The Case for Reparations

Central to the author’s argument in the essay is the importance of home ownership to building wealth and how lack of access to home ownership contributed to the wealth gap that exists between blacks and whites in America. Parts I and VII explain at length how African Americans in Chicago were excluded from federally insured mortgages and thus locked out of a vital means of generating wealth. The only means they had for purchasing a house was buying on contract, “a predatory agreement that combined all the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting—while offering the benefits of neither” (Part I). 

Redlined maps produced by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation also symbolize the wealth gap between blacks and whites, as well as white supremacy in general. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, created as part of the New Deal and thus part of the federal government, assessed how creditworthy different neighborhoods of a city were. As part of this effort, it produced maps that showed low-risk areas in the color green and high-risk areas in red. Inevitably, African-American neighborhoods were considered high risk and rendered in red; thus, the term “redlining” refers to discriminating against groups of people by automatically refusing them a mortgage based on where they live.