It is summer, and I am 11. I’m at the beach with my friends, playing in the calm waves of Lake Michigan. This water that I’ve grown up with I know like the back of my hand. I’ve seen the beaches change from year to year. I…
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America
When White Christians Support Good Cops
[blockquote type=”left”]”The religious institutions became comfort stations for scribes and publicans and pharisees. Far from curing the wound of racism, the white man’s Christianity has been its soothing bandage – a bandage masquerading as Sunday clothes, for the wearing of which one expects a certain moral credit.” – Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound[/blockquote] How do…
An Integrated Life – The TL;DR Version
As Reconstruction ended, and the Great Migration was getting underway, white people collectively looked around and realized they weren’t alone. And they wanted to be. So they made it happen. A summary of the series looking at the book Sundown Towns by James Loewen, and also ideas for what you can do about it. Know…
An Integrated Life – Until We Solve the Problem of Sundown Neighborhoods…
[blockquote type=”left”]”America should not have white neighborhoods or black neighborhoods. It should just have neighborhoods. People who live in interracial neighborhoods and towns have taken an important stand in favor of better race relations. Integration is no panacea, but there is no substitute…Integrated towns and suburbs are a necessary first step to integrated hearts and…
An Integrated Life – An Historical Comparison
[blockquote type=”center”]”White Americans encounter sundown towns every day but rarely think about them or even realize that they’re in one.” (193) [/blockquote] What do we view as normal? What are some things about your life you consider normal? Is it possible we live inside a legacy that is deeply un-normal? [blockquote type=”left”]”Perhaps it is more…
An Integrated Life – Living In Fear
We all know the Bible says over and over to not be afraid. “We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can; everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most…
An Integrated Life – Sundown Suburbs = NIMBY
The church’s task in each country is to make of each country’s individual history a history of salvation. -Romero, The Violence of Love [blockquote type=”left”]”Since affluent sundown suburbs are not politically connected to nearby inner-city neighborhoods, the system of white supremacy that makes them so much nicer is not obvious.” (375)[/blockquote] Listen to This…
An Integrated Life – Do You Live in a Sundown Town? Before you say no….
For 70+ years segregation in our cities was sought and designed. How are we working to undo that design? [blockquote type=”center”]”During the Depression the federal government…set up at least seven towns…that explicitly kept out African Americans. At the same time, and for three more decades, the Federal Housing Administration – a government agency –…
An Integrated Life – Restrictive Covenants and Governments
[blockquote type=”left”]”After 1917, most sundown suburbs resorted to restrictive covenants…[they] first targeted Chinese Americans in the West, originating in California in the 1890s, and then spread to the East, where Jews and blacks were targeted for exclusion.” (257)[/blockquote] [blockquote type=”center”]”Across the United States, exclusionary covenants were the rule rather than the exception.” (258)[/blockquote] Where have…
An Integrated Life – Gravitating Towards the Comfortable
[blockquote type=”center”]”Asking ‘Why?’ with quiet astonishment when acquaintances announce that they are thinking of moving to a town or suburb known to be overwhelmingly white invites people to explain their decision – suddenly no longer obvious – to live in such places and may make them think. So do questions such as ‘But don’t you…