The only reason suburbs even became a thing in this country was because white people with FHA loans wanted nice houses close to their jobs and the amenities of cities but didn’t want their tax money going to fund black kids schools, and a lot (not all but a lot) of “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” people just want to get recognition for being an ally but descend into the kind of thinking and talking that would make Stephen Miller blush the moment they’re actually asked to actually do anything to support marginalized communities, so I’m not surprised at all to see suburban Republicans fall for this
e; technically it wasn’t the white people with the FHA loans who created the suburbs as we know them today so much as it was the ones administering them and in the halls of power voting on the creation of municipalities
The only reason suburbs even became a thing in this country was because white people with FHA loans wanted nice houses close to their jobs and the amenities of cities but didn’t want their tax money going to fund black kids schools,
Hang on, that doesn’t track with history as I know it currently.
Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) is where the whole garbage “separate but equal” logic came from including on school funding where everyone but whites got poor resources for schools.
Suburbs were created as a result of soldiers returning from WWII which would have been starting in 1945 with a the majority in 1946 after VJ day with the Japanese surrendering.
It would be another 8 years before Brown v Board of Education (1954) shot down “separate but equal” for schools allowing integration, and even then it wouldn’t have meant instant emptying of inner cities for suburbs until the early 60s or so.
So suburbs already were a thing and not caused by white people not wanting to fund black schools. Yes, exit to suburbs accelerated because of that, but suburbs weren’t created because of it.
Prior to Brown, many of today’s suburban municipalities were just neighborhoods of the cities they were near, neighborhoods that were almost entirely populated by white people due to racist administration of FHA loans, racist zoning laws, and racist real estate business practices. Post Brown is when a lot of them started to be spun off into independent municipal governments by state legislatures with their own mayors and city councils and school districts.
So, rereading it now, I feel like I should correct my initial comment here - it wasn’t the white people with FHA loans who started this process of creating segregated communities, it was the ones who administered those loans and who were writing the laws incorporating them as independent government entities.
The 'burbs mostly got built by GIs returning from WWII. There wasn’t room enough in the cities for all of them. I strongly doubt that “tax money going to fund black kids schools” was even a thought for most of them, let alone a primary motivator.
I’m not saying redlining didn’t happen. I’m saying that returning GIs didn’t intentionally build neighborhoods and redline them away from blacks to prevent paying taxes to black schools.
Maybe the GIs that physically built or bought their own homes, but the developers and companies that did the building and selling of homes to the GIs sure did.
And for a large portion of them: they would have gone along with the enforced racial segregation of the time, which was the system in place designed to separate more than just tax money.
I live in the PNW and there are developed communities, (mostly waterfront), built right after WW2 and explicitly written in their covenants bamned access to non-whites.
So a GI who bought one of those houses may not have cared too much personally, but the system is what facilitated it. Which is why it has nothing to do with personal conviction.
The only reason suburbs even became a thing in this country was because white people with FHA loans wanted nice houses close to their jobs and the amenities of cities but didn’t want their tax money going to fund black kids schools, and a lot (not all but a lot) of “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” people just want to get recognition for being an ally but descend into the kind of thinking and talking that would make Stephen Miller blush the moment they’re actually asked to actually do anything to support marginalized communities, so I’m not surprised at all to see suburban Republicans fall for this
e; technically it wasn’t the white people with the FHA loans who created the suburbs as we know them today so much as it was the ones administering them and in the halls of power voting on the creation of municipalities
Hang on, that doesn’t track with history as I know it currently.
So suburbs already were a thing and not caused by white people not wanting to fund black schools. Yes, exit to suburbs accelerated because of that, but suburbs weren’t created because of it.
Prior to Brown, many of today’s suburban municipalities were just neighborhoods of the cities they were near, neighborhoods that were almost entirely populated by white people due to racist administration of FHA loans, racist zoning laws, and racist real estate business practices. Post Brown is when a lot of them started to be spun off into independent municipal governments by state legislatures with their own mayors and city councils and school districts.
So, rereading it now, I feel like I should correct my initial comment here - it wasn’t the white people with FHA loans who started this process of creating segregated communities, it was the ones who administered those loans and who were writing the laws incorporating them as independent government entities.
The 'burbs mostly got built by GIs returning from WWII. There wasn’t room enough in the cities for all of them. I strongly doubt that “tax money going to fund black kids schools” was even a thought for most of them, let alone a primary motivator.
Post WW2 was when racial segregation was still legal. Redlining was a long documented thing and definitely included tax money going to schools.
I’m not saying redlining didn’t happen. I’m saying that returning GIs didn’t intentionally build neighborhoods and redline them away from blacks to prevent paying taxes to black schools.
Maybe the GIs that physically built or bought their own homes, but the developers and companies that did the building and selling of homes to the GIs sure did.
And for a large portion of them: they would have gone along with the enforced racial segregation of the time, which was the system in place designed to separate more than just tax money.
I live in the PNW and there are developed communities, (mostly waterfront), built right after WW2 and explicitly written in their covenants bamned access to non-whites.
So a GI who bought one of those houses may not have cared too much personally, but the system is what facilitated it. Which is why it has nothing to do with personal conviction.