I have not investigated this incident personally, so I can only pass on the link to another blogger’s website. But I have seen rampant racism in a number of other HOAs across the country. In my upcoming book, Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowner Assocation, I trace a number of similar cases that should be of intense concern to anyone who respects the civil rights of all people.
If this story in Houston is even halfway accurate, then all men and women should read and weep:
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2012/05/walnut_bend_black_males_e-mail.php
Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association
http://www.ibtimes.com/contents/20100303/hoa-rules-why-necessary-home-buying.htm
HOA Rules – Why is it Necessary in Home Buying
By Flynna Jones
03 March 2010 @ 09:54 am EDT
International Business Times
Being a member of a homeowners association can give you a lot of benefits….
…they set the allowable number of occupants per house, the kind of pets that are permitted and the race of persons who can stay in the community.
Race restrictive covenants were one of the original purposes of H.O.A.s. Although they were made unenforceable by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948 (Shelley v. Kraemer), many remain on the books. But that a writer — and her editors — for the International Business Times would tout racial exlucsion as a positive benefit of H.O.A.s says something.
This is so wrong. In our neighborhood, all the teens are treated suspiciously, which I consider age discrimination.
I think it’s an example showing that the ideological heirs of the old segregationist Dixiecrats, who bolted to the GOP after Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, are alive and well and have LOTS of popular support, if listening to talk radio is any indication. They would love for those acts — as well as Brown vs. Board of Education — to be revisited by a Supreme Court they see as friendlier to white supremacists than was the Warren court. Race-restrictive covenants were not only the original ideas behind HOAs but “school vouchers” as well — and today’s voter-suppression tactics by politicians under the American Legislative Exchange Council’s thumb amount to the modern embodiment of the old racist “poll tax.” Unfortunately in all these cases, the old mantra that “The South Shall Rise Again” is coming true in many ways, a lot of them disturbingly mainstream.
George, Ward, here. Hmmmm, I’m not sure I totally agree. It was a Republican Congress which largely voted in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and a Republican leaning Supreme Court who brought in Brown v Board of Education. Also, a Democrat South who brought us voter supression and Jim Crow laws. Some throwbacks were Bull Conner and George Wallace. There was a reason that Civil Rights greats like Martin Luther King, Jr. leaned Republican (albeit not publicly). But politics in those years were complicated. There were surprises on every side.
* sigh *
This is common revisionist history, perpetrated by the right-wing spin machine.
The 1964 Civil Rights Acts was not a partisan issue, but a regional issue. Northern Democrats were more likely to vote for it than Northern Republicans. Southern Republicans were more likely to vote against it than Southern Democrats.
The vote by party _and_ region was:
The original House version:
Southern Democrats: 7–87 (7%–93%)
Southern Republicans: 0–10 (0%–100%)
Northern Democrats: 145-9 (94%–6%)
Northern Republicans: 138-24 (85%–15%)
The Senate version:
Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5%–95%)
Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0%–100%)
Northern Democrats: 45-1 (98%–2%)
Northern Republicans: 27-5 (84%–16%)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
Anonymous. You are right, and I stand corrected. Since I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, I had a completely different view of the bill’s history.
Ward, you’re correct. But remember, Republicans of THAT era (Eisenhower, Nixon, Everett Dirksen, Nelson Rockefeller, Arlen Specter) are not the Republicans of today. And the Democratic Party back then was really two parties — split between a liberal-moderate wing (FDR, JFK, Humphrey, Scoop Jackson) and the segregationlst Dixiecrats (George Wallace, Lester Maddox, Ross Barnett, Orval Faubus, etc.) FDR named border-state Harry Truman his running mate to try to draw those two dramatically separate wings together — the same reason JFK went to Dallas in 1963. The liberal-moderate Dems were to the left of those moderate Republicans, but the Dixiecrats were to their right. So when LBJ signed the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, he said publicly that “we’ve lost the South for a generation ” — and he was right. The Dixiecrats largely bolted to the GOP — including people like Jesse Helms and Strom “Segregation now, segregation forever” Thurmond — and propelled Civil Rights Act opponent Barry Goldwater to the 1964 GOP nomination instead of moderate candidates Rockefeller, George Romney or Bill Scranton. LBJ defeated Goldwater in a landslide, of course, but the only four states Goldwater carried besides his native Arizona were in the South. It’s gone Republican ever since. Today’s southeastern-based GOP has kicked out all its moderates; it’s a safe bet Ike and Ford and Chuck Percy and Earl Warren and maybe even Nixon would be Democrats today. Every once in awhile, today’s Republicans tip their hand and show their true colors: Trent Lott of Mississippi was in a Republican leadership position in 2002 when he said that if we’d elected Thurmond president in 1948 when he ran on a segregationist third-party platform, “we wouldn’t have all the problems we have today.” And Kentucky’s Rand Paul won his election after saying that Lester Maddox should have been able to bar blacks from his Atlanta lunch counter. Sorry, but as Ronald Reagan once famously misspoke: “Facts are stupid things.”