Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City

Antero Pietila

Ivan R. Dee, Mar 16, 2010 - History - 336 pages

Eugenics, racial thinking, and white supremacist attitudes influenced even the federal government's actions toward housing in the 20th century, dooming American cities to ghettoization. The Federal Housing Administration continued discriminatory housing policies even into the 1960s, long after civil rights legislation. This all-American tale is told through the prism of Baltimore, from its early suburbanization in the 1880s to the consequences of white flight after World War II, and into the first decade of the twenty-first century. The events are real, and so are the heroes and villains. Mr. Pietila's narrative centers on the human side of residential real estate practices, whose discriminatory tools were the same everywhere: restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting, predatory lending.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - datrappert - LibraryThing

For some reason, I am fascinated by Baltimore. Any drive through streets of once proud but now vacant and crumbling stores, or a walk around Mount Vernon Square, Calvert Street, or environs reveals ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - SqueakyChu - LibraryThing

This is a very well researched book about how race relations affected the demographics of Baltimore during the twentieth century. I was first curious to read this book because I grew up in Baltimore ...

Bibliographic information

• Title: Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City
• Author: Antero Pietila
• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, 2010
• ISBN: 1566639638, 9781566639637
• Length: 336 pages
• Subjects: History / United States / General; History / United States / State & Local / Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA); Social Science / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies