Racism Hiding in Plain Sight

As part of #blackhistorymonth I've been looking into how US housing laws have been involved in wealth disparity and the opportunity gap for people of color. (a great resource is the Color of Law by Richard Rothstein)

A client recently sent me an excerpt from the title of property I was helping them buy late last year and it was both shocking and illuminating.

You can watch the video, but the passage that got me reads:

"No person of any race other than white shall use or occupy any building or any lot, except that this Covenant shall not prevent the occupancy by not to exceed two domestic servants of different race domiciled with an owner or tenant."

Now, obviously, this is unenforceable and was of no issue for our purchase today.

But it still conveys as part of the title written in 1947.

1947.

2 years after WWII ended.

This means people the age of my father, one generation back from me, would have come home from fighting for this country, land of the free, and would have prohibited from freely living where they wished.

I knew this conceptually, but here it was, in black and white, codified legally in the middle of a transaction I'm party to today

OK - that was then. This is now. We have the Fair Housing Act. This isn't happening anymore. We fixed it.

Did we? What are the direct implications of that "then" on this "now"?

Think about the amount of money, and the kinds of opportunities, a family gets from their real estate in this country.

If your parents were legally prohibited from buying the home you grew up in, how would that have impacted your life?

Would you have gone to the same school? If not, where would you have likely gone to school? What are the implications of you going to that school?

Would they have been able to afford to help with college? Did they ever borrow against the equity in their home? Did you ever get to move to a bigger house after selling the one you grew up in?

What kind of job could they have gotten/kept? What was their commute like? What might it have been like if you couldn't live where you did?

Where did your parents wind up aging? At home? How might that have changed if they couldn't live where they did?

What would the crime rate have been compared to where you actually grew up? How might that have impacted your youth?

What would your attitude have been toward those that kept you from being able to move freely? How might this situation have impacted your self esteem or the difference you felt you were capable of making?

Think about the way housing equity transfers generationally. That would not have happened for anyone in your family tree. How might that have impacted you?

We're not talking about slavery 200 years ago. We are talking one generation ago.

The fair housing act was passed in 1968 - that is in my lifetime. In other words, in my lifetime my clients would not have been able to purchase this home.

I know, I'm old. But we are not talking about "ancient" history.

And this also illuminates what is meant by "white privilege".

If you're white and grew up poor and your parents never imparted on you the benefits mentioned above, i.e. you grew up in public housing, with a high crime rate, with no generational wealth passed to you. Even if this was the case, if you're white, you personally could have come home from WWII, used the GI Bill to get a good education, started a business or gotten a job, and moved ANYWHERE YOU WANTED without the fear of being excluded by law.

Because you are white.

(a quick aside - it's important to mention the fact that what I just said only applied if you are a white man. White women could have done none of this either. Male privilege is real too and, rightly or wrongly, I want to keep this particular post specific to white privilege as a distinction of its own)

A person of "any race of than white" DID NOT HAVE THAT OPPORTUNITY.

You could've taken a shower, gotten a shave, borrowed a suit, and gotten that job, signed that deed, built a life. That same ability was simply was not available for people of color.

White privilege does not mean your life is easy. It means your skin color isn't making it harder.

So what of today? What can we do now?

Even if you say the field is level - I mean, we do have the Fair Housing Act. We have created laws to abolish discrimination. We even had a black President. What else can we do?

Well...if you take money from me, if you steal from me, and you do so over a prolonged period, and then you tell me you will stop stealing from me, well, I think that's good. It's a start.

But it doesn't make me whole. Until the damage done by you stealing from me is made up, until you pay me back what you stole, I'm not so sure we're good. You and I are still going to have something incomplete. We are definitely going to have trust issues...

Of course, the first step is to be willing to acknowledge the damage. I certainly don't know what reparations will look like, but I certainly can't see how we get this complete without them.

When my client sent me this title, on a house I was party to selling, the damage my people (both white people and real estate people) had been part of hit me.

This post is part of acknowledging that I have been part of the problem and I am looking for ways to make that up.

One way I've taken on is donating a portion of every commission to the Southern Poverty Law Center ($1,700 since Aug 2020) but this feels like the least I can do.

What are you doing to unwind the impacts of your privilege, and the damage that your industry's past (and current) practices, have caused?

It's not enough to be non-racist anymore - we need to find ways to express our anti-racism if we're to make a world that works.

If you have suggestions for me, I'd love to hear them.