Discrimination by Design

Some people are born with a silver spoon in their mouth. I was born with a roof over my head. That’s one of the fortunate outcomes you face when your father is a builder, as mine was.? Just shy of graduating high school, my father made the decision that he would work in construction, laying bricks alongside his own father, and learn how to build homes. For the decades that followed, he continued to learn more, build more, and do more. Despite his sustained success, nothing ever came close to the pride and satisfaction he got from providing “shelter” for others. He expressed that to me several times, intentionally I’m supposing, as a means to keep me forever grounded and to reinforce our true purpose.?

Homebuilding was also something that he very much looked forward to being involved in when it came to his own children, as they reached adulthood. It was pure logic. After all, he learned the value of a “home” not only by building one, but by experiencing his own transition from an immigrant family that often lived under one roof with aunts, uncles, and cousins, to one that he could eventually call his own. He also understood that the physical and financial securities of a home were closely intertwined, if not inseparable.? And so my siblings and I never knew the worry of wondering whether or not we would one day have a home of our own. Only years later, would we fully digest this monstrous rarity and understand that it was well beyond privilege.?

Today, we live in a world where this is a very unfamiliar and unheard story. A world where the dream of homeownership specifically, continues to elude many. As more of us dwell in cities that become increasingly unaffordable year after year,? owning your own home seems exceedingly out of reach, even if at one time it may have seemed a likely opportunity. Many others however, never shared in this fleeting optimism. The opportunity never seemed likely in the first place, simply because of the colour of their skin.??

Today, the talk in the industry continues to be very much centred around increasing costs, labour shortages, and most famously, “red tape.” While they're all important issues, the latter immediately takes my brain (and heart) to redlining - the root cause of the racial wealth gap that still exists, nearly 100 years later.? And which needs to continue to be talked about.

While it may be true that individual white people today are not responsible for racist policies that were implemented before they walked this city, this country, this Earth, it is true that white people are still benefiting from them, often at the expense of others. I’m one of them.?

A construction site was essentially my playground growing up, and “home” was the most frequent four-letter word at our dinner table. In fact, the entire concept of buying and selling homes was tossed around so freely and frequently in my world, that you could likely have substituted it with something as insignificant as hockey cards, or a pack of gum. (Thus the emphasis on shelter and purpose that I still hear in my father's voice.) It was my normal. For what felt like a very long time.?

But then there comes the day when you get that thing they call “perspective.” You make your way into the big, bright world and see the rest of it. You see that not everyone looks like you do, not everyone lives how you live, and not everyone has what you have. You learn that sometimes the scales are in your favour, and other times, they’re not. Needless to say, the scales were very much in my favour. While I’m not a big believer in feeling guilty about your good fortune or fate, I’m also not a believer in taking it for granted. Plus, when you’re in an industry that has an underlying problem that screams inequity and refuses to go away, it’s sometimes hard to feel good about what you do. It became very important to me to understand the “why.”?

The inequity was a result of redlining, a (discriminatory) formal practice, which started in the 1930’s in the United States. The federal government created maps to “grade” hundreds of neighborhoods, assessing the level of risk for future real estate investment. Black and immigrant neighborhoods were often designated as “hazardous” and outlined in red, denying those that lived within their geography access to loans and mortgages. Further to that, little money was invested into other critical infrastructures such as schools and education - and it wasn’t long before property values started to decline.?

Private lenders also started to rely on these maps, causing some to deal with unethical and “predatory” lenders, which often resulted in the repossessing of homes and further instability.?

There were other forces at play too, such as the emergence of landlords who in their attempts to create more value for themselves, divided homes into additional, smaller units, resulting in crowding. The unavailability of capital didn’t only pertain to purchasing a home and extended to home maintenance, which led to outstanding repair issues and the deterioration of properties, which people often attributed to not valuing or taking care of their properties or laziness.?

Despite homeownership being a primary way to create wealth, there are also many ancillary benefits that those discriminated against were robbed of; a significant one being the ability to create intergenerational wealth. For example, when someone purchases a home, they generally see an appreciation in the equity of that asset. This often allows the next generation to benefit, and continue the trend of homeownership in their family. When you’re left out of the housing market and continuing to rent, there’s, unfortunately, no such significant asset to transfer. The appreciation in a home can also help families fund continuing education, pursue employment opportunities, and even finance new entrepreneurial businesses.?

Intergenerational wealth is just scratching the surface however, as there's an abundance of long-term and invisible impacts on the Black community.? Research continues to demonstrate that where you live is correlated to your quality of education, employment, fresh food, and healthy outdoor spaces — even your life expectancy.?

While structures and housing are intended to last a long time, the policies regarding them, particularly when they're wrong, are not. While it’s difficult to distinguish between mistakes of the past and present-day circumstances, the history of housing has very clearly suffered a hangover - as racial disparities continue to exist. ( Canada, despite it's lack of historical data, was not immune to redlining, as noted in the well-documented history of Africville, a small black community in Nova Scotia.)

Sometimes it seems an impossible feat to undo what's been done. But going after the “why?” may help us to do better. I recall my struggle to focus in Grade 10 history class, many days gazing out the window and staring at posters on the walls. The one that I often recited in my head repeatedly was, “You have to know the past, to understand the present.” We now know. But we don’t fully understand. And there is work to do. Because beyond knowing, we require reparation, reconciliation, forgiveness, and a mutual willingness to agree to move forward. I’m convinced that together is the only way.?

As Peggy McIntosh’ commented in her 1989 article White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, “I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems. Privilege is [also] misunderstood as something individual rather than a system.? As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.”? Imagine what the world could look like if everyone could recognize their privilege and use it toward purpose? Imagine the advantage we could all have collectively.