# Redlining

*Race-based mortgage policy that denied Black families capital, then blamed them for the wealth gap it created.*

> Black's Encyclopedia — the sourced record of Black American life.
> Portal: History & Migration · Status: In review · Revised: July 24, 2026 · Revisions: 1
> Canonical: https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/redlining-1fe0

## Questions this record answers

- How did redlining create the Black–white wealth gap?
- What policy kept Black families from homeownership?
- Why were Black neighborhoods denied mortgages?

## Summary

Redlining was the policy that marked Black neighborhoods as bad credit risks, cut them off from mortgages and investment, and then blamed Black people for the wealth gap that followed. It was a deliberate system of financial exclusion, not a natural result of Black economic behavior.

## The archive's standing

Redlining is one of the most consequential state-backed mechanisms of Black dispossession in the twentieth century. It turned race into a lending rule, then turned the consequences of that rule into an argument against Black capacity. The archive records it as a policy of engineered inequality, not an unfortunate market outcome.

## The policy

Redlining refers to the practice of denying or restricting mortgage credit and related investment in neighborhoods mapped as hazardous, with Black residence treated as a central marker of risk. The result was systematic disinvestment in Black communities and unequal access to homeownership and wealth accumulation.

## What it produced

Because home equity became a major engine of American wealth, redlining helped widen the racial wealth gap across generations. It also reinforced segregated housing patterns by making Black neighborhoods harder to buy into, improve, or refinance.

## The blame shift

The later story often blamed Black families for instability, low property values, or lack of savings. The record points the other way: the credit system itself was designed to withhold the very capital that households needed to build and preserve wealth.

## Why the archive names it

This archive names redlining plainly because the policy was state-enabled, durable, and measurable in its effects. Its legacy lives in the land, the debt structure, and the inherited gap it helped manufacture.

## Sources

1. Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Liveright, 2017.
2. Beryl Satter, Family Properties: Race, Real Estate, and the Exploitation of Black Urban America, Metropolitan Books, 2009.

## Related records

- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/urban-renewal
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/united-states-housing-segregation-after-world-war-ii
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/federal-housing-administration
- https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/black-white-wealth-gap-in-the-united-states

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Cite as: Black's Encyclopedia, "Redlining," revised July 24, 2026. https://www.blacksencyclopedia.com/record/redlining-1fe0

Text under the Black's Record License: cite the record, keep attribution attached, cite the revision date.