In 1992, the University at Buffalo studied the state of Black Buffalo in a report that outlined segregation, housing and wealth inequity across the East Side. When the university revisited the numbers 31 years later, they found little change.
"Racial residential segregation is the linchpin in the system of Black inequality," concludes the 2021 report, titled "The Harder We Run."
The study was a major topic of discussion on Wednesday's edition of "Buffalo, What's Next?", WBFO's daily discussion on race. One of the authors of the study, Dr. Henry Louis Taylor, director of UB's Center for Urban Studies, spoke with WBFO News Director Dave Debo.
"We like to think about racial residential segregation as some kind of legacy of the past but it's not. And it's not just driven by white people don't like Black people. We used to like to think that way," Taylor said on the WBFO program, created in the wake of the racist Tops Market mass shooting on May 14.
"Racial residential segregation is tied up with with profits, is tied up with wealth production. It's tied up in the very way in which we design and construct our neighborhoods," Taylor continued. "And let me put it quickly and simply: housing value in the development of neighborhoods, whiteness, and social class exclusivity was embedded in the way in which value was created. The very concept of value as it related to housing and residential areas was based upon race whiteness."
You can read a copy of the study below.