Redlining

Below is a sample of the many resources you’ll find in the NASW Research Library on redlining.

NASW members have unlimited access to more than 25 international databases with thousands of documents from leading research institutions, think tanks and advocacy groups.

Learn more about the NASW Research Library >>


Example Resources


Document: Structural Racism, Historical Redlining, and Risk of Preterm Birth in New York City, 2013–2017

Authors: Krieger, N.; Van Wye, G.; Huynh, M.; Waterman, P.; Maduro, G.; Li, W.; Gwynn, R.; Barbot, O.; Bassett, M.

Source: American Journal of Public Health. July 2020, Vol. 110, Issue 7, p1046-1053.

The objective of this article is to assess if historical redlining, the US government's 1930s racially discriminatory grading of neighborhoods' mortgage credit-worthiness, implemented via the federally sponsored Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) color-coded maps, is associated with contemporary risk of preterm. The researchers analyzed 2013-2017 birth certificate data for all singleton births in New York City linked by maternal residence at time of birth to (1) HOLC grade and (2) current census tract social characteristics.


Document: Redlining in Lynchburg

Author: Abell, J.

Source: Virginia Social Science Journal. July 2019, Vol. 53, p5-24.

Lynchburg, Virginia's experience with racial injustice has deep roots in the institution of slavery and runs at least through the period of Jim Crow segregation, with real estate redlining in the 1930s playing an outsized role. The federal housing policies of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) in 1933, designed to avert the economic catastrophe that was unfolding during the Great Depression, set in motion one of the largest wealth building opportunities in human history. Unfortunately, those policies were openly racist in their intent and implemented in ways that specifically precluded blacks from being able to benefit from them in any significant way. This paper analyzes Lynchburg's experience with those HOLC policies; drawing upon the resources of the Mapping Inequality project and its interactive HOLC security maps and area designations.


Document: Epistemic Injustice and Epistemic Redlining

Author: Doan, M.

Source: Ethics & Social Welfare. June 2017, Vol. 11, Issue 2, p177-190.

The practice of Emergency Management in Michigan raises anew the question of whose knowledge matters to whom and for what reasons, against the background of what projects, challenges, and systemic imperatives. In this paper, the author offers a historical overview of state intervention laws across the United States, focusing specifically on Michigan’s Emergency Manager laws. The author draws on recent analyses of these laws to develop an account of a phenomenon that they call epistemic redlining, which is a form of group-based credibility discounting not readily countenanced by existing, ‘culprit-based’ accounts of epistemic injustice. 

NASW research library graphic
hands typing onto a laptop