Redlining and White Flight

It's not just a convenient target once you realize that as recently as the 1970s it was typical to redline neighborhoods so darker-skinned people wouldn't be shown certain homes. It was common to have white suburban flight, leaving all-black neighborhoods in the inner cities with little commerce or industry and few jobs. It's so easy to conflate class and race in some cities because a couple of generations out one still has been so informed by the other.

People are tribal about race and culture too, not just class. Redlining laws were aimed at minorities that could afford to live in the white neighborhoods they were moving into. We've made that illegal now, so people look for other ways to achieve the same effect.

How is it a product of racism? I always assumed it was due to the city's constituents wanting to protect their real estate invesments

You're trying to shift the words because it's uncomfortable, but the underlying facts remain the same. Community is often dominated, and in fact is defined by, by race. You can cherry pick a millionaire here and there but those are exceptions but it's disingenuous and ahistorical to assert that this isn't true. Redlining existed to maintain racial divisions. Cities, counties, and even states explicitly maintained racial divisions, and even though these laws do not exist today

In vast swathes of the US, the reason for it was to prevent black people from moving into white neighborhoods. I'd still call that outdated.

Living in the poor side of town often correlates to a history of systemic racism and redlining.

It's because in the US historically black neighborhoods have a unique history of racism and disinvestment.Here's an article about what happened literally where I'm sitting: https://kingneighborhood.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/BLEE...Stories like

Having talked to folks from the segregation era, you may be thinking of red-lining and white flight. As folks realized cities and schools were desegregating many moved out of urban environments to suburbs and rural areas, then excluded POC through zoning.Even if we accept that as the primary cause (which I don't) that would mean cowardice and racism are the root cause. An irrational fear of people who don't look and talk like us.

Pretty sure that was just racism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight#United_States

These people have figured out how to have their cake and eat it too. Major cities in the US have grown large enough that the ghettos can be reasonably far from the wealthier parts of town. That, plus racial profiling from both police and citizens, serves as an effective divide.