[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…
Posts Tagged
racism
An Integrated Life – City Schools, Suburb Schools
[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….
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 – Still Forming Sundown Towns Today
[blockquote type=”left”]”Circularities get built in. Some working-class or multiclass sundown suburbs have passed ordinances requiring teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other city workers to live within their corporate limits. Thus they can be assured that all their employees will be white…In turn, African Americans are ineligible to be hired for future openings, since they would…
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…
An Integrated Life – What Makes You Stay Silent?
[blockquote type=”center”]”On July 4, 1910, for example, black heavyweight Jack Johnson defeated Jim Jeffries, the ‘Great White Hope,’ in Reno, Nevada. African Americans rejoiced in the victory of one of their own, until they came up against the response of white Americans to Jeffrie’s defeat. Whites attacked African Americans in at least 30 American cities….
An Integrated Life – What Are You Known For Supporting?
[blockquote type=”left”]”Many white liberals in sundown towns and suburbs worry about social ostracism, so their anti-racism never gets voiced beyond the confines of home….Many residents of sundown towns expressed displeasure with their town’s anti-black policies when they talked with me. Their disapproval seemed sincere, but they never mentioned voicing such sentiments to their fellow…
An Integrated Life – All Whites Are Responsible
[blockquote type=”left”]”When one member of the black community was lynched, all African Americans took that as a threat to their continued well-being. Often they were right…..A lynching by definition is a public murder. Those who carry it out do not bother to act in private, since they believe the community will support them. Thus…