prospective Negro purchasers are sometimes told of restrictive covenants, or that the owner will not sell to Negroes, or that the neighbors would object," J.T. Wardlaw explained to the readers of the
Minneapolis Star in a letter published on December 23, 1944. The head of the Minneapolis Urban League expounded further, asserting that these practices pushed people of color into areas that were redlined, which made it almost impossible to acquire affordable financing to buy property. And once they identified a home, "the already inflated price is made higher for Negro prospects," Wardlaw wrote. These "are the tools used to depress homeownership among Negroes," he explained. "These are the practices which during the past decade have come to be regarded as expedient and profitable. These are also the practices which if endured for another decade will reap for Minneapolis a sorry harvest."
Wardlaw's declaration was prophetic.
Today Minneapolis
has the
. And since most families amass wealth through property ownership, this homeownership gap continues to feed our contemporary racial wealth gap. Wealth is built through generations, with one generation passing resources to another. Thanks in part to the racial biases that have been baked into the real estate market over the last century,
.
The racial wealth gap makes it hard to erode residential segregation. And it contributes in every way to the racial disparities in education, health outcomes and employment facing our community today.
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