Book Review: "Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality"

Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality by Robin Bartram. University of Chicago Press, 2022. 

This is "a startling look at the power and perspectives of city building inspectors as they navigate unequal housing landscapes." Though we rarely see them at work, building inspectors have the power to significantly shape our lives through their discretionary decisions. The building inspectors of Chicago are at the heart of this author's analysis of how individuals impact - or attempt to impact - housing inequality. 

Drawing on her extensive research into code enforcement in Chicago, Bartram shows that building inspectors often make surprising choices about who to cite (and who not to cite) and discuss how these choices underscore the continuing challenge of persistent inequality.

In Stacked Decks, she reveals surprising patterns in the judgment calls inspectors make when deciding whom to cite for building code violations. These predominantly white, male inspectors largely recognize that they work within an unequal housing landscape that systematically disadvantages poor people and people of color through redlining, property taxes, and city spending that favor wealthy neighborhoods. This book illustrates the uphill battle inspectors face when trying to change a housing system that works against those with the fewest resources.

The book argues that cities are stacked decks. They are sites of vast disparities in racial wealth, health, education, and well-being. But this stacked deck also motivates. Disparities in the city inspire and organize action. Built environments - and the inequity they embody - motivate frontline workers like building code inspectors. But features of this unequal world also hinder the actions they inspire and work as justice blockers. This tension - between motivation and obstruction - makes inequality particularly stubborn and hard to change. This book is a story of how the stacked deck gets reproduced even when people are trying to do the opposite.

Book Review: "Cracked Foundations: Debt and Inequality in Suburban America (Politics and Culture in Modern America)"

 

Cracked Foundations: Debt and Inequality in Suburban America (Politics and Culture in Modern America), by Michael Glass. University of Pennsylvania Press: October 7, 2025. 336 pages, hardcover $34.95.

This book describes how debt and speculation financed the suburban American dream and led to today’s inequalities. In the popular imagination, the suburbs are synonymous with the “American Dream” of upward mobility and economic security. After World War II, white families rushed into newly built suburbs, where they accumulated wealth through homeownership and enjoyed access to superior public schools. In this revelatory new account of postwar suburbanization, historian Glass exposes the myth of uniform suburban prosperity. Focusing on the archetypal suburbs of Long Island, Cracked Foundations uncovers a hidden landscape of debt and speculation.

The author shows how suburbanites were not guaranteed decent housing and high-quality education but instead had to obtain these necessities in the marketplace using home mortgages and municipal bonds. These debt instruments created financial strains for families, distributed resources unevenly across suburbs, and codified racial segregation. Most important, debt transformed housing and education into commodities, turning homes and schools into engines of capital accumulation. The resulting pressures made life increasingly precarious, even for those privileged suburbanites who resided in all-white communities. 

For people of color denied the same privileges, suburbs became places where predatory loans extracted wealth and credit rating agencies punished children in the poorest school districts. Long Islanders challenged these inequalities over several decades, demanding affordable housing, school desegregation, tax equity, and school-funding equalization. Yet the unequal circumstances created by the mortgages and bonds remain very much in place, even today.

Cracked Foundations not only transforms our understanding of housing, education, and inequality but also highlights how contemporary issues like the affordable housing crisis and school segregation have their origins in the postwar golden age of capitalism.

Glass is an Assistant Professor of History at Boston College.

Book Review: "Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYism, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don't See"

 

Excluded: How Snob Zoning, NIMBYism, and Class Bias Build the Walls We Don't See.by Richard D Kahlenberg. JPublicAffairs, 2023. 352 pages. Hardcover, $35.00. 

This is an indictment of America's housing policy that reveals the social engineering underlying our segregation by economic class, the social and political fallout that result, and what we can do about it. Kahlenberg integrates quantitative and qualitative evidence to illuminate one of the central controversies in contemporary America: how to reconcile the tension between class and race. He shows how ‘snob zoning’ leads to segregation by both race and class and thus blocks opportunity for all Americans.

While the American meritocracy officially denounces prejudice based on race and gender, it has spawned a new form of bias against those with less education and income.  Millions of working-class Americans have their opportunity blocked by exclusionary snob zoning. These government policies make housing unaffordable, frustrate the goals of the civil rights movement, and lock in inequality in our urban and suburban landscapes.

Through accounts of families excluded from economic and social opportunity as they are victimized through “new redlining” that limits the type of housing that can be built, Kahlenberg illustrates why America has a housing crisis. He also illustrates why economic segregation matters since where you live affects access to transportation, employment opportunities, decent health care, and good schools. He shows that astonishingly the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities where racial views are more progressive. Despite this there is hope. Kahlenberg tells the inspiring stories of growing number of local and national movements working to tear down the walls that inflicts so much damage on the lives of millions of Americans.

Baltimore Fair Housing Month Resource Fair 2025 is April 26th!

 

April is recognized as Fair Housing Month in the United States to commemorate the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968. This landmark law prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, color, religion, sex, disability, familial status, and national origin. This month serves as a crucial reminder of the ongoing struggle for equal access to housing and the need to address systemic barriers that perpetuate segregation and inequality. It is a time to reflect on the progress made, educate communities about their rights, and reaffirm commitments to fostering inclusive, diverse neighborhoods where everyone has the opportunity to live free from discrimination. Join the Office of Equity and Civil Rights and the Community Relations Commission for our upcoming Baltimore City Fair Housing Month Resource Fair! Learn more about your rights as a renter/homeowner in Baltimore City and be connected with resources to help you thrive in your communities. Lunch will be served, and activities are available for folks to bring their kids!  Date: Saturday, April 26, 2025  Time: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM  Location: Baltimore Unity Hall  Address: 1505 Eutaw Place, Baltimore, Maryland 21217, United States Register Here!

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State Legislature Creates a Maryland Reparations Commission, One of Few States with a Statewide Panel

 

The House of Delegates has given final approval on April 2nd to a bill that would create a Maryland Reparations Commission, sending the measure to the governor for his signature. The 101-36 party-line vote would make Maryland one of the few states in the nation with a statewide body to study the inequality endured by African descendants. California became the first state in 2020 to pass legislation; then Illinois in 2021 and New York in 2023. According to the American Association of Medical Colleges' Center for Health Justice (ACHJ), as of March 6, 2024, 22 localities (including Washington, D.C.) have approved a reparations commission or task force and 11 states have introduced legislation to create one.

If approved, the Maryland commission would assess specific federal, state and local policies from 1877 to 1965, the post-Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. Those years “have led to economic disparities based on race, including housing segregation and discrimination, redlining, restrictive covenants, and tax policies,” according to the bill. The commission would also examine how public and private institutions may have benefited from those policies, and would recommend appropriate reparations, which could include statements of apology, monetary compensation, social service assistance, business incentives and child care costs. The all-volunteer commission would consist of 23 people, including two employees from the state’s four historically Black colleges and universities with expertise in the history of slavery; a representative from the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission; and the state archivist or a designee from that office.

A hearing on the Maryland Senate version was first held on February 27th and then approved by the full chamber on March 14th. The bill would go into effect July 1st and remain in effect until June 30, 2028.

You can view a discussion with Dr. Jamal Bryant and the Reverend Dr. Robert Turner, NAARC Commissioner and Pastor of Empowerment Temple, Baltimore, on the “Let’s Be Clear” Podcast. They explore reparations, the intersection of faith and justice, and the significance of the Tulsa race massacre centennial. Dr. Turner recounts his 1,169-mile advocacy journey and highlights the ongoing fight for equity and reparative justice. Source: The Jamal Bryant Podcast “Let’s Be Clear,” YouTube. It was made available by the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC).

Read the April 3, 2025 Maryland Matters article.

Read the April 2024 ACHJ article about reparations.

Book Review

The Third Reconstruction: America's Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century

by Peniel E. Joseph. Basic Books, 2022. 288 pages, hardcover. $27.00

In this book, distinguished race and democracy historian Peniel E. Joseph (professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs and the History Department, College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas at Austin) argues that that the period since 2008 has constituted the country's Third Reconstruction.

Joseph previously has published several books on the Black Power movement and a Stokely Carmichael biography. His Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama (2010) is utilized in 1,120 libraries according to WorldCat and Wikapedia.

Joseph, in The Third Reconstruction, thus gives a new interpretation of recent history. He submits that the racial conflicts in 2020 "marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era." The book traces this Third Reconstruction from the election of Barack Obama to the rise of Black Lives Matter to the 2021 failed assault on the Capitol.

 Book Review

Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

By Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields.

Verso, 2022 (2014). 310 pages, $19.95 paperback.

Just out in paperback, this edition of a widely praised work on race and racism is as British historian Robin Blackburn - author of The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation And Human Rights (Versdo, 2013) - has remarked:

“A most impressive work, tackling a demanding and important topic—the myth that we now live in a postracial society—in a novel, urgent, and compelling way. The authors dispel this myth by squarely addressing the paradox that racism is scientifically discredited but, like witchcraft before it, retains a social rationale in societies that remain highly unequal and averse to sufficiently critical engagement with their own history and traditions.”

Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue that though most people assume racism comes from a perception of human difference, the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” This is so entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. Racecraft is so much a continuing part of American history, economic doctrine, politics, and daily thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed.

The authors hold that the reason that the promised post-racial age has not begun is partly because Americans have failed to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. Until this is done, the racial age will continue.