Abstract
In Privileged Places, Gregory Squires and Charis Kubrin paint a vivid picture of the structure of inequality in metropolitan America. In a set of loosely connected chapters, they convincingly show how the strong connection between race and place serves to exacerbate racial inequality in the spheres of housing access and criminal justice. They argue that urban sprawl, concentrated poverty, and residential segregation perpetuate the links among place, race, and privilege. While the book is not without weaknesses—the chapters could stand to speak to each other more and I have some quibbles with a couple of the analyses—this volume does a very good job of bringing theoretical discussion and empirical evidence to bear on these issues.
In the area of housing, chapters are devoted to discussing minority access to white neighborhoods, predatory lending, and discrimination in the property insurance industry. Among the principal findings is that in communities where a relatively larger share of mortgage loans are covered by the Community Reinvestment Act, blacks and Latinos are more likely to purchase homes in white neighborhoods. The chapter on predatory lending describes how exploitative lending practices can severely undercut revitalization efforts in vulnerable communities. The chapter on property insurance highlights how insurance redlining helps perpetuate dual metropolitan housing markets divided by race and income.
In the chapters on crime, the authors look at the association between access to capital and neighborhood crime, and how one's community influences an offender's reintegration into society. They find that increased levels of mortgage lending are associated with lower crime rates, suggesting that this can be an important strategy in community reinvestment efforts. The final analytical chapter links neighborhood conditions to recidivism in low–income neighborhoods.
Woven through all these chapters is commentary on policy. Squires and Kubrin argue that while many policies in the post–Civil Rights era have helped decrease racial discrimination and reduce racial inequality, policy has not done enough, and that inequality continues to thrive in new and sometimes unforeseen ways. For example, while efforts to promote minority homeownership have increased lending to low–income home seekers, some companies have taken advantage of the changing context by pushing exploitative loans that lead to financial ruin for many families.
The book's main strength is that it successfully documents continued racial inequality in the United States and the key role of place in this process. A couple of the chapters also offer empirical analyses that build on the existing academic literature. Finally, I appreciated the integration of policy discussions with the empirical analyses.
The authors rightly problematize the links between race, place, and inequality, but tend to deemphasize the progress that has been achieved in many areas. The declines in racial residential segregation, concentrated poverty, and the positive policy developments that have expanded minority opportunity in recent years, while all noted, tend to be downplayed, or at least viewed with considerable apprehension. In a similar vein, while the book directly equates predatory lending practices with historical redlining in the mortgage–lending industry, the extent and effects of the racial targeting in these areas likely differs qualitatively. Perhaps, however, the authors’ distrust of recent trends throughout the book is not inappropriate. After all, there is nothing that dictates that progress in combating racial inequality must or will continue, and sustained vigilance is likely very important.
Another quibble is that while all of the chapters tackle the common theme of race, place, and inequality, they often do not speak to each other. A couple of the chapters were clearly developed as stand–alone pieces that were published in academic journals, and they read that way. Finally, I have some questions about a couple of the decisions made in the empirical analyses (e.g., the analysis on minority moves to white neighborhoods should control for the size of the metropolitan white population in all models), but then again, it is not unusual for researchers to differ somewhat on such questions.
Overall, this is a fine book on how structural forces contribute to racial urban inequality. The effect of such forces is often lost in policy debates, which still tend to focus on the individual as the key unit of observation—or if not the individual, the “dysfunctional” culture of many poor urban communities. Thus, Squires and Kubrin provide an important reminder to maintain our attention on the continued salience of race, place, and social structure in social policy discussions of urban inequality.