Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism (70 page)
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Authors: James W. Loewen
BOOK: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism
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Black and interracial neighborhoods end up with most of the other “disamenities” in metropolitan areas, too, such as trash “transfer stations” (in former times these were “dumps”); impound lots for abandoned and illegally parked cars; storage lots for street cleaners, buses, and other city vehicles; public housing projects; and maintenance yards for street repair supplies. Zoning protects affluent white neighborhoods from these problems, which generate truck traffic, odors, and noise. Private disamenities, such as polluting industries, can make black and interracial areas still worse, while most sundown suburbs have the clout to keep them out. One result, according to survey data, is that African Americans are almost twice as likely as whites to rate their neighborhood “poor.” Probably they’re right! Foretelling that interracial neighborhoods will go downhill, compared to sundown neighborhoods, is the third prediction by whites that Ellen believes accounts for white flight. Again, whites don’t have to be racist to want to avoid such neighborhoods.
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Suburban Hitchhikers29
Not only disamenities but also amenities can burden cities and older multiracial suburbs. Such amenities as universities, museums, cathedrals, churches, parks, arts organizations, concert halls, and nonprofit hospitals are located in central cities but are used by people from the suburbs, including the sundown suburbs. Indeed, some amenities, such as private colleges and universities, are used
mostly
by suburbanites. These institutions do not pay property taxes.
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Their users, too, pay no taxes to the city, except sales tax on incidental purchases. Yet cities provide services—police, streets, fire protection—to these amenities and their users. In some cities, as much as a third of the potential tax base is exempt from taxes, compared to as little as 3% in many suburbs. In some metropolitan areas, this has been an issue for a long time. In 1943, for example, Dallas Mayor J. W. Rodgers pointed out that “well-heeled” residents of the Park Cities, the two sundown “suburbs” entirely surrounded by Dallas, relied more than most Dallas residents on Love Field, the Dallas airport. They “needed to assume their rightful burden in its upkeep and administration,” in the words of Dallas historian Darwin Payne. The
Dallas News
called the Park Cities “ ‘suburban hitchhikers’ using Dallas’s facilities free of charge.”
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mostly
by suburbanites. These institutions do not pay property taxes.
30
Their users, too, pay no taxes to the city, except sales tax on incidental purchases. Yet cities provide services—police, streets, fire protection—to these amenities and their users. In some cities, as much as a third of the potential tax base is exempt from taxes, compared to as little as 3% in many suburbs. In some metropolitan areas, this has been an issue for a long time. In 1943, for example, Dallas Mayor J. W. Rodgers pointed out that “well-heeled” residents of the Park Cities, the two sundown “suburbs” entirely surrounded by Dallas, relied more than most Dallas residents on Love Field, the Dallas airport. They “needed to assume their rightful burden in its upkeep and administration,” in the words of Dallas historian Darwin Payne. The
Dallas News
called the Park Cities “ ‘suburban hitchhikers’ using Dallas’s facilities free of charge.”
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The use of city services by suburban visitors wouldn’t be so bad if it were a two-way street, but it’s not. City residents do not use suburban facilities equally and often are not allowed to. We have seen how sundown suburbs often barricade their amenities against outsiders or make them hard to find. No sign points to the beach in Darien, for example, and a visitor who does manage to find it encounters signs marking it “Private.” A sentry checks even cyclists and pedestrians for beach stickers that only Darien residents can get. Even basketball courts are amenities worth keeping African Americans away from in Ohio, according to a man who grew up in the sundown suburbs of Cincinnati: “Saint Bernard and Elmwood Place were two of a number of all-white towns in the Millcreek Valley area of Cincinnati when I was growing up. Just a few years ago, the parks and basketball hoops still bore signs saying that the facilities were for the use of St. Bernard residents only.”
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One response might be, “What’s wrong with that? Don’t Darien taxpayers pay to keep that beach clean? Doesn’t St. Bernard maintain those basketball courts?” But Darien residents would be furious if New York City kept them out of Central Park. Ohio suburbanites would protest if Cincinnati kept them away from its beautiful new Riverfront Park. Residents of sundown suburbs consider it their right to make use of the facilities of the central city. They do not reciprocate.
In yet another way, elite sundown suburbs fail to pay their way: their zoning, lot requirements, and other restrictions force their maids, supermarket clerks, police officers, and even teachers to live elsewhere. These people simply cannot afford to live in the affluent suburbs where they work. These suburbs have never allowed public housing, and they impose minimum lot and zoning restrictions that make private housing too costly. Thus the property taxes paid by affluent whites in elite sundown suburbs do not help pay for the city services their employees use. Instead, less affluent and less white towns house them and try to educate their children, without the benefit of the tax base their employers’ homes and businesses would provide.
A few suburbs have done better in providing public housing, including Summit, New Jersey; Palo Alto, California; and Prince Georges County, Maryland. But again, it’s hard for a suburb to do this as long as it’s the only one; it may wind up majority-black and labeled a social problem. In the Washington metropolitan area, Prince Georges County was one of the few suburbs that allowed FHA-subsidized apartments; as a result, it wound up with nearly all of them, as of the mid-1970s. By 2000, the county was about 64% African American.
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Better Services, Lower Taxes33
In his famous book
An American Dilemma,
written as World War II wound down, Gunnar Myrdal noted that residential segregation has been a key factor accounting for the subordinate status of African Americans. Separating people geographically makes it much easier to provide better city services to some than to others, to give some children better schooling than others, and indeed to label some people better than others. In Roosevelt, the black township on Long Island, “as tax money dried up, the schools withered,” as
Washington Post
reporter Michael Powell put it. Across the United States, Jianping Shen concluded in 2003, schools with 50% or more minority enrollment had the highest rate of teachers teaching outside their field, the highest rate of inexperienced teachers and teachers with temporary certification, and the highest teacher attrition. Money is not the only issue. Professors in some schools of education routinely try to place their best graduates in elite suburban school districts, partly because they boast better working conditions and higher salaries, but also because they are more prestigious; hence the placements reflect credit back upon the graduate school. “The best teachers should be in the best schools”—this attitude permeates the field. “Most teachers consider it a promotion to move from poor to middle-class schools,” Kahlenberg notes, “and the best teachers usually transfer out of low-income schools at the first opportunity.” Again, the whites in Ingrid Ellen’s research are often right to associate predominantly black neighborhoods with poor schools—even if it’s not African Americans’ fault.
34
An American Dilemma,
written as World War II wound down, Gunnar Myrdal noted that residential segregation has been a key factor accounting for the subordinate status of African Americans. Separating people geographically makes it much easier to provide better city services to some than to others, to give some children better schooling than others, and indeed to label some people better than others. In Roosevelt, the black township on Long Island, “as tax money dried up, the schools withered,” as
Washington Post
reporter Michael Powell put it. Across the United States, Jianping Shen concluded in 2003, schools with 50% or more minority enrollment had the highest rate of teachers teaching outside their field, the highest rate of inexperienced teachers and teachers with temporary certification, and the highest teacher attrition. Money is not the only issue. Professors in some schools of education routinely try to place their best graduates in elite suburban school districts, partly because they boast better working conditions and higher salaries, but also because they are more prestigious; hence the placements reflect credit back upon the graduate school. “The best teachers should be in the best schools”—this attitude permeates the field. “Most teachers consider it a promotion to move from poor to middle-class schools,” Kahlenberg notes, “and the best teachers usually transfer out of low-income schools at the first opportunity.” Again, the whites in Ingrid Ellen’s research are often right to associate predominantly black neighborhoods with poor schools—even if it’s not African Americans’ fault.
34
Often, the better schools and nicer amenities that suburbs offer come bundled with
lower
taxes. The reason is simple: elite suburbs often have “five times as much taxable property per capita as the poorest suburbs,” according to social scientist Michael Danielson. In 1990, Philadelphia had the highest tax burden in its metropolitan area, yet brought in less money per pupil than elite suburbs with much lower tax rates. Black townships suffer from this problem even worse than cities. Roosevelt, for example, has a student population that was “99.7% black and Latino in 2002,” according to Powell. “They attend decrepit schools and read tattered textbooks.” Yet, “to support these failing schools, homeowners here pay the highest property tax rates on Long Island, as their 1½-square-mile town has no commercial tax base to speak of. Far wealthier and far whiter towns border Roosevelt to the north and east.”
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lower
taxes. The reason is simple: elite suburbs often have “five times as much taxable property per capita as the poorest suburbs,” according to social scientist Michael Danielson. In 1990, Philadelphia had the highest tax burden in its metropolitan area, yet brought in less money per pupil than elite suburbs with much lower tax rates. Black townships suffer from this problem even worse than cities. Roosevelt, for example, has a student population that was “99.7% black and Latino in 2002,” according to Powell. “They attend decrepit schools and read tattered textbooks.” Yet, “to support these failing schools, homeowners here pay the highest property tax rates on Long Island, as their 1½-square-mile town has no commercial tax base to speak of. Far wealthier and far whiter towns border Roosevelt to the north and east.”
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Companies frequently leave interracial areas to get lower taxes. Often, sundown suburbs wind up with an area’s best taxable draws. In 1956, for example, Edina, Minnesota, got Southdale shopping center, still a potent commercial site. On Long Island, what Powell calls “the massive and successful Roosevelt Field shopping malls” were built just five miles north of Roosevelt, “with the help of county subsidies and zoning regulations. From the point of view of Roosevelt, however, the malls might as well have been in Des Moines, because tax revenue is not shared across town lines.” The result was catastrophic for the black township. “As Roosevelt Field thrived, stores died in Roosevelt itself,” further shrinking Roosevelt’s taxable property base.
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Sundown Communities and the Political System36
Finally, sundown towns influence their residents’ politics. With this discussion we return to the effects of these towns on whites with which the chapter began, but now in the context of their impact on our political system as a whole. The racial exclusiveness of sundown suburbs helped move the Republican Party away from the equal-rights creed of Lincoln, which had lingered in vestigial form as late as 1960. Most independent sundown towns started out Democratic, but beginning in 1964, voters defected for racial reasons—first to Alabama governor George Wallace and then to Richard Nixon and subsequent Republicans. Anecdotal evidence and some statistical analyses suggest that in 1964, in his first presidential campaign, Wallace carried most sundown towns in the Indiana Democratic primary, for example, while winning 35% of the white vote statewide. He did even better in the Wisconsin primary, winning more than 40% of the white vote. His only issue—and he was clear about it—was President Lyndon Johnson’s use of the federal bureaucracy to improve race relations. For Wallace to do so well as an awkward, angry southern white in his first try for national office made a striking comment about midwestern white voters and their desire for continued white supremacy.
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In the 1964 general election, the two parties again began to articulate consistently different racial programs, for the first time since 1890. Democrats after Johnson would be identified with civil rights, and Republicans after Goldwater would be identified with resistance to civil rights. In 1968, Richard Nixon followed an explicit “southern strategy,” appealing to white southerners upset about black claims to equality and dismissing black voters. Nixon called for “law and order,” condemned civil rights (and student) protests, and said he favored neither integrationists nor segregationists. He appointed four Supreme Court justices thought to be soft on desegregation, ordered the Justice Department to oppose immediate desegregation in 1969 in
Alexander v. Holmes,
and sent a bill to Congress to outlaw busing for desegregation.
Alexander v. Holmes,
and sent a bill to Congress to outlaw busing for desegregation.
Nixon’s southern strategy also turned out to be a winning strategy in sundown suburbs and independent sundown towns. After 1964, most sundown towns and suburbs voted Republican or, in 1968 and 1972, for Wallace. Before 1964, Owosso, a sundown town between Lansing and Flint, Michigan, had usually voted Republican, but not for racial reasons, the two parties not being clearly different in racial policies. That year, however, it went for Democrat Lyndon Johnson, “an exception and a mistake, according to everyone interviewed here” by a
New York Times
reporter in 1968. In 1968, Owosso switched to George Wallace. “A lot of people like what he has to say about handling riots and aggressive law enforcement,” said a local Republican leader. The reporter saw through this rhetoric, noting, “Such talk seems ironic in a town where the most pressing law-and-order problem is teen-agers’ hot-rodding past the pizza house on Friday and Saturday nights.” The real issue was that “Owosso has no Negroes, has never had any, and, according to many private opinions, does not want any.” After 1968, Owosso voted Republican.
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New York Times
reporter in 1968. In 1968, Owosso switched to George Wallace. “A lot of people like what he has to say about handling riots and aggressive law enforcement,” said a local Republican leader. The reporter saw through this rhetoric, noting, “Such talk seems ironic in a town where the most pressing law-and-order problem is teen-agers’ hot-rodding past the pizza house on Friday and Saturday nights.” The real issue was that “Owosso has no Negroes, has never had any, and, according to many private opinions, does not want any.” After 1968, Owosso voted Republican.
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Owosso was hardly alone. Bill Outis grew up in Sandoval, Illinois, which he thinks was a sundown town, moved to Ramsey in 1962, another sundown town, and now lives in Pana, a third. In 1968, he recalled, Sandoval and Ramsey high school students held straw votes for president. About half voted for Nixon, the Republican and eventual winner, half for Wallace, and
one student
in each high school chose Hubert Humphrey, the Democrat nominee. Dearborn, Michigan, held a huge rally for Wallace in May 1972, and Wallace went on to win a stunning victory in Michigan’s 1972 Democratic primary. Across the North, Wallace frequently spoke in sundown towns, where he knew he could count on positive crowds. Kathy Spillman reports on her hometown in upstate New York: “George Wallace was so popular in North Tonawanda. And this was a Democratic union town!”
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one student
in each high school chose Hubert Humphrey, the Democrat nominee. Dearborn, Michigan, held a huge rally for Wallace in May 1972, and Wallace went on to win a stunning victory in Michigan’s 1972 Democratic primary. Across the North, Wallace frequently spoke in sundown towns, where he knew he could count on positive crowds. Kathy Spillman reports on her hometown in upstate New York: “George Wallace was so popular in North Tonawanda. And this was a Democratic union town!”
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With his “southern strategy,” Richard Nixon headed off Wallace in 1968. Once in office, Nixon stated that denying housing to people because of their race was wrong, but it was equally wrong for towns to have integrated housing “imposed from Washington by bureaucratic fiat.” The next successful Republican candidate, Ronald Reagan, deliberately chose a citadel of white supremacy—the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi—as the kickoff site for his presidential campaign, where he declared his support for “states’ rights,” code words signaling that the federal government should leave local jurisdictions alone to handle the “race problem” as they see fit. George W. Bush understands the rhetoric in sundown suburbs, having chosen one (Highland Park, Texas) as home for his family. As a result of such leadership, Republicans have carried most sundown towns since 1968, sometimes achieving startling unanimity. For example, Donahue noted that every single student from Nickerson, Kansas, that he met during their field trip to Washington in 2002 was sympathetic to the Republican Party. Of course, those groups that usually vote most Democratic—African Americans and Jewish Americans—simply aren’t represented in sundown towns. So the “southern strategy” turned out to be a “southern and sundown town strategy,” especially effective in sundown suburbs. Macomb County, for example, the next county north of Detroit, voted overwhelmingly for Wallace in the 1972 Democratic primary. Wooed by Nixon, many of these voters then became “Reagan Democrats” and now are plain Republicans. The biggest single reason, according to housing attorney Alexander Polikoff, was anxiety about “blacks trapped in ghettos trying to penetrate white neighborhoods.”
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