There was a time when the words “government housing” didn’t conjure unfair and wildly distorted images of graffiti-covered walls and rampant crime. In post-World War II America, “government housing” meant simply that there weren’t enough homes available and the government was going to build some. The housing was generally well made and, even more importantly, the government-subsidized loans made them affordable.
Initially, all that housing was integrated – factories needed as many workers as they could find and issues of race took a backseat. The segregation came later (as did the myth that the segregation we continue to see today is the result of individual preference and not government mandate).
As an example, in Buffalo, a plan was approved to build a sprawling new community. A school and a church, along with many of the city’s citizens, spearheaded a campaign to make sure that housing would be segregated. The government acquiesced to their demands. A Supreme Court decision would nullify that choice, but by then it was too late to reverse what had already been done.
As was always the case, the newly built black and brown neighborhoods never had enough units (even as the white areas had far too many). The cost of housing for families of color went way up. Waiting lists grew exponentially. Without homes to live in, families had to double and triple up in what were supposed to be single-family units. Neighborhoods became overcrowded. The city’s public schools shifted to split-day programs, letting half the kids come in the morning and the other half come in the afternoon. This drove down the quality of schools in urban Buffalo and had the added effect of making independent schools more appealing.
In essence, a school in Buffalo implored the government to create racially segregated housing (even at a time where integration was the norm) and then benefited from the resulting degradation of public schools.
Stories like this are not limited to a single school or a single city. The University of Chicago, at the request of their professors, signed on to racial covenants in neighborhoods surrounding the university. Once bought by a white family, a house in those neighborhoods could not be sold to a non-white one. Long after the previously mentioned Supreme Court decision, police-enforced racial covenants became the most popular way to keep neighborhoods segregated. In fact, my own house is one that I’m not technically allowed to own – the city council decided that the covenant in my neighborhood is not enforceable, but they keep it on the books as a reminder of the wrong that was done (I would argue no reminder is necessary).
And, of course, the past misdeeds of schools aren’t even limited to housing. Stanford University recently issued an apology after a task force uncovered that the school undertook active efforts to limit the enrollment of Jewish students in the 1950’s. The list of grievances goes on and on.
My point is this: schools played a part in creating a white supremacist society. They signed on to racial covenants, they petitioned for segregated housing, they took loans that were earmarked for so-called “segregation academies.” I don’t know that we can move forward until our pasts are acknowledged.
I’ve been a part of many school’s DEI committees – board committees, faculty committees, student groups. I’m sure many of us have done the same. The people in those rooms are well-meaning – indeed, many of us have gone to great lengths to educate ourselves around important issues so that we can come prepared to do the work. But there’s also this sense, this prevailing notion that hangs in there. The feeling is that we’re doing a good thing just by being present. We’re on the right side of history simply because this committee exists at all.
Sometimes, when a big decision needs to be made, there’s a worry that we’re moving too fast. That we’re doing too much all at once. If the sentiment is that having this meeting is itself a net positive, then it can be a challenge to argue with those worries. Hey, we’re all here. We’re all of the same mind. If we think this might be too fast, then won’t the rest of the school definitely see it that way?
I wonder how closely any of us are examining our own school’s histories. I was at a conference once where the speaker worked at a school in the suburbs of a major city. He told us that his school was founded shortly after integration was legally enforced, but that it was very definitely not a “white flight” school. I don’t doubt that this is the case. I wonder, though, how he knows.
I visited another school where they were actively working on recruiting a more racially diverse student body. The main impediment was the neighborhood the school was situated in, a neighborhood that was overwhelmingly white. The feeling was this was the hand they were dealt and it was their job to fight against it, even if that fight was inevitably a losing struggle. To be clear, the school was doing the work; the problem was that they were hamstrung by the area. And yet, it’s entirely possible the school played a role in the racial composition of the neighborhood they now found themselves in. Segregation didn’t happen by accident – when it wasn’t government mandated, it was the result of police-enforced racial covenants. Many schools signed on to those covenants. In that case, this was less a hand that was dealt and more a scale that was tipped.
My hope is that many more schools will take on the work that Stanford and the University of Chicago have done. In the end, it changes the flavor of our DEI discussions if we know the exact ways in which our own schools enforced racism and segregation. When the cat is out of the bag, then having a DEI committee is no longer a nice thing. It ceases to be an obvious positive against which well-meaning people can sometimes push back for fear that we’re going too fast. If our schools have a history, and all schools have a history, then the work becomes a moral imperative. We have no choice except to move fast.
Shuja Khan
Director of Enrollment Management
Rowland Hall