Building the Troost Wall: Structural Racism in Kansas City

Overview

The video explores the sharp racial and economic divide along Troost Avenue in Kansas City. After lunch in the wealthy Plaza area, host Michael Wesch walks east with ethnographer Nathaniel Bozarth. Within about a mile, manicured public spaces and high-value homes give way to barred windows, fewer amenities, and businesses where customers are served through glass.

The video describes Troost as a boundary between predominantly white, wealthier neighborhoods to the west and predominantly Black, poorer neighborhoods to the east. It points to significant differences in household income and home values across the avenue, and presents the divide as the result of accumulated policies and decisions rather than the actions of a single villain.

Historical Context

The video traces the area’s history from Indigenous land and a slave plantation to a prosperous neighborhood near “Millionaires Row.” After World War II, a housing boom helped fuel suburban growth, while racially restrictive covenants excluded Black families from many developments, including properties associated with J.C. Nichols. Federal housing policies also steered investment toward suburbs deemed safe and away from inner-city neighborhoods marked as risky through redlining. Though these practices were later outlawed, the video argues that their effects persisted.

The account also describes blockbusting, which encouraged white residents to sell when Black families moved into a neighborhood. This often depressed property values and limited Black families’ ability to build wealth through homeownership.

School integration brought another cycle of change. Central High desegregated after Brown v. Board of Education, but the school and surrounding area were predominantly Black again within several years. The video also links white flight to declining property values, strained services, and the placement of disruptive infrastructure. It says construction of US 71 displaced 10,000 people.

Structural Racism and Lasting Effects

Wesch and Bozarth frame these patterns as structural racism: systems and policies that can disadvantage racial groups even when individuals do not see themselves as racist. They argue that neighborhood conditions become associated with racial stereotypes—for example, cleanliness and safety with whiteness, and insecurity or criminality with Blackness—and that these judgments shape how people are treated.

The closing reflection challenges the idea that hard work alone guarantees the American dream, noting that access to housing and wealth-building opportunities has never been equal.

Presenters and Contributors

• Michael Wesch: Host and narrator
• Nathaniel Bozarth: Ethnographer and guide