East of Detroit, United States of America. Using commercial satellite imagery with a resolution of 0.5 meters, you can see the low wall running north-south and spanning 4 blocks. On the west side of the low wall is the municipal administration area, and on the east side is Gros Point.
The significant differences between the two sides of this wall are clearly discernible from space 500 kilometers away: houses, roads, greenery, facilities... Everything marks two different worlds.
This wall separates "white" from "black.". In what it calls the world's most democratic and equitable country, walls of separation, whether explicit or invisible, are still being erected in one community after another.
Neighborhoods set with "gems" and collapsed houses
Gros Point is about 10 kilometers from downtown Detroit and has a population of about 50,000, mostly whites. The wall began to emerge in the 1980s and was built mainly by white residents on the east side of the wall.
White residents of Gros Point did not see the wall as racial segregation, but as protecting their property from the tide of urban decline in the direction of downtown Detroit. However, according to census data, the proportion of blacks on the west side of the wall is much higher than on the east side of the wall.
The west side of the wall is covered with decay and ruin: cracked roads, collapsed houses, a large number of bare open spaces, and the density of houses is one-tenth of the size of the east side of the wall.
On the east side of the wall, the pavement is not significantly damaged; the houses are extremely dense, but everywhere is trimmed green space; single-seat houses generally occupy more than twice the size of the west side, and many houses have wide passages connecting the road, indicating a garage; and the azure swimming pool is set like a jewel in a neat neighborhood.
The differences in community scenes brought about by the skin color of the resident population exist almost throughout Detroit, but in different ways. In urban areas, closer to job opportunities, black communities are much denser than white communities.
In the vicinity of the Ford Motor Plant in the urban area, although people all serve the same factory, a completely different community structure can be seen through the extraction of roads.
Located on the west side of the factory, the predominantly white community, in addition to the main road, the road into the community is mostly arc-shaped and other irregular shapes, these carefully designed roads and neat lawns, in the satellite imagery constitute a beautiful picture.
It is estimated that each individual residential plot is about 36 meters long and about 18 meters wide, covering an area of nearly 660 square meters, and the house itself generally occupies more than 200 square meters. This is actually something that all blue-collar workers — whether "White" or "Black" — are hard to afford, but whites are more likely to apply for loans.
Located on the east side of the factory, the predominantly black community has simple horizontal and vertical roads, houses are tightly arranged, and although the length of each plot is about 36 meters, it is less than half the width of the west side.
Using artificial intelligence technology to further extract the number of houses in the residential area of different skin colors, the density of residential buildings per unit area varies by more than ten times.
The Invisible "Red Line"
The "8 Mile Wall," located off Burwood Avenue in the northwest of downtown Detroit, is the city's oldest and most famous wall. It is 1 foot thick, 6 feet high, and 0.5 miles long, so named because one side is connected to the "8 Mile Road."
Today Burwood Avenue "8 Mile Wall". (Image source: NBC)
Early Burwood Avenue "8 Mile Wall". (Image source: NBC)
In 1941, developers wanted to create a white community in the burwood avenue area, which was predominantly black residents, but the federal housing administration refused: it was defined as a "dangerous" area, and racial promiscuity could provoke confrontation, lead to violence, and ultimately endanger the safety of investment, so no one was willing to provide property insurance for bank loans here.
So the developer built a gray concrete wall spanning 3 blocks. Insurance and loans immediately landed on the west side of the wall, which was dominated by white residents.
What ultimately prompted blacks to cross the "8-mile wall" in droves was that whites were moving away from the suburbs more and more quickly, enjoying more permissive spaces and better environments.
In the United States, there is serious racial discrimination in the financial system: black and minority communities often do not have access to insurance or need to pay more premiums, which is called the "Redlining policy."
It began in the 1930s, artificially dividing urban communities into four levels: A, B, C, and D, and identifying them on maps in different colors of ink. According to the practitioners, factors such as employment, income, education, community environment, public facilities and community harmony are the main bases.
Detroit's "red line map" at the end of 1939. The red areas are predominantly black communities. (Image source: Mapping Inequality project)
But since the 1960s, a series of surveys have shown that the "red line" is actually closely related to skin color: even if the white middle class lives in a black community within the "red line," its loans and insurance may be denied because the value of all properties in the area may fall.
The Federal Housing Administration requires that federal bank loans not guarantee projects sold to blacks, nor can federal bank guarantees be recommended for projects developed for white residents located near black neighborhoods because of the risk of being infiltrated by "discordant racial groups."
In Chicago's neighborhoods most heavily affected by the "red line" policy, residents receive only 4 percent of their savings on loans, compared with 31 percent in suburban white neighborhoods.
Today, in Chicago, an "invisible" wall of green spaces and roads still separates communities of different colors.
In Milwaukee, between 1985 and 1991, large insurance companies accounted for only 8 percent of black community policies, compared to 32 percent for white communities. Even whenever a community's residents change from predominantly white to predominantly black, insurance companies close their locations.
In Atlanta, an analysis of more than 100,000 mortgage applications showed that the percentage of middle-income white and black owners who received loans was 2.2:1 in 1982 and 6:1 in 1986.
Lack of financial support makes it difficult for predominantly black residents to improve their homes and environments, so they and white communities are easily identifiable in space.
An indestructible wall
Civil rights organizations, especially those within the "red line", have fought fiercely against the "red line" and even called on community residents to transfer all their deposits from banks that implement the "red line" policy.
At the national legislative level, attempts to break through the "red lines" have been rich in support and improvement of the Fair Access to Credit Act 1974, the Residential Mortgage Disclosure Act 1975, the Community Reinvestment Act 1977 and the Financial Institutions Reform, Rehabilitation and Implementation Act 1989.
But Congress's attitude is that it wants banks to improve their investment behavior in order to protect their reputations. By the mid-1990s, legislative calls by federal financial regulators to increase enforcement sanctions were again rejected.
The de facto "red line"—the invisible wall of separation—remains.
As it remains difficult to obtain fair loans, predatory loans are pouring into the "red line" zone, with not only higher interest rates and fees, more stringent lending conditions, but also with little regard for lenders' ability to repay. Not only do lenders lose access to homes, they often lose their savings.
Research from the National Coalition for Community Reinvestment shows that 75% of communities marked as "red lines" were still in economic distress in 2018. Of the areas classified as "best" in the 1930s, 91 percent are still upper-middle income earners today, with 85 percent still dominated by white residents.
As satellite imagery shows, black communities are in decline and ruin. The Social Vulnerability Index, published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, also proves that the "red line" area is still the weakest place in the major cities in the United States today.
Baltimore, historically low-rated "red line zones" and high-rated "green line zones" correspond to today's social vulnerability index. (Image source: Mapping Inequality)
The so-called social vulnerability is a series of criteria for measuring the lag of social development from the level of public facilities to violence. In addition to decaying homes and environments, black communities have faced a systemic crisis.
Minneapolis, the "yellow line district" that used to follow the "red line district" expanded with the increase in the number of black residents and became the place with the highest social vulnerability index. On the evening of May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an African-American man, was violently killed by police here.
In Freud's place of death, as in all black neighborhoods in American cities, there were simple, straight roads, compact houses.
As has been the focus of the human rights struggle since the 1960s, Americans understand that "all other forms of segregation that exist in our society begin with, 'Where do you live?' ’”
Although the US Congress advocates the export of fairness and justice to the rest of the world, it is not willing to really erase the widespread separation wall and "red line" on the mainland.
This is an institutional racism and human rights issue.
In the United States, people are accustomed to attributing black poverty to their own "flaws" while ignoring the role of institutions and policies. People prefer to talk about the "American Dream" with beautiful environments, winding roads, spacious houses, and neat green spaces, rather than improving the poor black communities created by man.
This wall is a lie visible in space.
Director system: Liu Siyang Yan Wenbin
Producer: Ni Siyi, Xu Shanna
Planning: Zhong Haoxi
Producer: Cheng Ying, Zhang Zhengfu
Author: Shan Xu
Data/Video: Fu Yiming, Zhang Xiaoxue, Feng Chun
Vision: Guo Chao, Wang Jiadong, Li Dongze
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Source: Xinhua News Agency