Courthouse News:
A Wisconsin city in the most segregated region in the nation buckled to racist pressure and shut down an affordable housing project, federal prosecutors say. New Berlin has no affordable housing for general occupancy or families - just for seniors - and truckled to fears that affordable housing would draw minorities to the city, which is 95 percent white, according to a Fair Housing complaint.
The city approved a 180-unit project, but "Immediately afterward, and over the next several weeks, city officials received numerous emails, calls, and other communications from residents of New Berlin, the large majority of whom voiced opposition to the ... project. Some of the opposition was based in part on fear that the prospective tenants would be African American or minority. The Mayor, Aldermen, Plan Commissioners, and staff at DCD were aware that community opposition was based in part on race," according to the complaint.
"The communications they received over several weeks contained express and implied racial terms that were derogatory and based on stereotypes of African American residents. These communications referenced 'niggers,' 'white flight,' 'crime,' 'drugs,' 'gangs,' 'families with 10 or 15 kids,' of needing 'to get a gun,' of 'slums,' of not wanting New Berlin to turn into 'Milwaukee,' of moving to New Berlin 'to get away from the poor people,' of not wanting to provide housing to people 'who work but do not live here.'"
New Berlin Mayor Jack Chiovatero initially supported the project, but was worn down by being called a "nigger lover," having his property vandalized and a failed recall effort against him. The pressures upon Chiovatero were revealed in an email he sent to a friend, indicating that he condemned racism, but found himself surrounded by it.
According to the complaint, Chiovatero wrote: "I am a prisoner in my own home. I have spent several hours a day last week listening and replying to concerned citizens. ... I was asked NOT to attend two functions this weekend for fear it would distract and cause havoc by my presence. Our City is filled with prejudice and bigoted people who with very few facts are making this project into something evil and degrading. ... New Berlin is not ready, nor may never be, for a project like this. Unfortunately, I will be doing whatever is in my power to end this project, it will result in lawsuits and making New Berlin a community of bigots."
A PDF of the actual complaint can be found
here. A newspaper article on the situation can be found
here.
Needless to say, this is shocking but it really should not surprise us. For all that crap the right shovels out about racism being a "thing of the past" we know damn well that a lot of outright bigotry still exists and its often thinly veiled by classist rhetoric about "riff-raff" and "hoods." As the Courthouse News article points out, New Berlin "has a median household income of $75,853, more than 50 percent higher than the state median of $49,993." In other words, these are elitists who think they are better than the rest of the country and have no desire to tolerate lower-income non-Aryan folks in their midst. They just sit in their gated communities while busing in proles from outside city lines to clean their toilets and work at their restaurants while refusing to give them a place to stay. It's obviously bullshit, and we should be greatful that the DoJ is stepping in.
Needless to say, there will be a backlash. The comments on the JS Online piece and this gun nut forum indicate this reality. Expect to hear a lot of sanctimonious rhetoric about the "fedral gubmint" interfering in their sacred right to keep darkies out. To hell with 'em. They belong to a different era.
I recommend you guys read some historical pieces on Sundown Towns. Here is David Neiwert reviewing James Loewen's work, Sundown Towns:
The American landscape it reveals is not the one we have created in our own minds, one in which the bulk of racial bigotry resides south of the Mason-Dixon line, while the enlightened northern states have, comparatively speaking at least, provided both a racial refuge and social justice. Rather, it reveals that racism is not only woven throughout the nation's social fabric, but that the brand of bigotry practiced throughout much of the North was even more noxious in nature than that in the South.
Specifically, while the South actively oppressed its nonwhite population, Americans in most of the rest of the country chose not to even tolerate their presence, and actively engaged in an ongoing campaign of eliminationist violence to drive them out, forcing them to cluster in large urban areas for their own self-protection and survival. The benign, polite white face of suburban and rural America outside the South is revealed as both deeply deceptive and ultimately lethal.
What exactly is a "sundown town"? Loewen defines the term [pp. 28-30] thus:
A sundown town is any organized jurisdiction that for decades kept African Americans or other groups from living in it and was thus "all white" on purpose.
... Beginning in about 1890 and continuing until 1968, white Americans established thousands of towns across the United States for whites only. Many towns drove out their black populations, then posted sundown signs. ... Other towns passed ordinances barring African Americans after dark or prohibiting them from owning or renting property; still others established such policies by informal means, harassing and even killing those who violated the rule. Some sundown towns similarly kept out Jews, Chinese, Mexicans, Native Americans, or other groups.
Independent sundown towns range from tiny hamlets such as DeLand, Illinois (population 500) to substantial cities such as Appleton, Wisconsin (57,000 in 1970). Sometimes entire counties went sundown, usually when their county seat did. Independent sundown towns were soon joined by "sundown suburbs," which could be even larger: Levittown, on Long Island, had 82,000 residents in 1970, while Livonia, Michigan, and Parma, Ohio, had more than 100,000. Warren, a suburb of Detroit, had a population of 180,000 including just 28 minority families, most of whom lived on a U.S. Army facility.
Outside the traditional South ... probably a majority of all incorporated places kept out African Americans.
Moreover, as he details, the appearance of sundown towns occurred in every region, every state:
There is reason to believed that more than half of all towns in Oregon, Indiana, Ohio, the Cumberlands, the Ozarks, and diverse other areas were also all-white on purpose. Sundown suburbs are found from Darien, Connecticut, to La Jolla, California, and are even more prevalent; indeed, most suburbs began life as sundown towns.
Kudos to the Holder Justice Department and Perez' Civil Rights
Division for taking on the remnants of this tragic legacy.
For more on the successes of Obama's DoJ, see this.