Previously, Blacks were segregated in ghettos; now Whites are segregating themselves from people of colour, immigrants and the poor.

Historically, in the American housing system, Blacks were segregated from Whites and placed in ghettos. But in the emerging housing culture, Whites are segregating themselves from Blacks and other people of colour. Whites are moving away from racially mixed areas to Whites-only or predominantly White areas.

Recently, The New York Times carried a story about a new Whites-only commune in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. The “Right to the Land” colony was founded by one Eric Orwoll, a former professional musician. Orwoll told NYT that one had to be White to live in the 160-acre commune in Ravenden, Ark.

The “Return to the Land” commune is a 160-acre compound with about 40 residents. But it is also a private association with hundreds of members, paying a one-time $25 membership fee.

“Applicants to the community are screened with an in-person interview, a criminal-background check, a questionnaire about ancestral heritage and sometimes even photographs of their relatives,” Orwoll told NYT.

In answer to criticism that the “Return to the Land” is testing anti-discrimination housing laws that have been in place for 57 years, Orwoll said that the concept meets the requirements for a legal exemption for “private associations and religious groups that offer housing to their members.”

But experts insist that a community restricted to White residents is illegal. ReNika Moore, the director of the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, saw it differently. She said in an email to NYT: “Federal and state law, including the Fair Housing Act, prohibit housing discrimination based on race, period.”

John Relman, a civil rights lawyer who specialises in fair housing violations, said the group could be sued under not just the 1968 Fair Housing Act but also multiple sections of the US Civil Rights Act of 1866.

But the creators of “Right to Land” believe they can win any challenge in court in the current political climate under President Donald Trump. His anti-inclusion ideology is propitious.

NYT points out that Orwoll and his companions believe in the “Great Replacement theory”, a conspiracy theory that non-White populations will replace Whites through higher birthrates and mass migration. They also believe in racist pseudoscience about human intelligence and its link to genetics. They spew the theory that Whites in America are persecuted and that the fabric of the US is fraying as its non-White populations grow.

Non-Whites Communes

Orwoll pointed out that other ethnic groups also have communes designed exclusively for members of one race or religion, pointing to EPIC City, a master-planned Muslim-centric community in Texas, as an example.

However, according to NYT, these communes do not explicitly bar outsiders. They only have amenities that would attract certain people. For example, EPIC City has a mosque and halal market. It was investigated by the Justice Department for potential civil rights violations, but no discrimination was found.

Co-existence of Diversification and Segregation

A TIME magazine article by Alana Semuels points out that while the US is becoming increasingly diverse, segregation is also appearing. More than 80% of large metropolitan areas in US states were more segregated in 2019 than they were in 1990, according to an analysis of residential segregation released by the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.

Yes, the US has become more diverse over time, but that masks the persistence of segregation, the report says.

“Metropolitan areas aren’t all-White, all-Black, or all-Latino, but within metropolitan areas, the different races are clustered in segregated neighbourhoods, creating social and economic divisions that can fuel unrest,” Semuels points out.

Stephen Menendian, Assistant Director at the Othering & Belonging Institute, says: “Areas may appear to be integrated because they are home to many different racial groups, when in fact those groups live completely apart. The city of Detroit is 80% Black, while Grosse Pointe, a suburb that shares a border with the city, is 90% White.”

Zoning Laws

Efforts to integrate most of America’s housing—like efforts to integrate its schools—have fallen short of expectations.

Federal government money was meant to be used for “public or affordable housing schemes” in racially, ethnically and economically diverse neighbourhoods.

But racist people found ways to get around these norms. Whites kept out “affordable housing” schemes through “zoning laws” that prohibited the construction of multifamily or affordable housing. The zoning laws made housing expensive, which meant that Black Americans could not afford it. In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, 80% of the land is “zoned” for single-family housing, not multi-family housing.

“While racial segregation was seemingly addressed by the Supreme Court in 1917 and 1948, and by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, racism persists today in zoning and housing laws. It may not be as easy to see when compared to the criminal justice system, but it’s still insidiously there, hidden in a patchwork of nuanced zoning definitions and regulations,” says an article in Forbes.

Zoning laws in the US originated in the early 20th century, and for many cities, these zoned areas were specifically segregated by race. Places that were undesirable or industrial were assigned to racial or ethnic minorities, the article said.

Zoning laws laid down the number of unrelated individuals who can live together, and limited the amount of multifamily housing that could be built in certain neighbourhoods. These laws continued to keep low-income people of colour segregated.

Black War Veterans

Forbes further said that when Black soldiers returned from World War II, the Federal Housing Administration did not allow them to obtain mortgages. Despite fighting for the US, Black soldiers were explicitly discriminated against because they were viewed by banks and the federal government as “higher risk” loans.

“In order to obtain federal funding, local developers were required to include in their codes a refusal to sell to people of colour,” Forbes pointed out.

Black households with lower incomes that were intentionally prevented from receiving mortgages were disproportionately pushed into the suburbs and exurbs. However, according to TIME, some cities, including Berkeley, have eradicated single-family zoning, making it easier for developers to build more housing within city limits. But still, housing is very expensive and beyond the reach of Blacks and other people of colour.

Homeownership has undoubtedly increased among many people of colour despite ongoing affordability struggles, but wide gaps remain between the numbers of White and minority homeowners, according to a new report from the National Association of Realtors.

The association’s 2025 Snapshot of Race and Home Buying in America found that the national homeownership rate increased to 65.24% in 2023, a reversal of the downward tick recorded in 2022. But Black homeownership remains substantially lower than that of other groups.

Impact on Social Inequality

The COVID-19 pandemic underscored some of the consequences of residential segregation, TIME pointed out.

Black Americans living in segregated cities like Detroit and Chicago died at a higher rate than people of other races in the same cities. But even before the pandemic, research had shown that neighbourhoods where children grew up shaped how likely they were to go to university and to make more money than their parents. It also determined their access to medical care.

As Craig Gurian, the executive director of the Anti-Discrimination Center, told TIME: “You really cannot name any significant social injustice problem in the United States that’s not undergirded by residential housing segregation.”