I'm white. I grew up in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan -- which was 100% white in the 1960s when I was living there. I'm a baby boomer. The civil rights movement was the background music of my childhood.
And today, I find myself completely gobsmacked by how far we haven't come and how much we haven't learned since then. I thought it was better than this -- maybe not perfect -- but better than this. Then came Ferguson.
Today, I live in the same neighborhood my family lived in in the 1950s. (We moved to Grosse Pointe Woods in 1961.) Back then, this suburb was 100% white, mostly blue collar and not as peaceful as you might guess from that description. My parents moved to Grosse Pointe Woods because they wanted better schools for their children and because they were uncomfortable with some of their (white) neighbors. My parents were academics, and some of the aspects of white, blue-collar culture (guns, excessive alcohol) didn't sit well with them. (This didn't apply to all our neighbors. Some remained friends after we moved to Grosse Pointe until the end of my parents' lives.)
Since my family lived here in the '50s this suburb has undergone a cultural sea change. The big change came in the real estate crash in 2007-08. The city has gone from nearly 100% owner occupants to more like 50% rentals. The racial makeup of the city has gone from nearly all white to something more like 50/50. The schools may have an even higher proportion of African-American students because the people moving in have been mostly young families, and the people staying put are mostly older with no children in the schools.
The Great Recession hit this city hard. It's major employer had been the auto industry, which contracted dramatically. This suburb's decline in property value was among the worst in the United States. That has hit city revenues hard. It has hit the condition of property in this city hard.
In the course of about five years, this suburb converted from an average mostly white, blue collar city to something that is pretty close to Ferguson, Mo. People here are poor. Unemployment is high. The infrastructure is deteriorating.
And the police force is mostly white.
I'm not naming the specific Detroit suburb because what's happened here applies to most of Detroit's inner-ring suburbs. It's not much different in Warren, Roseville, Hazel Park or Eastpointe.
Follow me beyond the squiggle for some meditations on race.
My immediate neighbors, to the north and south and directly across the street, are white. This is almost entirely luck of the draw because my block is 50/50. The houses to the north and south of me are both rentals. I own my home (I've been here for 23 years) and the widow across the street has lived there for close to 50 years.
I have very good relations with one set of next-door neighbors and I'm civil to the people on the other side. I'm civil because I think being at war with your next-door neighbor, no matter who they are, is bad for you. The neighbor I'm civil with is the poster child for racist, blue-collar idiots. When I have to talk to him, I set my face on neutral and nod alot. Talking with other neighbors, I know that he isn't a popular person. Whites dislike him as much as the African-Americans do.
I'm not scared of my AA neighbors. They're families. Their children ride their bikes up and down the sidewalk in front of my house. Last spring, I bought a new lawn mower. I was unloading it in my driveway when a group of AA teen boys came walking along the street. They saw me struggling to get the big, heavy box out of my tailgate and stepped in to help. They stuck around and helped me uncrate the mower, get it assembled and then one of them volunteered to mow my lawn -- for free. (I think he sort of fell in love with the shiny, new machine -- as teenage boys of all ethnicities are wont to do.) I should be afraid of these boys?
But there are still racial tensions in my neighborhood -- most but not all stoked by my less-than-civilized white neighbor.
When a different (white) family lived in the rental on the other side from the racist, I witnessed a completely idiotic fight between two white mothers. They got into it over a squable between their respective 12-year-old sons. I thought I was going to have to call the police, but it broke up before blood was spilled. (It was a close thing.)
I won't insult anyone's intelligence by saying I'm unbiased and not at all racist. We all have our biases, gained through our personal experience. (Sort of like Avenue Q's "Everybody's A Little Bit Racist.") My background is growing up through the civil rights years in a family that was solidly in favor of equality. Even so, I was shocked by my parents when I was in college when they disapproved of my dating an AA man. They were products of their own background, and later in life their attitude on that issue changed as well.
Many of the "old settlers" in this suburb are unhappy that the city has so many rentals these days. I can't share their displeasure because I earn my living managing rentals these days.
I once had a neighbor of one of my rentals tell me, "Just don't rent to anyone black." I replied, "You know I can't promise that."
I have to follow the law, which prohibits selecting tenants on the basis of race. I'm perfectly OK with that. In six years of being a landlord, my experience has taught me that race is no predictor of whether a tenant will pay their rent or tear up the house. Right now, out of six houses I manage, I have two absolutely reliable tenants. One is white and one is AA. I have a couple of problem tenants as well -- they're both white.
Currently, more of my houses are rented to whites than minorities. But that mostly isn't a matter of my bias in choosing tenants. I do have to choose, but my primary issue for evaluation is "will this person be able to pay the rent." I can't claim that race plays absolutely no part in my evaluation. At the end of the day, after I do a credit check and interview, I have to apply a bit of "gut feeling" to the decision. My gut has been spectacularly wrong on occasion, but it's still the only thing I have to go on when the credit scores and background checks are similar.
But even if I was 100% non-racial in my decision, there's another part of the equation. The people who submit applications do so because they're comfortable with the idea of me as their landlord. So, for all I know, some desirable AA potential tenants are walking away because I'm white.
I don't have any answers, only questions. Where do we go from here? Why can't we just get along? What can I do to make it better?