Race, class and antisemitism in Baltimore (Dundalk: house, neighborhood, school)

[barante]

Thesegoto11 -- Hypersegregation is an academic subfield and studies abound. Trying to gauge segregation merely by eyeballing streets is a very inaccurate gauge.
Here is one reputable index:
Rank. City, Segregation Index

1. Chicago, 84.6
2. New York, 82.2
3. Atlanta, 81.5
4. Washington, 79.7
5. Cleveland, 77.3
6. Newark, 76.7
7. Philadelphia, 76.4
8. Baltimore, 71.1
9. Houston, 70.9
10. Los Angeles, 70.6

A word of caution. These measurements are by metropolitan area. I am not familiar enough with other cities but in Baltimore's case this amounts a double-whammy because, in addition to the city, most of the counties are also hypersegregated.
As seen, Boston is not among top ten. Why this is I don't know because it; keen competition, I guess. What is interesting about these indexes is that the Sun Belt, particularly Florida, scores high. Not only are cities hypersegregated but so particularly are most of the new communities, including senior villages.
Want to more? Just google by using hypersegregation and cities. An excellent primer to everything discussed here, including some stuff mentioned by Pietila in his speech, is "American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass" by Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton. This seminal book came out in 1993, but it's pretty up-to-date because these things change slowly.

[TheseGoTo11]

Originally Posted by barante

Thesegoto11 -- Hypersegregation is an academic subfield and studies abound.

Sadly, I've read a lot of the academic studies and most are useless and filled with jargon.

I use zip codes and census tract data, these funny academic indexes are not worth much to any sensible businessperson.

When you look at Boston 02215, 02116, DC 20007, 20008, 20016, NY 10023 etc, you get contiguous areas of up to 100k people with median HHIs of 60k-100k, and less than 10 percent of pop that is A-A. No such equivalent exists in Baltimore.

Also, these academics are always trying to use the data to push some political philosophy, I'm just looking to see what the data reveals about the economic life of the city and its settlement patterns, not to use it as a tool to criticize politicians.

[Be More]

barante..I don't know if you caught this map while at the Walter's. I didn't see it until I came through the second time with my students. There is a segregation map of one of Chicago's neighborhoods. Each house was hand painted according to ethnicity. It looks like it was a map of the neighborhood before it was "Blockbusted". Pretty interesting.

[jonjj]

Yes, that map was very interesting. I spent a lot of time with it. If you have more interest in it, you could rent "Chicago", a documentary about the city. The makers of that film went into great detail refering to that map.

[barante]

This is the map the federal government's Home Owners Loan Corporation prepared for Baltimore in 1937, one of 239 cities mapped.
The best neighborhoods, where mortgage lending was encouraged by lenders at the time of mapping, are marked green.
The second best are blue.
The third best were neighborhoods marked yellow. They were seen as transitional areas whose eventual fate was to be redlined. Lending was possible but had to be done with caution and on terms totally different from green and blue, HOLC said.
In "hazardous" neighborhoods, marked red, some lending could be done. In practice, however, many interpreted the map as a ban against lending altogether. As you can see, most white ethnic neighborhoods in East Baltimore were redlined, in addition to the city core. (Their saving grace were ethnic building and loans, which stepped into the lending vacuum).
In Baltimore, as in most of the other cities, these maps justified the self-fulfilling prophesy that led to lasting mortgage discrimination. The lack of loans in yellow neighborhoods, mostly populted by whites in 1937, interrupted normal ownership rotation and made the easy targets for blockbusters after World War II.


http://cf.uba.uva.nl/nl/collecties/k...x/groot/30.jpg

The coloring is uneven and misleading. I have copies made from the originals in the National Archives that, in addition to coloring, contain letter coding. It is clear that the big blob of seemingly green in Northeast Baltimore is in fact blue.

[krakenten]

I always learn something from your posts.

Thank you.

[barante]

BTW, the western border of the redlined district was Fulton Avenue, which was the Maginot line of segregation in Baltimore ever since the 1910 City Council ordinance requiring segregation on all residential blocks. The east side of Fulton Avenue was black; the west side white. When blacks broke through that line in December 1944, all bets were off and a fundamental transformation of the city began.
The eastern border ran along Patterson Park Avenue, except that Highlandtown and Canton also were redlined. As were Federal Hill and Locust Point (and Bolton Hill).
So it's pretty miraculous that those neighborhoods eventually emerged as much in tact as they did.

[barante]

Fraser Smith will talk about his new book, and sign copies, on Saturday June 7 at Ukazoo, an interesting new book store on Dulaney Valley Road, across from Towson mall. It's a huge place that features NYT betsellers along with lots of used books that are very reasonably priced.
Ukazoo (google) has easy chairs for people to use and offers free coffee.
Fraser Smith's book , "Here Lies Jim Crow," will be launched at the Enoch Pratt Free Library June 12.

[TheseGoTo11]

Originally Posted by barante

BTW, the western border of the redlined district was Fulton Avenue, which was the Maginot line of segregation in Baltimore ever since the 1910 City Council ordinance requiring segregation on all residential blocks. The east side of Fulton Avenue was black; the west side white. When blacks broke through that line in December 1944, all bets were off and a fundamental transformation of the city began.
The eastern border ran along Patterson Park Avenue, except that Highlandtown and Canton also were redlined. As were Federal Hill and Locust Point (and Bolton Hill).
So it's pretty miraculous that those neighborhoods eventually emerged as much in tact as they did.

I think you're putting out a lot of conspiracy facts. By that I mean, pointing out events that are undeniably true, but are symptoms of other economic and social developments, not causes.

In most cities, the A-A ghetto, whether it's the South Bronx, Roxbury, or North Minneapolis, is an area that had a large Jewish pop prior to WW2. Meanwhile, look at annexed streetcar/infill suburbs like Cleveland Park, Back Bay, Bolton Hill, and they all held white populations during 20th century white flight regardless of what redlining was going on. Why?

was there less population turnover? more money? fewer immigrants?

Also, white about mid-19th century white flight - when protestants left cities due to Irish Catholic immigration? Baltimore was a younger city than Boston and NY, how was it impacted?

To tie everything to banker/politician scandals makes for a compelling story, but it is one factor among many, and emphasizing it excessively steers you away from the truth.

[barante]

The Jewish Museum of Maryland cordially invites you to its 2008 Annual Meeting

The Samuel Boltansky Memorial Keynote Speaker
Gil Sandler

Baltimore Goes To War!
Over There, Over Here, 1941 - 1945

Monday, June 2, 2008 / 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.

Installation of Officers
Reception - Dietary Laws Observed

Admission is Free.
RSVP to Ilene Dackman-Alon, Program Director, at 410.732.6400 x14 or idackmanalon@jewishmuseummd.org.