Well, in 1965, Fred and I bought a Levitt house in Levittown. We were complete
novices. We didn't know how to competently shop for a house or think clearly
about the ramifications of moving to a suburb with barely any public
transportation, and we certainly didn't know about the clause in the deed
regarding not selling to African Americans. I learned about that clause much
later. We did hear that several years before we moved in, an African American
family lived not far away, but they were made to feel very unwelcome and
finally left. And then, in 1974, we brought our adopted half black, half
Vietnamese adopted toddler home to live. But it was obvious to us that our
neighborhood and its all white school would not be an appropriate place for her
to grow up, and so we moved to Westbury, to the area that was integrated where
the schools were predominantly black because so many white people had withdrawn
their children.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Sunday, June 25, 2017 8:13 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: THE COLOR OF LAW A Forgotten History of How Our
Government Segregated America `
My first wife and I were married in June, 57 years ago. 1960. While it's
difficult to reconstruct the world of 1960 totally, there are some memories
that are as clear today as when they happened.
On 6/25/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From the New York Times Book Review section THE COLOR OF LAW A
Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America By Richard
Rothstein Illustrated. 345 pp. Liveright Publishing. $27.95.
In the summer of 1950, with Americans reeling from the news of North
Korea's invasion of South Korea and Senator Joseph McCarthy's ever
expanding 'Red hunt' in Washington, Time magazine ran a disarmingly
cheerful cover story about the nation's housing boom, titled: 'For
Sale: A New Way of Life.
Featuring the builder William Levitt, who had recently transformed
some Long Island potato fields into a sprawling complex of starter
homes -- two bedrooms, one bath and an extension attic for $7,990 --
it spoke reverentially of the development's parks and playgrounds and
many rules.
'Fences are not allowed,' Time noted. 'The plot of grass around each
house must be cut at least once a week,' and laundry couldn't be hung
outside 'on weekends and holidays. One rule, however, was conveniently
absent from the piece. Homeowners in Levittown were forbidden to rent
or sell to persons 'other than members of the Caucasian race. Asked
about this so-called 'racial covenant,' Levitt blamed society at
large. 'As a Jew, I have no room in my mind or heart for racial
prejudice,' he said. 'But I have come to know that if we sell one
house to a Negro family, then 90 or 95 percent of our white customers
will not buy into the community. This is their attitude, not ours. As
a company, our position is simply this: We can solve a housing
problem, or we can try to solve a racial problem, but we cannot
combine the two. At first glance, Levittown stands as a prime example
of de facto segregation, which results from private activity, as
opposed to de jure segregation, which derives from government policy
or law. Levitt, after all, appeared to be an independent businessman
responding to the prejudices of the home buyers he hoped to attract.
In truth, it wasn't that simple. As Richard Rothstein contends in 'The
Color of Law,' a powerful and disturbing history of residential
segregation in America, the government at all levels and in all
branches abetted this injustice. 'We have created a caste system in
this country, with African-Americans kept exploited and geographically
separate by racially explicit government policies,' he writes.
'Although most of these policies are now off the books, they have
never been remedied and their effects endure. Levittown reflected this
dynamic. Popular with World War II veterans and their families, its
17,500 houses required no down payment. The federal government
guaranteed low-interest bank loans for Levitt to build them, and
low-interest mortgages for veterans to buy them.
The government also made clear that developers receiving these
incentives must sell to whites only. It didn't stop there. In the
1950s, following a Supreme Court decision that restricted the scope of
racial covenants, an African-American veteran bought a house in a
second Levitt development outside Philadelphia. A white mob formed,
the house was pelted with rocks and crosses were burned on the lawn.
Amazingly, the black family held out for several years before moving back to
a segregated neighborhood.
Rothstein
sees this incident, and dozens like it, as an insidious form of de
jure segregation -- the failure of racially biased police and public
officials to protect African-Americans from unlawful intimidation. One
of the great strengths of Rothstein's account is the sheer weight of
evidence he marshals. A research associate at the Economic Policy
Institute, he quite simply demolishes the notion that government
played a minor role in creating the racial ghettos that plague our
suburbs and inner cities. Going back to the late 19th century, he
uncovers a policy of de jure segregation in virtually every
presidential administration, including those we normally describe as
liberal on domestic issues. Indeed, some of the worst offenses
occurred with Franklin Roosevelt in the White House. One of his New
Deal centerpieces, the Public Works Administration, built 47 public
housing projects, all rigidly segregated, 17 for blacks, the rest for
whites. His vaunted Tennessee Valley Authority put white employees in a
'model village'
of 500 homes, while blacks endured 'shoddy barracks' far from their jobs.
When war came, the Roosevelt administration provided housing for white
defense plant workers, but only temporary, poorly constructed
dwellings for black workers. The few protesters included Eleanor
Roosevelt, whose pleas for fairness fell on deaf ears. The president,
no friend of civil rights, argued that ending the Great Depression and
winning World War ll must take precedence over divisive social issues.
Among Rothstein's more telling examples is Stuyvesant Town, a
9,000-apartment complex built on Manhattan's East Side in the 1940s by
the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The process of construction
began with the city condemning 18 square blocks of a racially
integrated neighborhood and transferring the land to the company,
which received tax relief as well. Met Life executives made it clear
that Stuyvesant Town was for 'white people only' -- a policy that led
to protests and a compromise whereby the company agreed to lease a
handful of apartments to 'qualified Negro tenants,' while building a
'smaller development' for black renters in Harlem. By this point,
however, Stuyvesant Town was almost fully leased. Blacks were shut
out, and would remain so, because New York City's rent control laws
kept turnover low for the original white tenants and their 'lawful
successors,' while rapidly rising rents for its vacated apartments
made the development unaffordable for even middle-class families.
Today, African-Americans constitute a minuscule part of Stuyvesant
Town, which sits in one of Manhattan's most famously 'progressive' districts.
(Donald Trump received a paltry 15 percent of the vote there in the
recent presidential election.) What are the remedies? Here, Rothstein
has less to add. A number of his pet ideas have no hope of gaining
public acceptance, he readily admits, like withholding mortgage
interest and property tax deductions from those living in
neighborhoods that actively exclude blacks and the poor, or having the
federal government buy a percentage of the houses that come up for
sale in Levittown, which would then be resold to African-American
buyers for $75,000 -- far below their current market value but equal,
in today's dollars, to the original asking price of $7,990.
Sadly, there is no easy fix. Though many states place restrictions of
some sort on 'exclusionary zoning,' a few have gone further to mandate
'fair share' requirements for low- and moderate-income suburban
housing, with incentives both for developers and local communities --
a plan Rothstein favors. As a call to arms, 'The Color of Law' may be
difficult for potential allies to embrace. Interracial alliances break
down, Rothstein insists, 'when whites develop overly intolerant
judgments of the unfortunate -- from a need to justify their own
acceptance of segregation that so obviously conflicts with both their
civic ideals and their religious ones. Supposedly blinded by bigotry
or ignorance, they refuse to acknowledge what Rothstein seems to see
as self-evident: that the myriad social problems plaguing the inner
cities today arise from race discrimination, and race discrimination
alone. To dare to challenge this -- to speak of individual agency, for
example -- is akin to flogging the victim. End of discussion.
Rothstein, moreover, rejects the phrase 'people of color,' because it
lumps African-Americans with groups that didn't suffer as
systematically at government hands -- like Asians and Hispanics.
(First- and second-generation Mexicans live in segregated
neighborhoods by choice, we are assured, not because they are forced
to.) While the history of African-Americans is undoubtedly unique,
ranking groups by the discrimination they endured may not be the most
productive way to proceed. In his preface, Rothstein writes that
America has a constitutional obligation to remedy de jure segregation
in housing, and that its story must be told. While the road forward is
far from clear, there is no better history of this troubled journey
than 'The Color of Law. PHOTO: Police and demonstrators in front of
the home of a black family in Levittown, Pa., Aug. 20, 1957.
(PHOTOGRAPH BY SAM MYERS/ASSOCIATED PRESS).
