Abstract
This article focuses on black professionals’ perceptions of career opportunities in the real estate industry and discrimination in housing markets. The analysis is based on a national survey of black real estate professionals administered between July and December of 2009. Findings from the article suggest that black real estate professionals adopt a business strategy scholars have referred to as the economic detour. Following this strategy, their business activities focus on a niche market confined to residential real estate transaction with black clientele in relatively segregated neighborhood contexts. The findings from this analysis suggest that this focus has emerged in response to perceptions of institutional discrimination that closes opportunities to black professionals in the broader real estate industry. Recommendations are made to address economic barriers faced by black professionals.
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Notes
The respondents are identified as “black” in this chapter because some of them were not U.S. citizens.
A white–black dissimilarity index identifies the percent of blacks across census tracts in a metropolitan area that would have to relocate in order to produce a completely integrated community. For example, a dissimilarity index equal to 65 would indicate that 65% of the black community would have to relocate in order for a metropolitan area to become integrated. Calculations were based on 2000 U.S. Census were, since it was the most recent data release that included census tract level data necessary to calculate dissimilarity indexes for the metropolitan areas examined in this analysis.
The ACS is an annual survey of population and housing characteristics conducted by the US Census Bureau. It is administered to 3 million households in the country per year. The ACS collects information previously collected in the long form of the decennial census. It is the largest survey, other than the decennial census, administered by the US Census Bureau.
State level data for SBO data was applied to the analysis for two reasons. First, at the time of the writing of this article, MSA level data was not released for the 2007 SBO. Second, in prior releases of SBO data, a large proportion of data for black-owned real estate firms was suppresses by the U.S. Census Bureau at the MSA level due to the low number of firms identified at that level of analysis. Consequently, state level data from the 2007 SBO was the most accessible and applicable to this analysis.
It is noteworthy that dissimilarity indexes above 70 are considered to reflect hyper-segregation. A mean dissimilarity index of 65.2 suggests that about half of the MSAs where survey respondents were located were at or approaching hyper-segregated conditions.
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Acknowledgement
This research was supported in part by an annual research grant from the UB2020 Scholars Fund at the University at Buffalo. The author would like to thank Gloria Kornowski for research assistance. The Author would also like to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers from the Review of Black Political Economy for comments on an earlier version of this article.
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Silverman, R.M. Black Real Estate Professionals’ Perceptions of Career Opportunities: The Economic Detour Redux. Rev Black Polit Econ 38, 145–163 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12114-011-9086-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12114-011-9086-2