Sentence:  Admittedly, our metropolitan plan was an exercise in hope. There were million reasons why it might not have worked. But it represented a responsible way to try to begin atoning for the public housing ghettos, the racial zoning and covenants, the <WSD>redlining</WSD>, the “Negro removal,” and the other policies and practices that had given us the two separate and unequal societies described by the Kerner report. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  The systematic denial of various services to residents of specific, often racially associated, neighborhoods or communities, either directly or through the selective raising of prices.