Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

An insightful article by Jason Laughlin in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer describes how racist covenants in the early 1900s restricted black families’ access to some neighborhoods in that city. Drawing on research done by Larry Santucci, a senior research fellow at the Consumer Finance Institute of the Federal Reserve Bank, Mr. Laughlin’s article describes how “...deeds for Philadelphia homes included racially restrictive covenants, with language barring minorities from buying into the neighborhood.”  His research found that “...the practice was especially widespread in two wards in the Northeast” where “…currently, only 18% of the residents in those wards are African American, compared with 49% in the rest of Philadelphia“. He also sensed that his research scratched the surface and offered this understated paragraph:

Philadelphia’s poshest addresses didn’t need (restricted deeds)… There, minorities were excluded largely by housing being out of their price range.

As noted in earlier posts on this blog noting the link between zoning and school segregation, I wrote an essay on this topic when I attended graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania in 1972. That essay noted that exclusionary zoning practices in suburbs that bordered Philadelphia created artificially high housing process that effectively excluded minorities and families who qualified for Title One funds while generating higher property tax revenues that, in turn, resulted in well funded schools.

Nearly 50 years later, nothing has changed….