As diverse as New York City is, we still see pretty defined borders to “ethnic” neighborhoods. HOLC pushed minorities away from “white neighborhoods” with a clearly racist rating system, and the remnants of that can still be seen in the city today. We have neighborhoods like Chinatown, Little India, Harlem, etc. that are all remnants of the housing policies that separated out minorities from “A” rated neighborhoods.

This rating system was a way of segregating neighborhoods without calling it segregation. Minorities couldn’t get mortgages in “A” rated neighborhoods, making it virtually impossible to afford housing in them. After this policy was trashed, the precedence still stood because redlining took its place. While redlining wasn’t an official policy, it still shaped neighborhoods just the same. Minorities were still being denied mortgages in “white neighborhoods”. While people naturally like to surround themselves with people like them because it gives them a sense of community, since minorities were only allowed access to certain neighborhoods they had no other options. Today we have densely Asian, African, Jewish, etc. neighborhoods because when families were moving into the city they had practically no other choice.