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      “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

       www.brookings.edu

      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

       Acknowledgments

       Introduction

       The Assets of Home

       1

       Who Runs the City

       2

       A Father Forged in Detroit

       3

       Buy Back the Block

       4

       A Different Kind of School

       5

       The Apologies We Owe to Students and Teachers

       6

       Having Babies Like White People

       7

       For the Sake of America, Elect a Black Woman President

       8

       “This city will be chocolate at the end of the day.”

       Notes

       Index