It Takes a Village

So there I was, in a village meeting with the commissioners. We were all discussing how to revitalize a strip of mixed use residential and commercial land in our town. I am new to the commission.

"We have a great plan. There was a rape on this parcel several years ago and no one goes there any more." [It is too close to a black part of town]. "The community wants to revitalize the business district." [It is used by too many poor blacks]. "We want something that reflects the needs and desires of the community." [Where white people and the middle class blacks we like can shop]. "We need to make the area safe again." [Maybe by removing some of the black faces].

I tried to speak up, it was just hard to know what to say. I immediately raised the subtextual issues.

The response:

"I don't think this plan was driven by issues of race, but rather by economic issues."

Too smart by half? The economic issue is the poor black people. I am no master of statistics or the most recent census. I bet you could tell me that most poor people aren't black and be right. After all they make up a small part of the overall population. Did you know that many of the housing projects were originally brimming with poor whites? But I'd bet that a disproportionate number of black people are poor. And I know that a dispropotionate number are in prison. Economics is a wonderful way to discriminate on the basis of race without discriminating on the basis of race.

We aren't against black people, we just want more income diversity. If the diversity leads to less black people, how were we to know? We just don't want any kind of aggregation of poverty. That's different than saying we don't want blacks. (Several of the letters are different). Same thing really, but we said it in a much nicer way.

The plan we had may be the best one, I have no idea.

The lying makes me uncomfortable.