“Perry helps the reader understand that the contemporary landscape of inequality is no accident, but exists by design. Know Your Price is an important addition to any conversation about racial inequality in this country and is an essential tool to help refute the lies we have been told for so long.”
Clint Smith,
author of Counting Descent
“Perry lays bare the wretched tradition that devalues black bodies and black property. By writing from the inside out, he gives the facts and figures of redlining and subsequent gentrification names and faces—their joys, desires, hopes, pain, agony, and despair. The writing itself is deft and heartfelt. It reads as if James Baldwin was a social scientist.”
Rev. Osagyefo Sekou,
Institute for Policy Studies
“A powerful indictment of a white culture that persistently blames the victims of racism for the consequences of oppression, Know Your Price is also a hopeful and moving celebration of Black resilience. It is must-reading for American policymakers and the people who put them in office.”
Grant Oliphant,
president, The Heinz Endowments
“This memoir is not another self-aggrandizing voyeuristic presentation of hood triumph. Rather, it is a brave, honest, and analytically insightful understanding of dignity and worth and a challenge to society’s myopic devaluation of black people and communities.”
Darrick Hamilton,
The Ohio State University
KNOW YOUR PRICE
Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities
ANDRE M. PERRY
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2020
THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the Brookings Institution Press.
The Brookings Institution is a private nonprofit organization devoted to research, education, and publication on important issues of domestic and foreign policy. Its principal purpose is to bring the highest quality independent research and analysis to bear on current and emerging policy problems. Interpretations or conclusions in Brookings publications should be understood to be solely those of the authors.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Perry, Andre M., author.
Title: Know your price : valuing black lives and property in America’s black cities / Andre M. Perry.
Other titles: Valuing black lives and property in America’s black cities
Description: Washington, D.C. : Brookings Institution Press, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019048137 (print) | LCCN 2019048138 (ebook) | ISBN 9780815737278 (cloth) | ISBN 9780815737285 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Urban African Americans—Economic conditions. | Urban African Americans—Social conditions. | Valuation—United States. | United States—Race relations. | United States—Social conditions—1945–
Classification: LCC E185.8 .P43 2020 (print) | LCC E185.8 (ebook) | DDC 305.896/07301732—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048137
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048138
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro
Composition by Elliott Beard
For incarcerated parents,
their children,
and caretakers—
You are not to blame.
Contents
The Apologies We Owe to Students and Teachers
Having Babies Like White People
For the Sake of America, Elect a Black Woman President
“This city will be chocolate at the end of the day.”
Acknowledgments
Knowing your price involves understanding the value of family. I appreciate my wife Joia Crear-Perry for giving me the space and time to write the book. I thank my son for allowing me to come to my office to write on the days he wanted to play with me in the park. I thank my cousins, aunties, and uncles for sharing our family history with me. Shante, Anna, Tallulah, Kergulin, Danielle, Dorian, and Kevin provided wonderful insights into what made me into the adult I’ve become. My relationship with my mother Karen and sister Danielle gets stronger with time. Thank you for supporting me. I also thank my extended family, including Gemal and Erika Woods, Mattie and Gerald Woods, Stan and Monique Drayton, Darren and Dabeiba Del Rosario Hudson, and Fletcher Brooks.
Jayati Vora provided brilliant editorial support for the book. She has