The North and its Covert Segregation

Despite much of the civil rights movement’s history being centered around the South, there were still many struggles seen in the North, in cities such as New York City and Boston. In the North, racial discrimination was much less direct and explicit, but no less institutional. For example, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), a government organization, created a rating system for homes to designate certain areas as unsafe for loans and development (Theoharris, 35). Despite seeming relatively harmless, their rating system included racial demographics, and areas with higher Black and Puerto Rican populations were rated lower. This allowed the government to improve white neighborhoods and simultaneously leave non-white communities behind, under the guise of encouraging real estate development. The Board of Education in NYC took advantage of the housing segregation, and instead of changing how the districts were drawn when the primarily Black schools were overcrowded and sending some Black students to white schools, they simply worked harder to keep the Black students in the overcrowded schools.

In order to hide the racism of their systems, white liberals at the time used coded language. For example, William Jansen, Superintendent of Schools, instructed his staff to use the words “separate” or “racially imbalanced” instead of “segregated” to describe NYC’s schools (Theoharris, 38). Most notably, Northerners invented the concept of “de facto” segregation versus “de jure” segregation, arguing that the segregation seen in the South was due to the law, but the “racial imbalances” seen in the North were a natural result of other forces such as private corporations and the free market (Theoharris, 39). These terms and special language surrounding the segregation present in Northern cities allowed programs perpetuating segregation, such as the HOLC, an even greater benefit of the doubt. Using these terms, the Board of Education was able to deflect charges of school segregation, saying it was due to housing segregation and that the housing segregation could not be avoided because it was simply “natural” (Theoharris, 38).

I was surprised by some of it, but other parts I knew about already. I’ve learned about the HOLC before and how it harmed racial minorities because it contributed greatly to the redlining in Omaha where I’m from, so I knew that it was happening outside of the South. I was more surprised at the coded language used, since I’d never really thought about how they might have needed to hide their racist practices. I had assumed that white people in the North understood these practices were segregationist and were entirely fine with it. It makes sense though after thinking about it more, since, after Brown v. Board, they would have been legally required to desegregate their schools, and they would have had to use this coded language if they wanted to get around the ruling. I mainly didn’t realize before that the same people fighting against segregation in the South were also supporting these segregationist policies in the North.