Mapping the Restrictions of African American Lives
Racism has been a constitutional factor in determining and shaping the lives of African Americans. Simple acts such as occupations, benefits, daily life, and even housing become acts of despair to African Americans due to the intolerance rendering in people from back to the times of Jim Crow (and obviously before) until present day 2018. Through the Mapping Prejudice project, the concept of exclusion of African Americans, and other minorities, is prevalent through the use of structural racism including occupying homes in any form and can be displayed through the use of digital humanities.
Structural Racism
Injustice towards African Americans has been relevant for many years. Through slavery, the era of Jim Crow, and the current Black Lives Matter activism, African Americans have been a part of a bigoted, intolerant society through history to present. This shows how racism affects the daily life of those impacted by it. From simply going to a store, school, or any other basic part of society, African Americans face the possibility of being targeted by those who feel they are superior.
“These factors include the entrenched racism in our legal, social, and political systems that enable police officers to disproportionately stop people of color, often without cause, and who do so with greater use of force without any repercussions.”
-Garcia and Sharif, Black Lives Matter: A Commentary on Racism and Public Health
This map shows those states in which racial segregation in public education was required by law before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. In 1960, four years later, fewer than 10 percent of southern African American students attended the same schools as white students.
-Lumen Learning, The African American Struggle for Civil Rights
The well-known act of structural racism through education is the act of segregation of students by race. Doing so, obstructs the futures of children while at the same time altering a child’s belief and values of other races while at a young age. The laws set forth during this era prior to Brown vs. Board of Education was a legal act of discrimination and racism within the education system. In modern era, people are still acting on structural racism through many other attempts from obtaining occupations, applying to organizations, and even buying homes.
Racism in Occupying a Home
The covenants presented through Mapping Prejudice show how racism can be portrayed and acted on in almost any situation. While analyzing, I saw how simple acts such as buying, renting, or occupying were rigorously restricted to African Americans and even other groups other than the Caucasian and white race. In these racial covenants, they either were explicit or referenced. The explicit ones included straight forward racial language on restrictions.
One example was from covenant 658 that stated, “Said premises shall not be occupied by Negroes nor Jews” (Mapping Prejudice). Referenced covenants, instead, would state a racial restriction without any specific words, but would, instead, cite to another document such as a title, deed, or record. An example would be from covenant 307 that stated, “Files of Registrar of Titles, of which racial restrictions are permanent…” (Mapping Prejudice).
One phrase that I came across that particularly stood out to me was from a 1944 covenant number 090 which stated, “No part or portion of the within conveyed premises shall be sold, mortgaged, leased, occupied, used or otherwise owned or conveyed except to or by persons of the Caucasian race, except that this restriction shall not apply to resident domestic servants” (Mapping Prejudice). This allowed that African Americans (or other minority servitude) were allowed housing, but only through the acts of their work towards the legitimately allowed race — white or Caucasian.
The use of the words white or Caucasian always shows the effect of word play in these covenants. Simply stating “white” or “Caucasian” can, in turn, result in another form of discrimination towards those they (as in the ones allowing the leasing) believe are not “purely white.” Some examples could be those who are of a different European descent or those with a mix of backgrounds such as Creole or Eurasian.
Generally, the covenants I transcribed were referenced articles and contained the same language. I only came across one that specifically pointed out two specific races. Other than that, they just referenced racial restrictions. As for those who were allowed to occupy spaces, they were always referenced as Caucasian. The covenants that I transcribed ranged between the years of 1920–1950. This was possibly the high point of property buying and obviously the end of the Jim Crow era which was still highly prominent. Another key historical factor was that these were during the Great Depression.
Two novels that tie into the Mapping Prejudice project would be Gloria Naylor’s Women of Brewster Place and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man which reflect upon social injustice and the hardships faced by African Americans.
For Naylor’s novel, Brewster Place can be seen as a geographic region of exclusion. Naylor stated that “the wall came up and Brewster Place became a dead-end street” (2). This became the ultimate element that created Brewster Place’s isolation from the active city to its own community. The covenants in Mapping Prejudice convey racial language and restrictions which result in the relocation of a specific race, or races, to other areas of a community based on the constraints. According to Naylor, “The neighborhood was now filled with people who had no political influence; people who were dark haired and mellow-skinned — Mediterraneans — who spoke to each other in rounded guttural sounds and who brought strange foods to the neighborhood stores” (2). This is what caused the construction of the wall. This aspect of difference from those other than the locals created a need to separate the two groups of people. By doing so, it can be seen as an act of segregation due to differing views and races.
As for Ellison’s novel, the old shacks that were located within the college’s community is also an act of exclusion based on race and differing views. Ellison stated that they “were passing a collection of shacks and log cabins now, bleached white and warped by the weather. Sun-tortured shingles lay on the roofs like decks of water-soaked cards spread out to dry” (46). The shackled neighborhood represents where those who were restricted, or were exclusions due to societal expectations and regulations, were placed due to factors such as race. Following the tour for Mr. Norton, the narrator met with Dr. Bledsoe where Bledsoe stated, “The quarters! Boy, are you a fool? Didn’t you know better to take a trustee out there?” (102) This portrays how the quarters was displayed as a restricted area. The school wanted nothing to do with the community and vice versa. The exclusion of this community is shown through the dismissal and rejection of the school as well as the physical features of it. The actual homes were an act of segregation just as the people who populated them were.
Both of the novels connect towards the project of Mapping Prejudice due to the restraints set forth in order to have control over living conditions and those who occupy it.
The Affect of Digital Humanities
Digital transformation has allowed for more research and information to be readily available to readers. When it comes to reading, the audience can become distracted, act in skim reading, or pick and choose sections they find interesting. For digital works, it allows the writer to include content to keep the reader’s focus and allow them to engage within the text. As for digital humanity works, such as the Mapping Prejudice project, it involves reading while also allowing an interactive space to see the actual work that is being done. Mapping Prejudice is a digital project that displays the racial structure of society through the transcription of the provided covenants within a map.
“The Mapping Prejudice Project is working to identify and map racial restrictions buried in historic Minneapolis property deeds. These restrictions, known as racial covenants or racially-restrictive deeds, were used in most American cities before 1968 to prevent people who were not white from buying or occupying property. Yet no one has ever shown how much of the urban landscape was saddled with these restrictions. We are making the first-ever comprehensive map of racial covenants for an American city.
This is only possible with the help of Zooniverse volunteers. We have used optical character recognition to identify tens of thousands of warranty deeds with racial language. But we still need individuals to annotate these deeds. Those annotations will then be used to complete our map of racial restrictions in Minneapolis.”
Through these projects, the readers as well as the writers (or transcribers) learn more of the subject as they complete the tasks or contribute to them. Through Mapping Prejudice, one learns how structural racism through the act of occupying a home is prevalent as they learn the language, restrictions, structure, and provided information was portrayed through the years.
References
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. W. Ross MacDonald School Resource Services Library, 2018.
Jee-Lyn García, Jennifer and Mienah Zulfacar Sharif. “Black Lives Matter: A Commentary on Racism and Public Health” American journal of public healthvol. 105,8 (2015): e27–30.
Mapping Prejudice.” Mapping Prejudice, www.mappingprejudice.org/.
Naylor, Gloria. The Women of Brewster Place. Penguin Books, 2006.
“US History II.” Lumen Learning, Lumen, courses.lumenlearning.com/ushistoryii/chapter/the-african-american-struggle-for-civil-rights/.
“Zooniverse.” Zooniverse.org, www.zooniverse.org/projects/kevinesolberg/mapping-prejudice/about/research.