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…
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Sundown Towns
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 – Reputations are Important
[blockquote type=”left”]”We have seen that sundown towns both collect and create racists, while integrated towns both collect and create anti-racists. Just as cognitive dissonance makes whites more racist when they live in a sundown town, which they must justify, so it makes whites less racist, even anti-racist, when they live in a multiracial town, which…
An Integrated Life – Hidden Fault Lines
In my high school of 1000 students, all of our teachers and staff were white. My class was nearly all-white. We had a small handful of Asians and Indians, out of a class of 250, and I think that was only because they fulfilled the stereotype of being smart, which helped make our school look…
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 – HOAs – What Are You Supporting with Your Way of Life?
[blockquote type=”left”]”In addition to sundown exurbs, another innovation threatens to maintain sundown suburbs, morphed into a new form: suburbs hypersegregated by social class.” (390)[/blockquote] Loewen goes on to talk about homeowners associations and gated communities. [blockquote type=”left”]”Gated communities epitomize defended neighborhoods, providing no amenities, not even streets, that are open to the public. Their walls…
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…