YouTube Link https://youtu.be/Afqbw9x_R-E
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Hi everyone, I’m Rachel Kirby, and I’m Victoria Wittig. Welcome to this week’s edition of yo is this racist. We got a comment from a high school student in Nebraska, asking about what systemic racism actually is.
And kind of dive in a little deeper and hat and address its prominence in today’s society.
So just to start off, make sure we’re all on the same page. We’re going to jump right in and define some words for you, some terms ,so we’re first going to define racism, what is it? This definition is pulled from Oxford languages, and it is “prejudice discrimination or antagonism directed against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority, or marginalized.
The next time we’re going to describe define is systemic racism and this definition is pulled from the New York Times, and systemic racism is a form of racism that is embedded as normal practice within a society or organization. It can lead to such as issues as discrimination in criminal justice, employment, housing, healthcare political power and education among many, many other issues. So, that is what we’re going to touch on today.
Dive a little deeper into it systemic racism can occur through many different ways and kind of
Um come in many different forms. It could be something you see through text, an advertisement, a commercial, your actions, something like a situation you’re observing which is what makes it so so versatile, which I think makes it a lot harder to kind of pinpoint like oh this type of thing is systemic racism.
Anyway, a lot of these instances seem to occur subconsciously and therefore more of like a habit, and you don’t, you’re not called out on it you don’t maybe immediately realize it’s wrong what you said or what you did or how you acted so it’s important.
Yeah, Rachel I completely agree. I think it comes in so many versatile ways. And I think like what you said like sometimes like people like don’t, they don’t realize what systemic racism is, and they might like completely miss it, or, you know, sometimes it could be intentional like with different laws and the federal government and different regulations that they, you know, impose on minorities or people of color. Um I think sometimes it could be intentional, but I think everyone has like has a different point of view on that. And an example that you guys might not be as familiar with is systemic racism, systemic racism in real estate.
This documentary was called a matter of place, and it gave an inside look on this issue of systemic racism in real estate. Connected past struggles for fair housing to contemporary incidents of housing bias, based on race, sexual orientation disability a source of income, and it presented three stories of people who faced housing discrimination in present day in New York City.
And
That kind of reminds me of an article that I read about real estate and it was actually from February of this year, which is very shocking.
Um so this story was about a young black couple that lived in the Bay Area of San Francisco and if you’re not familiar with that it’s a really nice area to live, bigger houses, it’s just a really nice area.
So yeah, this couple added and an addition to their house in addition was 1000, square feet. So a big addition. And they also made like other really expensive renovations and they just updated their home.
So, a older white woman came to appraise their home value and when she did, she said that they that their home’s value only increased by $100,000. But this family had spent more than $400,000 in renovations. So clearly something’s not adding up there.
So, after hearing this like super disappointing number, they decided to get like a little creative with this, and they asked their white friends to pretend to be them, and placed all their family photos on their walls with photos of white families, and they had another like person come in and appraise their house, and it was appraised for $500,000 more than just a few weeks prior.
So, it just shows how, like you were saying how systemic racism is in real estate and like agencies and stuff like that, like, clearly that woman that was appraising this family had some sort of biases towards like black families, and I I don’t know the reasoning why she would phrase it like that but it’s really unfortunate to hear.
Yeah, and it’s it’s honestly really sad to the family knew like, I mean it’s good that they knew this wasn’t fair like at least they didn’t you know doubt themselves but it’s sad that they said, Okay, I know we’re probably being discriminated against because of our color, let’s bring in reinforcements and went to the extremes of not just having like a white family pretend to be them but taking down their pictures and replacing them. That just seems like so like dehumanizing like it just, it’s really sad to hear and I feel like for them to know like okay this is what we can do and then for it to be reinforced with it, working and getting what they actually deserved is a really upsetting thing and you know they’re definitely not the only family and it’s even crazier that this is occurring in a very like affluent area and neighborhood.
Well, like in that same article, I had like actually read and this is like a direct quote from it that “Black applicants are rejected from mortgage loans at rates, three times higher than white applicants.” So, it is just, I mean there’s so many examples of systemic racism in real estate, and I think you were telling me about an Act earlier, do you want to loop back and tell us about that.
Yeah. So, I mean, and that fact you gave about how mortgages are treated differently based off of the color of your skin like brings me to talk about the Fair Housing Act which was passed in 1968. It protects people from discrimination when they’re renting or buying a home, getting a mortgage, seeking housing assistance, or engaging in other housing related activities.
And it prohibits the discrimination in housing because of your race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, disability. It’s covering like a whole realm of things pretty much like if you could be discriminated based off of this, we’re going to put that in that legislation so you can’t be, which is great, awesome that this has all been passed, but realtors are still continuing to discriminate. And it’s difficult to handle because they are obeying the laws for from like a legal standpoint. I’m just because-
We just talked about, like how this stuff is happening but like how are real estate agents and agencies still going about this? Like they’re obviously being discreet. So, what, how are they doing it?
So, with the documentary that I’ve previously watched it seems that there’s kind of an unspoken agreement between realtors and, this isn’t all of them I don’t want to generalize, but at least with the documentary that I watched that what realtors tend to do is if they have a white family that they’re showing properties to, they will show them properties in a predominantly white neighborhood. And the people living in that neighborhood, the other whites are okay with that. They want that. But if these realtors, have a black family or a couple or just single person single parent whatever and they’re showing them neighbor, they’re going to show them neighborhoods that are predominantly black, and it’s not necessarily to make them feel more comfortable, because it’s not like these families requested I want to be showing houses where my neighbors are going to be African Americans. They’re showing them other black neighborhoods to like in efforts to keep them out of the white neighborhoods. And the reason they do that is because when.
This isn’t always, but if this my family were to move into a predominantly white neighborhood, they probably will face some acts of racism, Just be disrespected like, probably, they’re not going to enjoy living there most likely their neighbors are not going to enjoy them living there, but then sometimes that drives out the white, the white families that are already living there. And that’s no fault of the new family but that’s just-
Excuse me, there-
That’s just how some people view other races.
Yeah. They are just like I don’t want to live with these people. And because the realtors are aware of that they tried to abide by these people and a lot of these people have a lot of money and are very wealthy, so they have the ability to-
Sort of influence.
Yeah, influence. And it’s like money is powerful, and I feel like it’s probably not hard for these families to just say like, I don’t want this type of person living in my neighborhood and with the power and money and influence they have they can kind of make that happen.
So do you think that real estate agents think that they are doing the family a favor, like, if a real estate agent was showing a black family only houses in black communities, predominately black communities, do you think that real estate agents think that they’re doing them like a favor doing that or do you think that they are working in a white community’s interest to keep black families or individuals out of that community?
Yeah. I think it depends. Because normally when I feel like when you take on a client. You say, Well, “what are you looking for?” Do you want to be in the city? Do you want to be in the suburbs? Do you want a big house? Do you want a lot of land? Whatever, yes and all that stuff and I don’t think you explicitly asked them, do you want to have white neighbors or black neighbors? Like that that’s just not something that happens. And so, you know, there may be some realtors who just, they’re not going to ask that question because I feel like it can come off harsh and unnecessary and just like a little rude.
Um and so maybe you would show them houses, you know with black families as white families and kind of see where they lie like how they respond to him and kind of go from there. However, that kind of assumes that most neighborhoods are leaning on one way or leaning on another way like nothing’s integrated. And so I think that forms like a bigger issue of. If these practices keep happening. We’re not really going to be able to break them with how like strong they have become, you know what I mean? Like feel like you’re not going to want to have.
I don’t know I feel like I don’t want to make assumptions, but I feel like no one likes to be the first have something in an uncomfortable situation. So like I feel like there may not want to be a black family like okay we’re going to be the first ones to enter a white neighborhood. And we’re going to define stereotypes like we’re gonna make it more integrated you know like it’s complicated, I think, not every realtor is out and trying to.
I don’t think every realtor is out there trying to, you know, be racist in this sense.
Yeah.
But just to sort of wrap it up where, where do we go from here, what are your thoughts, I am interested about that.
Yeah, I think it’s hard because you know it seems like at least with this, this is like only one instance of systemic racism, that we decided to focus on. And if you as a listener wanted to conquer that you know you could become a relative, like I’m going to do it my own way the right way, whatever. That’s great, but you know not everyone’s going to become a realtor. So I think it’s really just being aware and trying to open up, excuse me, your view of things.
Yeah.
Being aware of yourself, like how you act how other people act, and you like, like is this polite? Is it respectful? You know, some people are like, oh, was that like racist I not have said that or like there are a lot of things that are politically incorrect like if you just people set you learned like elementary school think before you speak I think a lot of people a lot of adults forget that. Yeah, and like something simple as that would, you know benefit, to get people to like think a little bit before they do something they might regret, you know?
Yeah I completely agree. And I think that we cover systemic racism in a great way. So I just want to thank all our listeners for tuning in today. Um if you have any questions or if there is another topic you want to talk about, feel free to drop it below and we can try to touch on it next week.
And we have the documentary and the article that were referenced below if you guys want to check it out and our comments are open.
Bye guys. Thanks for listening.
Bye.