 give birth, and children w sent the one essential entity which must exist if t does. It is simply inconceivable that women, ths can any longer allow men to retain almost exclusiv over the vital process of defining the human fam
The concept of  family  can and should be a rather than divisive, principle. Given the weight ol tory that we uniquely bear, black women should collectively not only as blacks but as women, in th our lost children throughout history including gently the present generation. One of the first s confront, in all their ramifications, the racist/se historically concocted by opportunistic, ruthless white males in the interests of white-over-black ; over-female dominance.
Never again should the future of black childrer dren anywhere in the world be left in such han<
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Article 35
Home Ownership Anchors The Middle Class
But Lending Games Sink Many Prospective Owners
icott Minerbrook
t was the kind of house Donnell Cravens and his wife,  ugenie, had prayed for: a four-bedroom brick colonial with irown trim, hedges all around and an attached garage. They aw it for the first time in early July, and it was almost an ipparition of earthly rewards. For him, a personnel director, here was a garden to raise corn, tomatoes and melons. For her, tn accountant with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, a greensward of lawn manicured like a royal garden. True, West Bloomfield, Mich., didn t have many minority children for their kids to play with, but they d somehow make do.
They almost didn t get it. They had $54,000 in the bank from the sale of their Detroit home and had been pre-ipproved for a $150,000 mortgage, complete with a letter of qualification from one financial institution. Then came the meeting with the seller s realtor. One look at the agent and Eugenie told Donnell, "She's going to give us trouble.  The agent tried. She told the seller that the Cravens weren t qualified, even though she d gotten a full rundown about the husband s finances   without his consent. The seller was about to pull out when the Cravens threatened to call in their lawyers. That seemed to do the trick.  It was a trav- ty,  Donnell said.  I knew about the race game in real estate, but I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn t experi- ed it myself. 
Welcome to the world of real estate, to seclusion and exclusion. It is a world where many minorities give up.  J eed, the very intent is to make minorities give up. The u rimate humiliation for the black middle class is the denial j eclUal access to housing,  said Charles Bromley, director orthe Metropolitan Strategy Group in Cleveland, Ohio.
at all levels, the hoops are higher and smaller   le ^Or whites, they are wider and lower. It s discrimina-10nMth a smile. 
  Forthe black middle class, exclusion from better hous-J'l bitter fruit of a legacy of racial prejudice. In what  3rs call the  inertia of segregation,  millions O th 'Can;Atner cans who have climbed into the security, of dle and upper classes   about 12 per cent of all yeaCan Artler*cans now have earnings exceeding $50,000 a night"  nl' t0 f'ncl thar the dream of buying a home is a great**131* miscues and obstacles. Nowhere is this fact of ho*r COnsequence than in the field of housing. Buying a
1S not only part of the American Dream, it is essential
to grasping it. But study after study reveals that those in the middle class are restricted in their choice of where to live and what to buy. They are treated differently by lending and insurance institutions simply because of the color of their skin. This has a profound impact on the wealth of generations to come.
More than two decades after the 1968 Fair Housing Act banned discrimination in the sale and rental of housing, blacks who try to move away from the disadvantages of city living often find themselves re-segregated into what sociologists call the  inner ring  or  near-in suburbs,  such as Prince George s County or Silver Spring, in Maryland, which surround Washington, D.C. They find themselves hemmed in by housing practices that put them in close proximity to the poor and to lesser educational opportunities, despite the fact that they may be earning as much as their white counterparts. Steered there by discriminatory practices on the part of banks, insurance companies and realtors, middle-class blacks find themselves in areas where the demand for the houses they have purchased has already peaked, virtually ensuring a deflation in the value of their homes compared to those of the whiter suburbs beyond.
 The net result of segregation is that the black middle class loses the very freedom of movement that defines being in the middle class,  said Douglas S. Massey, a sociologist at the University of Chicago.
Massey has a word for these collective experiences: hypersegregation. It is a term that defines the increasing spatial isolation of blacks from whites, not only in American cities, but in the suburbs that weren t built for blacks in the first place. In his recent book, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass, Massey and his co-author, Nancy A. Denton, show just how deeply segregated America continues to be. A principal finding: Race, not class, is the main determinant of where blacks are allowed to live. According to the authors  data, a black person who makes $50,000 has fewer choices in where he or she can live and is more segregated than an Hispanic person earning $2,500. The authors say blacks earning $50,000 a year also experience the same degree of segregation as African-Americans earning $2,500 a year. And according to the National Research Council, it will take about six decades for blacks to achieve the minimal levels of economic security that integration with whites has already brought to Hispanics and Asians.
From Emerge, October 1993, PP-
42-48. Reprinted by permission.
157
6. AFRICAN AMERICANS
 This is the penalty of race,  said sociologist George Galster, of the Washington-based Urban Institute.
It is a reality so widespread that it is almost never challenged. The bottom line, Massey said, is that blacks in many big cities are less likely to move to the suburbs than either Asians or Hispanics and are more likely to live segregated lives once they are there. In the Chicago area, or instance, fewer than 16 percent of blacks live in the su urbs, compared to 27 percent of Hispanics and nearly half of the area s Asians.
The numbers are just as stark when Massey compares where blacks live to where whites live. By 1980, when black economic progress was beginning to stall because of resistance to affirmative action, 71 percent of all whites lived in northern suburbs. Blacks then composed less than a quarter of all suburban residents. In the South, the suburbs were 65 percent white and 34 percent black. In the North and Midwest, blacks were even less likely to live in the suburbs of Indianapolis, Kansas City, Milwaukee and New York all of which had black residential rates of less than 10 per cent. In the suburbs of Los Angeles, Pittsburgh and St. Louis, the black residential rates didn t approach that of whites.
But even these numbers are potentially misleading. While blacks began moving into the suburbs in the  80s, Massey said, this didn t mean the neighborhoods where they lived were integrated. In fact, many black  suburbs  were often simply sections of declining municipalities, replete with all the problems that have hobbled the economic growth of central cities.
Even if an African-American moved to the suburbs, various studies show high degrees of segregation   of blacks closer to blacks and whites closer to whites   were usually the rule.
And this does not bode well for blacks living there. Those suburbs where the numbers of blacks have increased have followed the old rule of real estate: Where blacks are, white homeowners stay away, fearful that the value of their homes won t increase. This may or may not be racism per se, scholars say, since racial attitudes are often indistinguishable from economic ones. One expert has estimated that between 30 percent and 70 percent of racial segregation is the result of economic concerns, such as home value. In large measure it is perception that becomes reality. In most instances, whites are reluctant to move to areas where housing approaches a 20 percent black ratio. Once this level is reached, white demand softens even as black demand increases. This often leads to re-segregation of an area. So set are white home buyers in their identification of the suburbs as being  white  that a 1985 study of white voters in Detroit by the Michigan Democratic Party found that whites believed that not being black is what, by definition, constitutes being middle class and that  not living with blacks is what makes a neighborhood a decent place to live. 
This generally has devastating effects on the areas that have become integrated. Proud and comfortable as they may be, weakening white demand means blacks will find themselves stuck with homes they can t sell. Median home prices in the city of Detroit tell this story over time The median home value of a single-family home in that city
dropped (in 1990 dollars) from $49,000 m ' $36,000 in 1980 to $27,000 in 1990   a 45 per c in their equity as whites moved out over the 20-yea As whites leave an area, a pattern of disinvestment i hurts the areas where middle-class blacks are movi
And that s for starters.
The inability of large numbers of blacks to buy 1 the suburbs reduces their ready access to jobs and i income. Galster, at the Urban Institute, said tha access to markets in outlying areas where wages a than in the cities means lower savings rates, which personal wealth.
Thus, the usual rule that has applied to virtua immigrant European group   and now Asian   tl ical and economic power across generations can b through home purchase, has largely not been the e: of African-Americans. In 1970, 65 percent of whit homes. Today, that number is 69 percent. In 197( cent of blacks owned homes. That number increa percent in 1989, before falling back to 42 per years later.
Instead of the crescendo of rising home values nomic viability, there is stagnation.  Realtors s weakness and begin offering forms of credit other ventional mortgages,  said Don DeMarco, execui tor of the Fund for an Open Society, a Philadelp fair housing group.  This tends to be a code for th the neighborhood is no longer attractive to the population.  Real estate agents jump into the I offering various federally-subsidized mortgage ments, including Veterans Administration am Homeowners Administration loans that becom< tom of weakening market demand. And since th points and closing costs is generally higher for tl blacks who move into the neighborhoods o socked with a third whammy: neighborhoods of investment value where residents must deplete t to close, leaving less money to fix the homes.
The effect on black wealth is devastating. In U.S. Census Bureau concluded that white families h the wealth of blacks in America