Review of race brokers

More than four decades ago, sociologist Thomas Pettigrew famously called residential segregation in the US the “linchpin” of racial inequality. Those words deeply influenced the discipline and have stuck with it through the years. Researchers have since widely documented the causes of segregation (things like unequal resource access, discrimination and residential preferences), as well as its effects (including individual- and neighborhood-level disparities in wealth, education, health, and more). But few studies explicitly aim to study the actual mechanisms and processes that connect segregation's broad causes with its broad consequences. Elizabeth Korver-Glenn's Race Brokers: Housing Markets and Segregation in the 21st Century marks the latest addition to that emerging literature. It draws from the author's multi-method study of real estate professionals in the Houston metro area. It includes a diverse but judiciously marshalled array of data: interviews with various types of professionals, ethnographic observations from shadowing them, and various quantitative analyses.

Race Brokers makes two related, overarching contributions. First, the book identifies and explains the mechanisms driving segregation across various “stages” of the home-buying process. Specifically, it frames segregation as a problem of both continuity and change. At every turn, the book is saying: so much has changed over the years. But segregation persists. Why? For Race Brokers: that's the puzzle. The book is quite explicit and intentional about identifying what exactly is new about it. We see, for example, how actual mortgage denial today plays a smaller role in the exclusion of applicants of color from access to mortgage credit. Instead, white mortgage bankers almost exclusively “network” with white real estate agents and their clients. So the racial exclusion happens indirectly—but no less harmfully—through the formation of these exclusionary networks.

There are obviously many mechanisms and processes driving segregation. But a critical one highlighted by sociologists over the years is the “dual” structuring of the housing market. That is, housing market dynamics seem to behave differently in white versus nonwhite (especially black and Hispanic) areas: in racially different areas, we often find different types of housing stock, different types of housing-related businesses and organizations, and different ways of producing housing-related profits, for example, scholars linked to the racial capitalism literature frequently remind us that such markets exist relationally: the accumulation and appreciation of home values in white areas largely depends on the devaluation of property in non-white (and especially black and Hispanic) areas.

In Race Brokers, we see this racialized and relational construction of value across different Houston neighborhoods playing out in a detailed and devastating way. The game in white areas is to cheerlead buyers to follow their heart's desire, to take out bigger and bigger mortgages, to shell out more and more, to drive up prices as fast and far as they can possibly go. And perhaps most importantly, the game is to limit access to so-called high value clients--namely, white clients. In this game, the people who buy homes are not simply purchasing a thing worth a specific amount of money. Rather, they're buying into a long-term promise defined by fantasies of seemingly endless value appreciation over time. Meanwhile, the game in black and Hispanic areas is telling buyers that the home they want is in fact worth less than they're offering to pay for it. It's a game of asking both buyers and sellers to settle for less. It's a game of hunting for people vulnerable enough to sell their homes for cheap.

In this way, Korver-Glenn's story of the mechanisms that drive segregation ultimately pinpoints the housing market. And that leads to the book's second big contribution: it demystifies and denaturalizes the market itself. In doing so, the book provides an invaluable service. For most homebuyers, “the market” is rather abstract. You pull up Zillow, and the market is somehow already showing you listings of available homes. It's already identifying features you desire. It's already showing you very exact price points. It's not always clear where the information comes from, but for most people, it all seems fairly legit. And much of “the market” seems already set in place by the time people start looking for a home. The developers have already built the properties. The neighborhoods have already formed. The prices and values have already stabilized. Both the built environment and the prices attached to specific properties are things we tend to take at face value.

But as Korver-Glenn's findings show us, that abstraction is distorting. Specifically, it distorts the fact that, in housing markets, people with power make choices about where and how to distribute resources that determine living conditions and life chances for all of us. The big accomplishment of Race Brokers is that it demystifies so much of that. The book relentlessly shines light on the real people who actually make markets--on their real actions and the real consequences that follow. And that starts with the book's very layout and organization. The core chapters each introduce readers to a different type of housing market player: developers, agents, lenders, appraisers. The chapters explain their roles in great detail. We see how these different players collaborate - sharing resources, information and clients. We see how each plays a critical part in making the housing market “work.”

The book's profound lesson, however, is that very same qualities that make housing markets “work” in a functional sense also serve to perpetuate and entrench racial and economic disparities between places and populations. That is, the mechanisms that produce segregation are the same ones that give life and shape to “the market.” For example, economic sociologists often talk about “trust” as one of the key ingredients that enables markets to work. But in Race Brokers, we see the toxic side of trust. One agent, for example, described how white clients always asked her: “is this a Black neighborhood? Is this area Black?” Her response: “I just tell them to drive around.” And, as she drove around with them, she would help them point out racial clues, like tires lying around. The agent knew that such talk could violate Fair Housing regulations. But the fact, as Korver-Glenn writes, was that “white clients trusted white agents enough to feel comfortable asking them.” And the agents, “answered these inquiries in ways that were clear enough for White clients to understand their racial meaning.” That's how they fostered trust in clients, proving their “honesty” and “forthrightness.”

Likewise, expertise is another one of those key ingredients necessary for markets to function. But for the characters that we meet in Race Brokers, it is precisely their status as market “experts” that lends them extraordinary power to shape what we think and feel about race and place. They're the experts, for example, who use their authority to draw up the official maps used by agents, brokers, appraisers and other professionals. The maps, as Korver-Glenn shows, clearly exaggerate areas of white population. But few are likely to question that. They're the experts who devise guidelines for underwriting mortgage loans. Those guidelines are riddled with “gray areas,” where underwriters can easily make lending decisions based on racialized assumptions about applicants and their ethnic-sounding names. The book urges us to look closely at what expertise is actually doing here: it is legitimating people's gut feelings and beliefs about racial “others” and naturalizing the segregation that results.

While the book is not very long, it packs many insights and contributions. Readers should not miss the concluding chapter on policy recommendations. Korver-Glenn clearly took the time to develop proposals—including an overhaul of the appraisal structure—that are ambitious yet sensible, and which follow seamlessly from the book's empirical matter. Race Brokers is the author's first book but it already sits among the classics. I can assure you: scholars interested in housing, place-based inequalities, markets, race and racism, and policy will be reading, teaching and thinking with this book for many years to come.