Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (57 page)

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Authors: James W. Loewen

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Similarly, the solitary black household allowed as the exception in a sundown town can humanize that community to a degree. At least whites have made a distinction among African Americans, even if only to separate out one or two Tonto figures from the otherwise backward horde. And their presence—and that of their children—does “desegregate” some of the institutions in town, such as the public schools and the library, even if only nominally. But I wouldn’t want to claim too much for this process. Allowing one African American person or household has rarely led to a difference in a sundown town’s policy or alleviated the racism that defends and rationalizes that policy.
On the contrary: publicizing the African American as an exception reminds the community that this is the
only
African American allowed in the area, thus ironically reinforcing the sundown rule. Even Greenwood, Indiana, for example, a town whose hostility toward African Americans was legendary, had its one African American household as an exception. In the words of Joycelyn Landrum-Brown, an African American who grew up nearby, “The whites in that town ‘just loved’ that black family,” and “they did not come to any harm.”
33
The Austin, Minnesota, story shows another ideological payoff that allowing one household to stay when all others are driven out can have for whites, as they can claim not to be racist: “We’re not against all African Americans, after all—look at Frank!” More accurately, whites can claim to be
appropriately
racist. The problem lies with those
other
African Americans—“the damn niggers.” Even Frank—“and he was
black”
—agrees. Thus instead of allowing their positive feelings about George Washington Maddox or Elizabeth Davis to prompt some questioning of their exclusionary policies, whites in Medford, Oregon, and Casey, Illinois, merely emphasized how exceptional these individuals were. In turn, this allowed whites to affirm once more how inferior
other
African Americans were, in their eyes. In about 1950, whites in Marshall, Illinois, a sundown town just east of Casey, even declared their exception, “Squab” Wilson, the barber, to be “an honorary white man.” Afraid of losing this honor—and perhaps his white clientele and his permission to live in Marshall—Wilson refused to cut the hair of a black writer living temporarily at the nearby Handy Writers Colony, until novelist James Jones threatened him with a boycott.
34
Interaction with people such as “Frank” or Wilson provides residents of sundown towns with no meaningful experience with African Americans, because such individuals take care not to reveal opinions or characteristics different from those of the white majority. Unfortunately, unless they enlist in the armed forces, most residents of sundown towns never get to know African Americans, except superficially in athletic contests and from television. The impact of the exclusion of African Americans on the residents of these towns—and on white Americans in general—will be the subject of the next chapter.
PART V
 
Effects of Sundown Towns
 
11
 
The Effect of Sundown Towns on Whites
 
And I said “nigger,” and my mother corrected me: “When we’re in
this
town you must call them ‘Negroes.’ ”
—“Susan Penny” of Oblong, Illinois, telling of her childhood trip to Terre Haute, Indiana, c. 1978
1
 
 
 
 
W
HAT DIFFERENCE DO SUNDOWN TOWNS and suburbs make? In particular, what effect do they have on their inhabitants? Is growing up in an intentionally all-white town unlike growing up in an integrated town? Sociologist William J. Wilson uses “social isolation” as an explanation (in part) for the social pathology of the black ghetto. Here we explore the social pathology of the
white
ghetto, if you will, caused by its comparable social isolation. We will see that residents of sundown towns do become more racist toward African Americans and also more prejudiced toward gays and other minorities. Sundown towns also collect white racists from the outside world who are attracted by the towns’ lack of diversity.
White Seems Right
 
My research shows that residents of sundown towns and suburbs are much more racist toward African Americans than are residents of interracial towns, and also more prejudiced toward gays and other minorities. But do sundown communities collect white supremacists or create them? The question is important. If sundown towns merely collected racists, they might be doing American society a service by sequestering bigots away from the rest of us. Sundown towns do collect white racists from the outside world who are attracted by their lack of diversity. Unfortunately, they also create racists. Living in an all-white community leads many residents to defend living in an all-white community.
These generalizations do not describe everyone in a sundown town, suburb, or neighborhood.
2
Many young adults leave sundown communities precisely to experience greater diversity and escape the stifling atmosphere of conformity that many of these places foster. Indeed, if they want to be successful, young people almost have to leave independent sundown towns, because these towns impart a worldview that limits their horizons. Children of elite sundown suburbs, on the other hand, are likely to move into positions of corporate and political leadership in years to come. This makes their constricted upbringing a problem for us all, because sundown communities inculcate a distinctive form of obtuse thinking about American society—I have elsewhere called it “soclexia”
3
—that incorporates remarkable ethnocentrism as well as NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) politics.
The first and mildest effect on one’s thinking that results from living in a sundown town is the sense that it is perfectly normal to live in an all-white community. Even towns that went sundown by violently expelling their African Americans quickly come to seem all-white “naturally.” Billy Bob Lightfoot, historian of Comanche County, Texas, caught this sense when describing the aftermath of that county’s expulsion of its black residents in 1886: “Almost immediately it seemed as though there had never been a Negro in Comanche County, and within a month the only reminder . . . was a sign on the public well in De Leon: ‘Nigger, don’t let the sun go down on you in this town.’ ”
4
“Almost immediately,” whites do not really notice that the town is
not
normal and that an initial incident, in this case a violent expulsion, and a subsequent series of enforcement measures, some violent, were required to achieve and maintain this abnormal result.
5
Decades later, it is even easier to take a town’s whiteness for granted. Not everyone moves to sundown towns to avoid African Americans, after all. Many whites locate in them without even knowing they are sundown towns. Once they have moved in, residents are still less likely to reflect upon the racial composition of their new community. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the children go to school, the adults to work, and all seems as it should be. All-white town governments, churches, choral groups, audiences, and even school athletic teams come to appear perfectly normal. African Americans come to seem unusual—abnormal—except maybe on television.
Children who grow up in sundown towns find it especially easy to develop the sense that it is normal, even proper, to grow up in a place where everyone looks like you, racially, and that blacks are
not
the same and not really proper. But newcomers, too, rarely challenge the whiteness of their newly chosen communities. Instead, they tend to take on the culture, including the political ideology and patterns of race relations, into which they move. Carl Withers studied a small Missouri sundown town, Wheatland, in 1940. “New settlers still come in, a dozen or two a year in the whole county,” he wrote. “Those who stay become in remarkably short time ‘just like everybody else here,’ in speech, dress, mannerisms, attitudes, and general way of life. Most of those who are unable to adjust to the community’s mores soon sell out and move away.” Jacob Holdt, a Dane whose exposé on race relations in the United States,
American Pictures,
was briefly famous in the 1980s, describes Danes’ accommodation to racism in the United States: “I have met Danish Americans who were red-hot Social Democrats back in Denmark, but in the course of just five years had been transformed into the worst reactionaries.”
6
Withers’s finding—that newcomers become just like everybody else—holds especially true for new arrivals to sundown suburbs. As
Newsweek
put it in 1957, during the peak rush to suburbia: “When a city dweller packs up and moves his family to the suburbs, he usually acquires a mortgage, a power lawn mower, and a backyard grill. Often although a lifelong Democrat, he also starts voting Republican.” Sometimes families even change their party membership before they move, a pattern sociologists call anticipatory socialization. The same adjustment seems to take place regarding race relations, which explains why sundown towns that were quite small before suburbanization usually stay all-white after suburbanization, even though nine-tenths of their populations may now be new arrivals. Sundown acorns produce white oak trees. Socialization to suburbia thus increases the level of racism in metropolitan areas, as people move from multiracial cities to all-white suburbs.
7
White Privilege
 
Once living in an all-white town seems normal, residents come to think of it as a
right.
Going against this right seems wrong. As we saw in the “Enforcement” chapter, a person of color who strays into an all-white town looks out of place, even outrageous. A white person who claims that this is not how a town should be can similarly sound out of place, even outrageous.
In 1987, Oprah Winfrey, broadcasting from Forsyth County, Georgia, then a sundown county, explored this mentality:
Winfrey: You don’t believe that people of other races have the right to live here?
 
 
Unidentified Audience Member #2: They have the right to live wherever they want to, but we have the right to choose if we want a white community also. That’s why we moved here.
This viewpoint is hardly confined to places as “extreme” as Forsyth County, which expelled its African Americans en masse in 1912. “White people have a right to keep blacks out of their neighborhoods if they want to, and blacks should respect that right” was one of the opinion statements presented to people by the National Opinion Research Center repeatedly in the 1970s, and in 1976, a representative year, 40% of whites across the nation agreed with the item. Of course, many of them lived in all-white suburbs and neighborhoods. Striking is Audience Member #2’s “we/they” terminology. White privilege necessarily involves the creation of a black “they”—a racial outgroup. Thus sundown towns increase white racism because they provoke whites to think of a black person not as an individual but as an African American first. The file folder phenomenon rules uncontested.
8
In 1958, sociologist Herbert Blumer published an important article, “Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position,” pointing out “that race prejudice exists basically in a sense of group position rather than in a set of feelings.” Blumer pointed out that viewing prejudice as feelings “overlooks and obscures the fact that race prejudice is fundamentally a matter of relationship between racial groups.” While feelings are definitely involved, prejudice presupposes “that racially prejudiced individuals think of themselves as belonging to a given racial group.” It also presupposes that they have an image of the “other” group, against whom they are prejudiced. Blumer went on to identify four feelings that are involved, of which “the third feeling, the sense of proprietary claim, is of crucial importance.” “Proprietary claim,” of course—the “right” to exclude—is precisely what sundown towns are all about.
9
This new proprietary claim helps explain why sundown towns usually stayed all-white for so long: once whites have concocted the “privilege” of living in an all-white community, they are then loath to give up this “right.” Indeed, what we might call “racial patriotism” keeps them from giving it up. Note the contradiction between the two rights invoked by Winfrey’s Audience Member #2: “They” have “the right to live wherever they want,” but “we” have “the right to choose if we want a white community.” How do “we” exercise that right? Obviously by infringing “their” right to live wherever they want.
A white friend unwittingly displayed this same contradiction upon first learning of my research topic: “I just can’t understand why people would
want
to live where they’re not wanted!” This statement seems reasonable and I tried to answer it reasonably, but it presumes that African Americans can be expected to assess whether whites want them and should comport themselves accordingly. When “we” (nonblacks) buy a house, we do not assess whether our neighbors will like us. We rarely even meet them before moving in, and if we do, we only meet those right next door. We
presume
we will be accepted or at least tolerated. We also presume the privilege of living wherever we want. My friend’s comment does not afford African Americans the same right and instead makes “them” the problem: “they” are wrong to intrude.

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