Housing discrimination and institutional racism date back to the period following the conclusion of the Civil War. The infamous Jim Crow Laws were implemented following the conflict. These rules prohibited discrimination based on race and ethnicity. Disability discrimination tended to be more severe if a person was African American. Because there are not many disabled persons in society, there are few instances and reports of discrimination. This type of prejudice is, however, fairly typical. The government is developing laws to guarantee inclusiveness in institutions. Laws like the Fair Housing Act and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 have had a significant impact on the changes the nation has seen. Racism is not a problem that just begun, the country has come a long way into achieving what we have today. Other minorities such as people with disability and Hispanics have also been subject to the institutional and housing discrimination. The set legislations have aimed at leveling the opportunities for all the citizens regardless of race, social class, religion, or physical ability or disabity.
Institutional Racism and Housing Discrimination
Introduction
This is a form of discrimination whereby an individual or family is treated with bias when trying to purchase, rent, sell, lease or finance a house because of c certain characteristics such as sex, class, religion, and disability. House discrimination is thought to lead to spatial and racial segregation. This kind of spatial inequality can also lead to can also create wealth inequalities between certain groups of people. This paper creates a focus on the discrimination according to disabilities. According to statistical evidences, discrimination in the housing sector is still common. People with disabilities are the most affected by this discrimination. This paper will focus on focus on institutional racism and institutional discrimination especially among the black minority.
Discrimination in the country is still rampant, in the U.S. realtors or house owners will not discriminate out rightly but will decline offers from people with disabilities. To deal with this issue the government has set up different departments where people can make reports of discrimination. According to statistics from the Housing and Urban Development, there are over two million cases of discrimination every year but only one percent of those cases are reported. The reason for this is that victims of discrimination will not even know that they have been discriminated against. Take for instance, if a person with a disability visits a realtor, the realtor will only look at the person and tell him or her that an offer has been made on the house of the person was interest in. Nonetheless, the set organizations can carry out investigations o establish for any sinister activities. For the people with disabilities in Utah and Salt Lake City there is the Fair Housing program at the Disability Centre. Through this program, the centre serves people from all types of protected classes. This centre helps these people to find out if their rights, as per the Federal Fair Housing Acts, have been infringed (Brescia 164).
The Fair Housing Act
This legislation was passed during the time of President Lyndon B. Johnson. A member of the congress set up provisions of the Act and penalties for its violence. The act is codified under the title of the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
The Fair Housing Act was set and implemented with a primary purpose of protecting buyers or tenants from discriminatory or abusive sellers or landlords. According to the Act, it is illegal for any owner or landlord to refuse to sell or to rent a building or house because the interested person is from the protected class (Orfield 17-47). The aim of the act is to ensure that the housing market is unitary and not dependant on one’s background. The act call calls for open housing, the citizens of the United States had to wait until the end of World War II to set and enjoy the provisions of the Act.
The Fair Housing Act which is under Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 brought about the federal enforcement mechanism that was aimed at addressing the following issues;
Decline of rent or sale offer to any one because of race, disability, sex, religion, national origin, or color.
Bias and discrimination based on color, race, national origin, conditions of dwelling or privilege of sale.
Advertising of housing with a specification of preference of a given type of people.
Intimidation, threats, coercion, or infringement of one’s freedom and rights based on discriminatory factors.
Retailing against an individual or an organization because of discriminatory factors.
Through time, the Fair Housing Act has been amended with an aim making it improve equality and reduce discrimination. For example, in 1988 the disability and familial clause was added. A further legislation was made in 1990 when the American’s with Disabilities Act was passed by congress. This act provided exclusively for people with disabilities and how they could also enjoy equality and fair treatment in the housing sector.
It is the responsibility of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to enforce the Fair Housing Act. This department is under the federal executive department and hence has statutory powers. Currently, enforcement of the act has been taken over by the HUD Office of the General Counsel and the HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. This department is the largest civil rights agency in the country. It houses over 600 staff in 54 offices all over the country.
Victims of discrimination can visit any of these offices and report the cases or complaint at no charge. The agency will then investigate the issue and if the accused is the accused is found guilty then legal processes are initiated. The agency is currently working with the state governments to develop sustainability strategies for the fair housing laws. The agency signs agreements with other state governments to implement the fairness and equality strategies. When a case is reported to the FHEO officers, the case will be presented to local agencies of the place where the complaint was launched. These agencies will help the FHEO with carrying out investigations regarding the report. The FHEO initiated this program under the title Fair Housing Assistance Program (Orfield 17-47).
In addition to the FHEO bodies, there is a network of nonprofit housing advocacy organizations such as the one mentioned above. Some of these organizations are funded by the Fair Housing Initiatives programs while others depend on grants and donations. As mentioned above, the HUD defers investigation of cases to local agencies, it also confers jurisdiction to the federal district courts to hear and settle cases that need to be heard in a court. Along with this, the United States Department of Justice also reserves the power to make rulings on any cases of infringement of the Fair Housing Acts on behalf of the government of the United States. A case can be presented to the department of Justice if the federal districts court feels out of capacity with the HUD administrative process.
Discrimination according race has been difficult deal with, the same case with other forms of discrimination. The government is trying to make the reporting process easier by allowing the HUD to delicate other functions such as investigation. Delegation will improve the capacity of the agency to deal with more and more case. Moreover, the federal courts will also improve the settling of the reports (Relman 629).
Institutional Racism
Racial Segregation in Colleges
A growing concern about college education in the United States has arisen: Are colleges diverse enough racially, and what is the best way to ensure racial division in college? The solution to said question has been the use of race as a factor in college admissions. Colleges can and do use race as an admission factor to reach a hidden quota on certain races in their school – such as African American, Latino/as, Native American, White/Caucasian etc. Supporters of this racial based admission believe that race is underrepresented in the tiers of higher education while opponents of racial based admissions believe that colleges should only take individual merit and accomplishment into account when dealing with college admissions. The opponents are right, for race should by no means be a factor in college admissions. Colleges should not have race conscious policies for admissions because it is simply a form of reverse discrimination, stands against the ideals of the United States, and students admitted through racial preference aren’t necessarily ready for college. This paper will focus on the cases of discrimination and how the schools and the country in general are trying to address the issue (Chavous 637).
Factionalist Perspective
Colleges have made various efforts to diversify their student populace, but their efforts can and are viewed as reverse discrimination. Functionalists would state that colleges have had a difficult time weaving race as a factor into their admissions while adhering to decisions by Supreme Court. The high court has had rulings that are confusing and controversial when dealing with race as a college admission, but, despite this confusion, there have been some general guidelines laid down by the rulings. Namely by the cases Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger which have given colleges the ability to use race as an admission factor. The synopsis of rule of law on both cases is that colleges may use race as a factor in college admissions if it isn’t used as the sole factor in admission, and the latent issue of race as a factor must be narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling interest in the university and hence some sense of social stability.
Conflict Perspective
Despite these rulings, organizations such as the Center for Equal Opportunity still consider race based admission factors to be a form of racial discrimination (Whitman et al., 31).These types of admissions are racially discriminating, for these admission policies may still deny or overlook a student based on his or her skin tone. For example, if an university has too many Latino/as and White students it may overlook their applications in favor of an African American applicant who has less merit than the Latino/as and White applicants based on the skin tone of the African American applicant.
Symbolic Internationalist Perspective
The ideals and beliefs of the United States conflict with the preferential treatment administered through racial based admissions. The United States was built upon the ideal of Equality of Opportunity; that everybody has the same opportunity to succeed if they apply themselves. Having equal opportunities for education, or Equality of Educational Opportunity (EEO), is defined as the equal access for all young adults – regardless of gender or race – to the same knowledge and resources. Recently, the belief that there should also be equality of “outcomes” has encroached on concept of EEO. Equality of Results was not an ideal that was indulged in the founding of the United States, nor should it be endorsed now. Race, or one’s skin tone, is not a significant factor to consider when applying to a college. It is as Carl Cohen, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, states “Race preference – the policy of giving special advantages to the members of certain minorities simply on the ground that they are members of those ethnic groups is unjust. Racial preference gives merit to certain races while taking opportunities away from other races. At a fundamental level, racial preference come down to a physical attribute of an individual being given priority over an the individual’s actual accomplishments, and such ignorance goes against the equality and fairness established in the United States.
Content Analysis
A documentary produced by Mary Robertson aired in one of the local TV stations depicts how the country is slowly moving into a crisis. This study will be the medium of analysis on this study. In order to gather the required information I did watched the documentary and read some supportive articles written by different journalists. From these sources it is clear that placing race or skin tone in the regime of meritocracy when dealing with college admissions is and has been harmful not only to the majority but also to the minorities whom it is placed upon, for this sort of action takes away from the accomplishments of both the majority and the minority. The documentary features the case of Abigail Fisher, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case about the University of Texas’ race aware admission policy, argues that she was overlooked during UT admissions because of her skin color. And the only difference between us was the color of our skin.” Fisher goes on to state that she was taught to believe that discrimination was wrong, and she couldn’t believe that it was happening at the college level. Such discrimination means that the majority may be denied admissions based on their skin tone rather than their accomplishments, and the accomplishments of the minorities may be overlooked in favor of their skin tone. Ultimately, the use of race in admissions is a form of labeling. Labeling is the process in which one is labeled for an attribute they have, and out of this labeling process expectations and nonsensical notions about an individual’s performance arise around the individual. If racial based admission policies remain, minorities won’t be seen as deserving of their college admission. The documentary revealed that the minorities will be labeled as undeserving candidates, and their success will be labeled as an outcome of preferential treatment rather than individual accomplishment. Preferentially admitted students don’t always excel at college; indeed, most of them do worse than their counterparts, the classmates admitted without help through preferential treatment methods.
A journal in the Wall Street Journal shows that at selective schools, more than 80% of blacks, and two-thirds of Hispanics, have received at least moderately large admissions preferences, the equivalent of at least a 100-point SAT boost, and often much more. Ignoring the fact that that is an enormous form of reverse discrimination, these minorities are being elevated to an intellectual level that they are not at. That is not to say they are intellectually impaired, but they are being labeled and promoted as being prepared for challenges that are above their level of comprehensiveness. Obviously, a person who scores a 1900 combined score on an SAT understands/understood more than a person who scored the lesser score of 1800. According to American journalist Stuart Taylor Jr. most students admitted through racial preferences have failure and dropout rates that are disproportionately higher than their classmates. Most of these students are at the bottom of their class, and only a few of them gain entry to elite professional schools based on their merit alone. That is not to say that every preferentially admitted student fails, for there are plenty of minorities that are admitted through race conscious policies that graduate. Unfortunately, a disproportionately larger amount of these students fail and or drop out. These students aren’t always prepared for the challenges of college, and preferential treatment is simply a very sweet, indulgent trap that many minorities spring (Prelow 442-454).
Conclusion
In order to achieve the fairness and equality, it is important for people to participate in the fight and against discrimination. People need to report all the cases of discrimination, this way the culprits can be brought to book. In addition to the prevention and legislative strategies, the government and the relevant bodies should improve awareness among people. Some people are not aware that there are laws that protect their right to fair treatment. People need to be educated on the Fair Housing Act; they should be made aware of what they need to do in case they are ever victims of discrimination.
Works Cited
Brescia, R. H. (2009). Subprime communities: reverse redlining, the Fair Housing Act and emerging issues in litigation regarding the subprime mortgage crisis. Albany Government Law Review, 164.
Chavous, Tabbye M., "Gender matters, too: the influences of school racial discrimination and racial identity on academic engagement outcomes among African American adolescents." Developmental psychology 44.3 (2008): 637.
Orfield, M. (2005). Racial integration and community revitalization: Applying the fair housing act to the low income housing tax credit. Vand. L. Rev., 58, 17-47.
Prelow, H. M., Mosher, C. E., & Bowman, M. A. (2006). Perceived racial discrimination, social support, and psychological adjustment among African American college students. Journal of Black Psychology, 32(4), 442-454.
Relman, J. P. (2008). Foreclosures, Integration, and the Future of the Fair Housing Act. Ind. L. Rev., 41, 629.
Ross, S. L., and Turner, M. A. (2005). Housing discrimination in metropolitan America: Explaining changes between 1989 and 2000. Social Problems, 52(2), 152-180.
