logoalt Hacker News

lazyasciiart • today at 7:26 AM • 1 reply • view on HN

Remember that there are plenty of houses today in America which were bought under the explicit promise that their neighbors would always be white people. That got taken away. Why should the promise of single family housing be any more precious?


Replies

noduerme • today at 8:01 AM

Uh, no, that's not the case at this point in time. There were racist HOA compacts like that up to the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Pretty few people alive today have bought houses where they were given an "explicit promise that their neighbors would always be white people" as you said.

I live ten blocks from a neighborhood in Portland called Laurelhurst. Laurelhurst sits on a hill, about 30 blocks east of downtown, and contains the largest 100-year-old mansions east of the river. At each main entrance to Laurelhurst, there are massive stone archways. The arches were built to define the points where Black people were not allowed to enter after sundown.

This is not the case today.

Speaking as someone whose Dad grew up in segregated Baltimore, my grandfather was a bar owner who wasn't even allowed to own or work at a bar in the white neighborhoods. They couldn't rent or buy a house in the white neighborhoods.

The situation today has nothing in common with that. We own homes and businesses wherever we want to. Fold up your manufactured guilt and sympathy and take it elsewhere, we didn't need your help and we still don't.