Reddit reviews Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism

OP HERE: This is my former bedroom window (current, captured in Google Earth), where we were living when I was born in 1964. The building is at N. 35th & Lisbon Ave., in the Washington Park neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisc., USA.




I have no memory of living here. By the time I was a toddler, my parents had moved us to a suburb, Brown Deer, where I could have a backyard and streets to bike on. But they felt torn about leaving what was then a dream neighborhood.




My folks lived in this apartment, above a hardware store, from the mid-1950s until 1965. They adored it. In those days, this area on Milwaukee's Near North Side was then a bustling hub where residents walked to a grocery store, a movie theater, and a bakery. Downtown Milwaukee was a 5-minute drive.




My relatives have told me how "classy" our little place was, with an "Oriental" theme in black, white and red. (Mom and dad always had great taste in decor!) It was the kind of apartment and neighborhood I'd love to live in today -- how I wish I could remember!




Or really, I wish I still lived there -- and that nothing had changed. So -- my (white) father had been President of the Milwaukee Jazz Society, and so many of my (white) parents' friends were black, I grew up in a bubble. Brown Deer was always a comparatively mixed suburb, hence my white ignorance of Milwaukee's hypersegregation and particular institutional racism, until I was older (and living elsewhere).




For decades now, the "Near North Side" of Milwaukee has been synonymous with "the black area" or the slum (called "The Core" by Milwaukeeans). Also for several decades, Milwaukee has been the most racially segregated city in the nation.(*) Almost 45% of Milwaukeeeans are white, but 80% of them live in the suburbs -- and only 9% of Milwaukee's blacks do. Living conditions for blacks are actually worse there, in many metrics, than in "The Deep South." (**)




Today, this building is one of the few structures remaining on a block mostly razed in the 1980s due to the crack epidemic. The poverty rate exceeds 60%. In 2018, this 128-acre neighborhood reported 159 burglaries, 414 counts of assault, and 464 "counts of shooting." The adjacent zipcode has the notorious distinction of having the highest percentage of incarcerated adults in the U.S.(***)




To illustrate the low property value there, I compared two similar homes for sale on Zillow -- one on my old block, and one close to where I live now (in Madison, about 70 miles away). A 4-bedroom, 2-bathroom house built in the 1930s is listed for $800,000 here ... and for $16,000 in my old neighborhood.




I turned 55 last week, and amazingly, I've only seen this building one time as an adult. Some years back, I drove into the neighborhood, parked my car kitty-corner, and got out of my car with a 35mm camera.




I managed only a couple of shots before a middle-aged woman inquired what I was doing. I told her I'd lived there as a baby, but couldn't remember it. In true friendliness and concern, she told me it was unwise for me to be there. That's why I got this photo on Google.




I always considered myself sort of "woke," but I realized how truly clueless I was about the level of institutional racism, particularly around housing issues in the Midwest, when I read the book "Sundown Towns: the Hidden Dimension of Racism in America." (+) It shocked and humbled me. It helped me to understand what happened to my old neighborhood and why it became an "urban hell."




(*) https://www.thecut.com/2016/08/milwaukee-shows-what-segregation-does-to-american-cities.html




(**) https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/03/05/390723644/why-is-milwaukee-so-bad-for-black-people




(***) https://www.milwaukee53206.com/




(+) https://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-American/dp/0743294483

I first heard about this in the book Sundown Towns by James W. Loewen. Anyone interested in the history of race relations in the United States should definitely check it out. This kind of thing happened often. Tulsa's race riot is notable because of its scale, but smaller towns all across the United States attempted to run off their black populations. Enough black people were living in Tulsa that the riot did not push it into becoming an all-white city. Towns all over the country, however, became all-white and did everything they could to stay all-white. This is the type of history that is essential to our understanding of the past but too often gets ignored or covered up simply because people don't want to think about the horrible effects of racism in this country's not-too-distant past.

It's no coincidence that Gary, Indiana is top of the list. Indiana is famous for Sundown Towns where black folks get run out of town or refused real estate. Lynchings were an epidemic in Indiana in the first half of the twentieth century. So you get super-concentrated areas where black people are allowed to live, like Gary and parts of Chicago.

So then, when minorities get holed up into large, shitty cities/neighborhoods, crime skyrockets because they get super poor with awful resources for jobs and general amenities. Then cops go out of their way to farm them for inevitable druglords and the like. Eventually you get a shithole city.

Source: Sundown Towns by James Loewen, the authority on large-scale housing discrimination.

I can answer that on a personal level. Pre Civil rights (and even post) blacks were systematically or informally discriminated on many levels. For example due to discmination in GI bill policies most returning blacks did not get a chance to get the free ride to college which alone is huge. Also many college programs would not accept blacks.

Here's where it's personal my father was denied entry into the school of engineering and mathematics at UCLA in the 50's. he was told (and I quote) "We won't have any niggers in this department" by the dean. He had enough money, didn't need scholarships and had the grades but such level of discrimination existed on every level which denied many black men opportunities to rise corporate ladders. Even if there was a progressive company that was willing to take on a black business graduate many workers would walk out on a negro boss or sabotage their work until they were fired. You also miss all the informal mentoring, alumni networks and business connections that a white male would have had at those same times. Even today we find that people generally don't mentor someone that is different than them on a cultural level. Hence a disproportionately reduced numbers of females and minorities in C-suite positions despite demographics.

Beyond that, housing was heavily and forcefully segregated. My grandparents were unable to buy a suburban house in LA, they had the money could afford the loan but realtors would simply refuse to show you houses, buyers would refuse to sell and most importantly banks wouldn't even consider your loan application. You know that small print in all loan commercials about "equal opportunity lender". There's a reason it exists. denial of business loans, personal loans and home loans was just another nail in the coffin of those who wanted to escape poverty traps or start investing and moving out of apartments and into neighborhoods. This again filtered most blacks regardless of economic status to poorer neighborhoods.

Beyond that, city planners actively destroyed many black neighborhoods (sometimes by accident) by placing the brand new freeways right through their neighborhoods and communities. Another personal story my grandparents home was destroyed to make the 10 free way in Los Angeles. Of course through eminent domain they were paid... but below market value. It's no coincidence that many of the highways in major post war cities across the US happen to intentionally reroute around affluent or white neighborhoods and cut right through minority ones. I'm not saying city planners were evil, post WWII futurists and leader saw suburbs as the ideal state with a car in every driveway and a .3 acre lot for every college grad and GI. Problem was they did this at the cost of divesting resources from public transportation and urban life, which in conjunction with unfair housing practices was just one more strike against blacks trying to enter the middle class.

Finally, if you somehow managed to become independently wealthy as a black businessman (much like my grandparents did) you still weren't safe. For a combination of reasons many black neighborhoods were systematically targeted or destroyed during the civil rights movement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot This wiped out a lot of black entrepreneurial enterprises and communities.

My family ended up being luckier than most my grandparents opened an african american credit union in the 50's in Los angeles (which is how they made it to the middle class) and helped their community for decades giving out loans when no one else would, but blacks were only allowed into the middle class begrudgingly, if at all. And this is just some of the more easily documented highlights of the civil rights movement.

Another good book on the subject is sun down towns. http://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-American/dp/0743294483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418708053&sr=8-1&keywords=sundown+towns All the towns that would "remove" blacks from their towns if caught there after dark. Not to mention prohibit any from moving in. this is just another facet in the many formal and informal ways blacks were prohibited from rising about their circumstance in those days. Many of them, such as wyandotte on the south side of detroit would do it with pride as they were basically the front line defense against having to live next to a black family, or other assumed ills of integration.

Suburbs exist to protect whites from minorities. Up until very recently the nation was dotted with Sundown Towns where only white people were allowed after dark. James Loewen's book on the subject ought to be required reading, in my opinion. You can't understand race in America if you don't understand how and why the nation pushed its black population into large, urban ghettos. The impact of this on the economic status of blacks has been devastating and is only now starting to recover.

Historian James Loewen talks in a few of his books about the interesting racial divide in America. In the South, historically, whites have had an antagonistic relationship with blacks, but still integrated them into their communities via slavery and low income jobs after slavery was abolished; they fulfilled a necessary role in their communities, even while being vilified. In the North, there just weren't that many black people around, so they have always been kind of an alien component until the last few decades, but that doesn't make the white populations in those areas more tolerant. By Loewen's estimation, 1/3 of all communities in the Northern US had either explicit or implied rules that people of color were not allowed to settle in the community, though they could work service jobs there. For more on the topic, consider this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Sundown-Towns-Hidden-Dimension-American/dp/0743294483

>Any "segregation" which does exist is entirely self-imposed by people choosing of their own free will to live in certain neighborhoods which are populated by people who match their own ethnicity or socio-economic class

"There’s this idea that people self-segregate, but the reality is that there’s never really been self-segregation in Milwaukee"

Segregation was literally the law of the land for 400 entire goddamn years. Not to mention Milwaukee was littered with sundown towns that helped create the racial landscape. If you think Milwaukee's racial demographics are just some happy accident, then you REALLY need to educate yourself, because there's no excuse for being this ignorant in 2019. If you haven't read The Color of Law or Sundown Towns (which very obviously you haven't) then don't bother responding.

omg yes, I am reading it right now. It's Sundown Towns by James Loewen. He has done extensive research on American history and race relations. If you want a good American history book, check out Lies My Teacher Told Me by the same author. I attended a lecture of his a couple years ago and the man has a pretty firm grasp on the subjects he writes about. Cheers