Redlining In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin In The Sun

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Hansberry’s drama draws on her own experiences growing up in segregated Chicago, for example, redlining was often used in Chicago to discriminate against [colored people] who were moving into new neighborhoods. “Redlining is the practice of denying key services (like home loans and insurance) or increasing their costs for residents in a defined geographical area...It was almost exclusively a tool to force blacks (and other minorities) into particular geographic areas.”(Jamelle Bouie, How We Built the Ghettos, page 1). This ties to Hansberry’s play, a Raisin in the Sun, by the Younger family lived in a very cramped and poor area. They were then meet by Linder from the “welcoming committee” of the white neighborhood he told them the people of the neighborhood were …show more content…

Her characters like Walter and Ruth are forced to live in a cramped house because they don’t have the money to move out. Walter has to work as a chauffeur driving people around all day for a low wage. Just like in that time period when African Americans could not get high paying jobs, this aided in the racial problem because it kept blacks from being able to move into white neighborhoods. Another method used to keep blacks out of White neighborhoods was contract buying. “When selling on contract, the speculator offered the home to a black purchaser for a relatively low downpayment- often several hundred dollars would suffice. For bringing the home within the reach of a black purchaser, however, the speculator extracted a considerable price.” (Jamelle Bouie,How we built the ghettos, page 2) This is like when Lena the mother of Walter and beneatha bought a new house and only had to put a small down payment on it in order to buy the

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