When millions of African Americans moved from the rural south to northern cities, exclusionary zoning and restrictive covenants worked to constrain their space. Over time, these practices evolved into lending discrimination and then into urban renewal projects that displaced Black communities.

Georgetown law professor Sheryll Cashin argues that geography is central to the American residential caste system, "The biggest myth in this country is that high opportunity living is earned and that ‘hood’ living is the deserved result of bad individual choices. It’s government systemic practices that created this landscape, that frankly, we’re all ensnared in."

Cashin’s latest book White Space, Black Hood.

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