Civil Rights Act of 1968 - Social Steering

Social Steering

Social steering is a form of housing discrimination that involves housing authorities, real estate companies and even local governments steering certain groups of people, often minorities, into certain areas of a city. According to Realestateagent.com, it is “Directing a particular race to a certain neighborhood and away from others. An example is a real estate broker steering a black family away from a white neighborhood.” Some types of housing projects can be taken as examples of steering.

Often, especially in east coast cities, housing projects concentrate poor minorities into a few buildings or blocks, concentrating the population and isolating them from most of the city. Often the areas where the steering tends to concentrate certain groups of people lack city resources that other parts of the city may have. Mike Davis notes that in Los Angeles, the "ghetto" is not wired into key information circuits like the rest of the city such as education and cultural media.

In the 1950s, governments across America took initiatives to destroy so-called slums and ghettos of the cities, and put up housing projects in place. These multi-story, high-density projects were where whites began to push blacks who were dislocated by destruction of slums, also heavily avoided by the white population. Despite the Fair Housing Act, which included cases like Gautreaux and Shannon which prohibited placing projects exclusively in black neighborhoods, the trend did not end.

Social steering can also be outside the economic institutions of real-estate a government policy decisions to build projects. Often the people living in a neighborhood may not be so friendly to people moving in that are different from them. For example, in 1985 an interracial couple moved into an all white neighborhood in Philadelphia. Upon arrival there was an angry mob waving torches and protesting the arrival of a person of color. The attitudes of people in certain neighborhoods therefore can also contribute to the segregation and steering of people of certain backgrounds.

Before the Fair Housing Act many minorities were met with blatantly racist objects of deterrence such as signs in the neighborhood or at real estate companies explicitly saying they do not accept certain minorities. However, after the Fair Housing Act, steering took on the role of a subtle fashion, where realtors deceive and lie making it harder to learn about or rent/buy homes in certain neighborhoods. The minorities are guided or “steered” into neighborhoods with certain characteristics of economics and race.