The esteemed moderator of Howard County Neighbors United, who is locally famous for his verbosity and pedantry, recently posted this uncharacteristically terse criticism of District 4 Board of Education candidate Jen Mallo. He took issue with Ms. Mallo’s statement in a recent candidate forum that “During redistricting, we saw groups that wanted to draw red lines around certain communities,” his objection being that the use of a phrase that describes racist housing policy perpetuates the “divisive” narrative that opposition to redistricting was racist.
It doesn’t surprise me that he would take offense to this. Despite many people, including me, explaining to him in vivid detail how the opposition to redistricting had a racist undercurrent that revealed itself in his very own Facebook group, he continues to insist that this is a “divisive false narrative” perpetuated by folks looking to smear nice white parents. Clearly, the man has never read anything by Ibram X. Kendi. Nor has he read The Elephant in the Brain, for that matter. But regardless of his own benevolent personal reasons for opposing redistricting last year, were he to perform just a smidge of critical thinking, he would see quite clearly why Ms. Mallo’s statement was, indeed, apropos.
Allow me to explain.
The practice of redlining was, quite literally, the drawing of red lines on maps to denote areas where mortgage lenders would not grant loans – those areas being primarily minority and economically disadvantaged. The end result of this practice was residential segregation and white people having disproportionately better access to wealth-building homeownership. Redlining became a de facto practice rather than a de jure practice thanks to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, but the far-reaching ramifications did not end there. Because schools tend to be aligned with neighborhoods, redlining influenced how school boundaries were drawn – creating a situation where both neighborhoods and schools were segregated, and much of these effects are still in place today (see also: Baltimore City).
In this day and age, it can be difficult to prove that any current housing policies have racist intent behind them, but the concept of disparate impact means that it doesn’t really matter – the result is what matters. In Howard County, regardless of whether or not racism had a hand in shaping housing policy throughout history, the current reality is that we have areas with little to no multifamily housing; neighborhoods with median home prices that leave out all but the most affluent; and very limited availability of developments that accept housing choice vouchers. This means that in Howard County, affordable housing is clustered mostly in Columbia with some pockets in Laurel, Elkridge, and Ellicott City. This means that these select neighborhoods – and their schools – are where most low-income Black and Latinx minorities in Howard County live and attend school. And some of these schools sit just a few miles from schools that are majority white and Asian, and affluent – think River Hill and Wilde Lake, or Howard and Long Reach.
The simple fact of the matter is this: low-income Howard County residents have fewer choices in housing. They cannot purchase a home in Clarksville or afford the rent in Maple Lawn. This means that sought-after schools like River Hill High, or Fulton Elementary, are not accessible to them. This may not be the intent of our current housing policy, but effectively, the result is the same – certain neighborhoods and their schools are inaccessible to low-income minorities.
Folks aren’t wrong when they say that the solution is to reform housing policy to diversify housing in the county and better integrate affordable housing in more communities. I’m on board with that. The problem is, when given their druthers, people don’t want to do that. They fight against it tooth and nail, time and time again. Even if folks were completely supportive of more affordable housing, it would take decades to reverse something that took decades to build. Some areas don’t have the space or the infrastructure to support more housing density. The longer the housing status quo remains in place, the longer the status quo of concentrated poverty in our schools remains in place as well, along with its deleterious effects on equity.
Since the school system cannot wait for housing policy to correct this issue, the 2019 redistricting process was intended to address it. But this noble effort to better integrate our schools and reduce segregation by socioeconomic status was met with acrimony, as angry River Hill and Maple Lawn families showed up in droves to protest and testify in opposition, just as they did in 2017 when they thought incoming Wilde Lake High School students would threaten their school’s ranking and thus their property values. The 2017 redistricting was tabled, and most of the 2019 moves ended up being thrown out in favor of the status quo, keeping these schools inaccessible to low-income minorities.
In other words, they drew a thick red line around their communities… just as Ms. Mallo said.