With seven of us children, my parents struggled to keep the bills paid, and it was tacitly understood that we could not squander food or money. As for our house, we grew up in a modest Cape Cod in West Irondequoit. Though we had a happy life there, any one of us would say that the four-bedroom house felt crowded for a while, when we were all young and living at home. I never connected “white privilege” to that house.
Then in 2016, I interviewed Liz Nicolas, a Rochester attorney, for the Spiritus website, after she gave a talk here at church on structural racism. Ms Nicolas, born in Queens, the daughter of a Haitian immigrants, has worked in the corporate and nonprofit worlds and now works as a consultant, coach, and anti-racism trainer in her own company, Black Amethyst LLC.
When Ms Nicolas talked about the disparities in treatment of white and Black veterans of World War II and how those disparities affected generational wealth, something struck a chord with me. I realized that while my dad, a veteran of World War II, likely used his G.I. benefits to get a loan for our house, the Black veteran got a virtual punch in the gut.
The Black veterans of World War II were at the mercy of a Veterans Administration that was hostile to them in many ways. Housing loans were administered under Federal Housing Authority guidelines that explicitly excluded African Americans from mortgages. (Hilary Herbold, “Never a Level Playing Field: Blacks and the G.I. Bill,” in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 1994-1995; Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, 2017). If a Black veteran did receive a loan, he was likely to be explicitly kept out of the suburbs, even though suburban housing developments were going up all over the country for white people. In fact, between 1934 and 1962, the federal government underwrote $120 billion in new housing. Less than 2 percent of this amount went to non-whites, according to the documentary, “Race: The Power of an Illusion,” produced by California Newsreel. (Excerpts are available for free online.)
I never realized that, if you were an African American veteran, it didn’t matter whether you ran through fire during World War II for your country. In fact, Rothstein, in the book referred to above, tells the story of U.S. Naval serviceman Doris “Dorrie” Miller, an African American kitchen worker who literally did run through fire to save his ship’s captain and became “the most heroic American sailor at Pearl Harbor.” (Rothstein, Ch. 4, “Own Your Own Home.”) Although Mr. Miller died during World War II, his heroics would likely not have been rewarded by our government. Furthermore, society as a whole enabled these racist policies, which translated into a huge and well-documented wealth gap between Black and white families from post-World War II to the present.
And Rochester, the city Frederick Douglass called home, did not exactly “welcome the stranger,” the way Jesus asked us to do. During the second wave of the Great Migration, in the 1950s and 1960s, our community restricted African Americans to the Third Ward (Corn Hill) and the Seventh Ward (east of Genesee River, north of Main Street), leaving them with generally substandard housing conditions. Undoubtedly, among these new residents were veterans who could only have dreamed about the house where I grew up. I don’t want to minimize my parents’ hard work on that house; my father dedicated many Saturdays to tasks as mundane as ant removal or re-caulking bathroom tile. However, for their efforts, they built equity – which was key in the care of my mom after my dad died. The option to build equity should have been a no-brainer gift from our government for every returning veteran.
Sadly, for anyone who thinks racist housing practices are past history, Mary Chao recently reported in The Democrat and Chronicle that the creation of a “private listing” on a house sale has the potential to lead to segregation practices. Although Ms Chao does not call out Rochester real estate agents for this practice, she does quote Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, associate professor of sociology who spent a year researching inequities in the Houston real estate market, on the topic of private listings. Ms Korver-Glenn wrote that real estate agents use “tacitly legal behaviors that code or signal racial stereotypes but assuage their ethical or legal concerns.” (“That house you saw listed for sale? It might already be sold,” D and C, June 12, 2020).
I feel daunted by the task of helping to “undo” racism. After all, is there any way to reframe racist structures that have been built over centuries? However, as we have heard from Rev. Myra and from Father Jim, this is a time of hope. And consider John’s words preceding today’s Gospel as we do this work: “But when he comes, the Spirit of truth, he will guide you to all truth.” Confronting the full truths of our past will not be easy, but knowing the truth is an essential first step to justice.
13 Comments
Kathryn Franz
Great piece today. We White people have no idea of all the insidious ways our “whiteness” has given us many many advantages. Your piece reminds me of Richard Rothstein’s book: The Color of Law
A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. There are many youtube videos of him discussing this unfortunate history, and undoubtedly was at work here in our region, too. Thank you for shining a light on it for us.
Mary Heveron-Smith Author
Thanks, Kathryn. Rothstein’s book is referenced above, but I’ll look for the YouTube videos as well.
What was interesting for me is how that casual observation during an interview gave me my “aha” moment and motivation to look deeper. Although Rothstein’s book wasn’t out at the time of the interview, it’s now a gold mine on this topic. One question that we white people can ask ourselves is (instead of “Am I privileged?”): In what ways am I privileged?
Judy Kkley
Thanks Mary I am at the point of actually recognizing and accepting the facts of white privileged, not denying. Your examples put faces to the issue. I am now reading Stacy Abrams Our Time Is Now about Voter Suppression which still exists today. My efforts now are VoterRegistration and then Get the Voters to the Polls. Your article helps keep me motivated to Action! Including I will go ( at a distance) to the Black Nurses Rally at MLK in Rochester tomorrow, 7/11 at 3 PM
I must show Support !
Mary Heveron-Smith Author
Thank you, Judy, for sharing your inspirational thoughts and actions.
Patrick Dwyer
Very well written and informative. White privilege doesn’t go out of its way to hide its racism. It’s like this is what we intended, deal with it.
Mary Heveron-Smith Author
Thanks, Patrick. You’re right. This was blatant. Why was society blind to it? I try to ask myself: What things are we blind to now?
Patrick Dwyer
You are an inspiration Judy.
Annie O’Reilly
Hi Judy and Mary. this blog is so well researched. I wanted to thank you for taking the time to write these. July, I too would like to do “Get out the vote.” If you have some specific ideas, I would love to hear them.
Mary Heveron-Smith Author
Thank you, Annie!
Judy
Great Annie. 5853159288 to text or call me. I will note this when I come up with some ideas. I spoke with. LWV person yesterday.
Patrick Dwyer
Sometimes I feel like we should role play and reverse the races where there was Black privilege and the white race is the minority.What would that feel like and where would I be sitting today? Boy, does that make me squirm! As a 5th grader I was anxious to meet new friends that were being bussed in to our school. I saw the buses out the window but do you know I never saw, not once one boy or girl of color the whole time I was at school! They entered the school after we were secure in our classes and kept them in a classroom not allowed to have gym or lunch- nothing. Literally separated! The next year my parents said it was time to move to the suburbs because there was rumor the blacks might move into our neighborhood. The effort white privilege took to stay separate is astonishing. And I don’t think alot has changed but maybe with the protests of 2020 there will be a willingness to make systemic change. I think I might be blind to the years that it will take for racial equality and that change that is so long overdue.
Mary Heveron-Smith Author
Reviewing events of childhood with a different lens — I’m doing a lot of that as well, Patrick, and it’s sobering. Thanks for the reflection. Let’s keep that hope for change!
Peg england
Thank you! Very insightful
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