The Making of Ferguson

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from Dissent magazine:



The Making of Ferguson


[font size="1"]At a vigil and rally for Michael Brown, Milwaukee, August 14, 2014 (Light Brigading/Flickr)[/font]

By Colin Gordon - August 16, 2014


In many respects, the script is a familiar one. A deeply segregated American city; an episode of police violence; a week of rage and protest—directed against both the police and the underlying segregation—and a chillingly militarized restoration of fragile order. Detroit in the summer of 1943. Miami in 1980. Los Angeles in 1992.

At the same time, the shooting of Michael Brown and its aftermath in Ferguson, Missouri offers a twist on this story. Greater St. Louis has always been a starkly segregated city, with the lines drawn at Delmar Boulevard between the city’s north and south sides and—until recently—at the border between the city and the suburbs sprawling west through St. Louis County and beyond.

Over the course of this history, local segregation was enforced and reinforced by a tangle of public and private policies. St. Louis was one of a handful of cities, early in the last century, to propose an explicitly racial zoning ordinance. When the Supreme Court checked this offense to equal protection (in 1917), the real estate industry stepped in—systematically adding race-restrictive deed covenants to transactions in white neighborhoods, and holding the line against racial transition as its core ethical standard.

When the courts outlawed race-restrictive deed covenants (in 1947), municipal zoning took over. West of the city and its inner suburbs, local zoning curtailed (and in many settings simply prohibited) all but large-lot single-family residential development. This fueled both urban sprawl and a generation of population flight, as white families rode federal subsidies (mortgage insurance, the GI Bill) out into the cornfields. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/ferguson-segregation-suburbs-white-flight-mike-brown

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