Redlines & Red Tomatoes
Action: If you work at a bank, mortgage lender, or for state or local government, look into your policies and practices, and figure out if there are any discrepancies in how you lend or to whom, using resources such as this 2016 paper from City & Community. Volunteer or provide resources for local environmental and community beautification projects adding green space in redlined communities, like the New York Restoration Project. And remember, not everyone has the capacity to plan and supply beforehand, so find a local food bank to use or donate to depending on your circumstances, and help out our undocumented (1, 2), indigenous (1, 2, 3), and trans friends through mutual aid programs as they face these crises with fewer resources and less government support than should be the case.
Educate: Listen to the Reveal podcast episode on the Center for Investigative Reporting 2016 report on discriminatory banking and lending practices still happening today. Read more about the relationship between redlining and increased vulnerability to extreme heat in these articles from NPR and Scientific American. Also, be sure to listen to the America Dissected: Coronavirus episode, COVID in Indian Country, to learn about how Native American populations specifically face disaster and emergency-related struggle as a result of redlining and housing and lending discrimination. And check out our Redlining The Garden Infographic from the week of June 8, 2020.
Source Material: Click through the links to the source material we used to research this week – take a deep dive into what was most interesting to you!
- Past Racist “Redlining” Practices Increased Climate Burden on Minority Neighborhoods from Scientific American
- Racist Housing Practices From The 1930s Linked To Hotter Neighborhoods Today from NPR
- 5 Reasons Natural Disasters Really Screw Over People of Color from Yessenia Funes
- How we identified lending disparities in federal mortgage data from Reveal
- How ‘redlining’ shaped New Orleans neighborhoods — is it too late to be fixed? from gambit
- Riding the Stagecoach to Hell: A Qualitative Analysis of Racial Discrimination in Mortgage Lending from City & Community
- Redlining’s Ongoing Harm: Intensifying Impact Of Climate Change, New Study Says from 90.5 WESA
