Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America
Northern whites in the post–World War II era began to support the principle of civil rights, so why did many of them continue to oppose racial integration in their communities? Challenging conventional wisdom about the growth, prosperity, and racial exclusivity of American suburbs, David M. P. Freund argues that previous attempts to answer this question have overlooked a change in the racial thinking of whites and the role of suburban politics in effecting this change. In Colored Property, he shows how federal intervention spurred a dramatic shift in the language and logic of residential exclusion—away from invocations of a mythical racial hierarchy and toward talk of markets, property, and citizenship.
 
Freund begins his exploration by tracing the emergence of a powerful public-private alliance that facilitated postwar suburban growth across the nation with federal programs that significantly favored whites. Then, showing how this national story played out in metropolitan Detroit, he visits zoning board and city council meetings, details the efforts of neighborhood “property improvement” associations, and reconstructs battles over race and housing to demonstrate how whites learned to view discrimination not as an act of racism but as a legitimate response to the needs of the market. Illuminating government’s powerful yet still-hidden role in the segregation of U.S. cities, Colored Property presents a dramatic new vision of metropolitan growth, segregation, and white identity in modern America.
 
1101614493
Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America
Northern whites in the post–World War II era began to support the principle of civil rights, so why did many of them continue to oppose racial integration in their communities? Challenging conventional wisdom about the growth, prosperity, and racial exclusivity of American suburbs, David M. P. Freund argues that previous attempts to answer this question have overlooked a change in the racial thinking of whites and the role of suburban politics in effecting this change. In Colored Property, he shows how federal intervention spurred a dramatic shift in the language and logic of residential exclusion—away from invocations of a mythical racial hierarchy and toward talk of markets, property, and citizenship.
 
Freund begins his exploration by tracing the emergence of a powerful public-private alliance that facilitated postwar suburban growth across the nation with federal programs that significantly favored whites. Then, showing how this national story played out in metropolitan Detroit, he visits zoning board and city council meetings, details the efforts of neighborhood “property improvement” associations, and reconstructs battles over race and housing to demonstrate how whites learned to view discrimination not as an act of racism but as a legitimate response to the needs of the market. Illuminating government’s powerful yet still-hidden role in the segregation of U.S. cities, Colored Property presents a dramatic new vision of metropolitan growth, segregation, and white identity in modern America.
 
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Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America

Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America

by David M. P. Freund
Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America

Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America

by David M. P. Freund

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Overview

Northern whites in the post–World War II era began to support the principle of civil rights, so why did many of them continue to oppose racial integration in their communities? Challenging conventional wisdom about the growth, prosperity, and racial exclusivity of American suburbs, David M. P. Freund argues that previous attempts to answer this question have overlooked a change in the racial thinking of whites and the role of suburban politics in effecting this change. In Colored Property, he shows how federal intervention spurred a dramatic shift in the language and logic of residential exclusion—away from invocations of a mythical racial hierarchy and toward talk of markets, property, and citizenship.
 
Freund begins his exploration by tracing the emergence of a powerful public-private alliance that facilitated postwar suburban growth across the nation with federal programs that significantly favored whites. Then, showing how this national story played out in metropolitan Detroit, he visits zoning board and city council meetings, details the efforts of neighborhood “property improvement” associations, and reconstructs battles over race and housing to demonstrate how whites learned to view discrimination not as an act of racism but as a legitimate response to the needs of the market. Illuminating government’s powerful yet still-hidden role in the segregation of U.S. cities, Colored Property presents a dramatic new vision of metropolitan growth, segregation, and white identity in modern America.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226262758
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 08/01/2007
Series: Historical Studies of Urban America
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 496
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

David M. P. Freund is associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. The New Politics of Race and Property

Part I: The Political Economy of Suburban Development and the Race of Economic Value, 1910-1970

Chapter 2. Local Control and the Rights of Property: The Politics of Incorporation, Zoning, and Race before 1940

Chapter 3. Financing Suburban Growth: Federal Policy and the Birth of a Racialized Market for Homes, 1930-1940

Chapter 4. Putting Private Capital Back to Work: The Logic of Federal Intervention, 1930-1940

Chapter 5. A Free Market for Housing: Policy, Growth, and Exclusion in Suburbia, 1940-1970

Part II: Race and Development in Metropolitan Detroit, 1940-1970

Chapter 6. Defending and Defining the New Neighborhood: The Politics of Exclusion in Royal Oak, 1940-1955

Chapter 7. Saying Race Out Loud: The Politics of Exclusion in Dearborn, 1940-1955

Chapter 8. The National Is Local: Race and Development in an Era of Civil Rights Protest, 1955-1964

Chapter 9. Colored Property and White Backlash

List of Abbreviations

Notes

Index

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