| June 16, 2006 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth White
picket fences
White
people are so scared of black people
they bulldoze out to the country and put up houses on little loop-dee-loop streets and while america gets its heart cut right out of its chest the berlin wall still runs down main street separating east side from west. — Ani DiFranco
From what I can tell, after a few weeks down south, the nation is more segregated than ever. In Charleston, S.C., millionaires are buying downtown property like locusts swarming into cornfields, home prices are in the stratosphere, and gentrification takes the form of a noun, verb and adjective. At a crowded rooftop bar on a Friday night, I saw a group of African Americans squeeze toward a table. They sat with their drinks for a while, watching the dozens of coeds pursuing each other as if humans were credit card purchases or stock. The only Blacks in the bar, they left without finishing their drinks. In fact, just about the only African Americans I ever saw in Charleston were young boys selling roses woven from sweetgrass, or, yes, servants. “Why are there no Black people on the beach?” I asked some locals one evening. “It’s not in their culture,” I was told, as if I should know better. On the other side of the country, in progressive Portland, I watched a young man with rectangular glasses, a goatee and a Metallica t-shirt over a long-sleeve reading an article about immigration reform and sneering. The woman serving his Starbucks coffee was Hispanic. Outside “P-Town” is a small chain of country clubs called McMenamins. They are upscale, yet artsy; a targeted clientele of yuppie deadheads with BMWs and expensive homes. After playing golf, you can drink a pint of ale from the microbrewery on the premise, watch glass being blown, or visit the bronze sculpture of Jerry Garcia. Where are the Americans of Latin descent? Well, someone had to pick the grapes to make the Pinot Gris, of course. In his recently published book, Shame of the Nation, Jonathan Kozol shows, with disturbing anecdotes, how the racial divide in U.S. public schools has increased dramatically in the past few decades. If schools, then, are racially segregated, what does that mean for the rest of society? What will it take to reverse racial stratification? I doubt there will be serious change without radical land reform policies. Armchair real estate prognosticators say there will be major collapse in property values in coming years—“the bubble has to burst,” they say. This might be a chance for urban planners to flush some of the marshmallows from their comfortable suburbs and provide low-income loans as homes become more affordable. It will have to be a sort of affirmative action real estate renaissance. Mix things up. This opportunity arrived in Anchorage in the 80’s when the housing market imploded and people left their homes with only a suitcase. As foreclosures blossomed, property values dropped and the state and municipal governments had a chance to re-create communities. As expected, however, the rich, white folk bought everything up, and Anchorage’s communities are as divided as Oreos. Land reform? Maybe. We’ll likely need to stop the millionaires from making the rules —and restore democracy—first. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist, and is the winner of the Alaska Press Club's 2006 'Best Columnist' award. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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