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nothing to address the material conditions of life for black people. When I read those reports from the <br />1940s I was really struck by the fact that while they had people do all these rankings of their attitudes, <br />there was basically a passing reference to the fact that 40% of the city at least had been restricted by <br />these racial covenants. <br />Racial covenants are a legal clause that specifies that land can never be occupied or sold to anyone <br />who's not white. The first one that Mapping Prejudice has found was introduced in Minneapolis in 1910. <br />Before that moment, Minneapolis was not a particularly segregated place. But after, racial covenants <br />were in use for 40 years. A lot of these contemporary disparities that are so pronounced and brutal have <br />roots in the history of deliberate efforts to make sure that all land in the city remained in the control of <br />white people. <br />Bergin: You start to see this map taking place, where black folks and other people of color couldn't buy, <br />couldn't build, weren't allowed to even occupy. Then, as history shows us, the redlining that the Federal <br />Housing Authority implemented during the Depression literally follows these profiles and these <br />boundaries and barriers in terms of what neighborhoods were worthy of investing in and underwriting <br />loans in. What we learned recently is that it wasn't just informal patterns of occupancy — it's all based <br />on the systemic racism of the 19th century. And then it shows up later in the 20th century, in terms of <br />the growing disparities. <br />"This is how segregation works in Minneapolis: It re -inscribes the racial stereotypes, because it keeps <br />peaceful people isolated." <br />Delegard: You could tell the story that I told you about almost any American city: Racial covenants are <br />not unique to Minneapolis, redlining's not unique, white violence is not unique, real estate steering is <br />not unique to Minneapolis. But the way they were used has created a different environment here. <br />When they first started to be used, there were just very few African Americans in this city. Because the <br />restrictions were adopted in such a universal, overwhelming way, where so much of the land as it <br />developed in the city throughout the 20th century was just off-limits to anyone who was not white — <br />the fact that that happened at a really critical moment in the city's history in the way that it did really <br />created a different geography of intolerance in this city, a segregation of opportunity. <br />Because of that, it became very, very hard for African Americans to find a place to live and buy a home <br />— and very hard to buy a home where they could actually amass wealth over time, rather than <br />homeownership being a financial burden. <br />Shannon Smith Jones, executive director of the nonprofit affordable housing organization Hope <br />Community: We can tout this as a really great space to live. Minnesota is absolutely beautiful: We do <br />have beautiful parks, we have walkable places, bikable places, all of these lakes. But who and how we <br />get to access those things has always been a part of it. Green spaces look different in North Minneapolis <br />than they do in other parts of the city. Even up until recently, when they started investing in inner-city <br />parks, there are huge disparities in what parks look like in North Minneapolis vs. Southwest <br />Minneapolis. There's been a value laid in the infrastructures that have allowed for those that succeed <br />and those who that don't to be held along the racial lines. <br />