[blockquote type=”center”]”In yet another way, elite sundown suburbs fail to pay their way: their zoning, lot requirements, and other restrictions force their maids, supermarket clerks, police officers, and even teachers to live elsewhere…Thus the property taxes paid by affluent whites in elite sundown suburbs do not help pay for the city services their employees use. Instead, less affluent and less white towns house them and try to educate their children, without the benefit of the tax base their employers’ homes and businesses would provide.” (369)[/blockquote]

If you look at the school ratings and reputations in your area, is there a correlation between city and suburb? How might people begin to address the desire to get a good education with integration and the socio-economic issues that white society has created? Are there any local issues about education you could get involved in?

“Like, we were leaving the Bronx and going into some complete, totally different Utopian existence.

You know, Lisa kept telling us while we were pen-palling these kids that, oh, they go to a private school, but they’re just like us. And “just like us” is you live in a bad neighborhood like we do, you go to a bullshit, shitty-ass school like we do, where we have no cafeteria because it’s been converted into a classroom. We have a daycare for mothers who have children. There’s, what, one, two, three floors in our school. She’s like, oh, they’re just like us. They’re nothing like us, nothing at all….

I felt like a ratchet-ass girl from the hood. I felt like I didn’t belong there. I just felt like– you know, I had no business in this building. I don’t remember them. They were just a sea of white, blonde, blue-green eyes. I couldn’t possibly bring myself into my body to actually engage with these kids. I didn’t want to engage with them.“ – This American Life, Three Miles

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This series is available in a handy 40 page pdf that includes journaling space for the personal questions.

Buy now

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An Integrated Life

a series studying the book Sundown Towns by James Loewen

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Part 1 – A Series
Part 2 – Our Racist Foundations
Part 3 – What Are We Taught Is Normal?
Part 4 – All Whites Are Responsible
Part 5 – What Are You Known For Supporting
Part 6 – What Makes You Stay Silent?
Part 7 – Gravitating Towards the Comfortable
Part 8 – Social Exclusion
Part 9 – Restrictive Covenants and Governments
Part 10 – Do You Live in a Sundown Town? Before You Say No…
Part 11 – Still Forming Sundown Towns Today
Part 12 – Sundown Suburbs = NIMBY

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