The disinvestment boundary line that kills opportunity

The disinvestment boundary line that kills opportunity
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Public policy not only makes things happen, it also keeps them from happening. A decision NOT to invest in something can have as much of an impact as making the investment. Part of the racial challenge facing us today are boundary lines of disinvestment that often kill opportunity for the poor and people of color in our cities.

About a week ago, columnist Derrick Jackson wrote a piece about his hometown of Milwaukee, site of recent riots after police killed a black man. Jackson lamented an “invisible racial cage,” separating the city’s black residents from the white suburbs. Nine months earlier, Janell Ross wrote an article in The Washington Post trying to explain the realities of Freddie Gray’s life in Baltimore before he was killed while being transported by Baltimore police officers. Ross wrote,

The abbreviated and not at all easy life of Freddie Gray was, to some extent, shaped by Gray’s choices. ...But it is also a life altered and quite likely distorted by the net effects of where and how the wealthy country into which he was born and its voters have decided to distribute its resources. ...You see, Baltimore might be the biggest city in one of the nation’s wealthiest states. But for the people in many of its neighborhoods, those resources are most readily used in ways that a growing body of economists, sociologists and mental health experts now argue do far more harm than good.

Where and how you grow up matters. Famous scholars have documented it in huge books and scholarly papers, time and again. In the world of human services, the phrase “your zip code shouldn’t determine your future” has become an old saw specifically because the zip code in which you are born disproportionately does determine your future.

Our public policy discussions about this reality have focused on the failures of various investments. Welfare didn’t work. Community block grants didn’t work. Public schools don’t work. Social capital doesn’t take. Those arguments are themselves debatable. But what about all the investments we aren’t making that could bring about change?

Did you know that there’s such a thing as the Latte Line? Nope, not the length of time you have to wait at Starbucks before you get your fix. It refers to the line in a community where the middle class stops, and therefore businesses that cater to them stop coming, too. On the one hand, the Latte Line suggests the boundary of gentrification. On the other, it also marks an invisible boundary of business disinvestment that can affect employment, suppress property values, discourage investment in transportation, and kill foot traffic that might support other local business.

What about transportation? According to Jackson, a key culprit of Milwaukee’s invisible racial cage is a systematic decision not to provide fast, affordable transportation to minority-heavy inner ring of the city. How about Freddie Gray’s neighborhood? Same thing. For those lucky enough to have a job (his neighborhood has 50%+ unemployment), crummy transportation options can drive commute times up to 45 minutes. That matters for everything from how long kids have to be in child care, to what jobs are viable, to how much time adults have to make other life investments - such as physical health or continuing education.

Then there’s access to convenience and other services. In Boston recently, Amazon caused a kerfuffle by drawing a boundary line around where it would and would not offer same-day delivery. The neighborhood it left out? Roxbury: highest percentage of African Americans in the city. After pointed protest, however, the company changed its mind and announced it would include Roxbury four days later.

We all know the old stories of redlining in our communities - banks refusing to offer mortgages to people of color in anything but specific, unattractive neighborhoods. Today’s redlining is different, but no less real or pernicious. Draw a circle around any low-income neighborhood of color in a US city and you are bound to find fewer businesses, less attractive green space, poorer transportation options and other signs of failure to invest.

We should challenge our lawmakers at the city, state and federal levels to identify these disinvestment boundary lines, and then work against them. Every public policy debate should include whether or not the investment in question further solidifies a racial cage or starts to tear it down. The same with the businesses to which we provide tax breaks and our consumer dollars. And when communities of color call for investments, we should ask ourselves, “What’s the long-term impact of not doing this?” along side, “How much will it cost, and when will we see the results?”

What we don’t do does a lot.

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Correction: An earlier version of this posting referred to the police in Milwaukee as white.

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